The Silent War: Inside the Global Business Battles Shaping America's Future. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, April, 1989 by Tom Peters

Second, all welfare "should be tied to work. Just as everyone should be entitled to insurance against disaster but not to guaranteed subsidy, everyone should be expected to work in exchange for benefits paid for by other Americans. . ."

Fallows's third suggestion is the toughest to implement, "de-emphasizing credentials and eliminating Confucianism." The logic: "A modern society needs good schools. But modern Americans should not use schools as a filter, sorting people into categories early in life. . . .The more that schooling matters, the harder it will be for anyone to overcome an initial handicap. The less that formal schooling matters, the more likely second chances become-and the harder people will try."

Finally, Fallows argues passionately that America should remain open to immigrants "The disproportionate share of the ambitious people of the world. . . fighting for a chance to use their ambitions in the United States," he says"are America's major advantage over other countries, especially Japan."

Except for a footnote in the middle of the book, Fallows never discusses industrial policy. Industrial policy, implicit or explicit, is the essence of the Magaziner and Patinkin book; culture never rears its head for them, no matter how indirectly. Why, then, review these two books together?

Because any American renaissance, economic or otherwise, will be built upon the strength of our people, their everyday actions and aspirations. To be sure, there is a great deal that our biggest companies have to learn that has little to do with culture. The deficiencies of our biggest corporations, which Magaziner and Patinkin chronicle so astutely, should be addressed with dispatch. But the underlying and unremitting theme of the Magaziner and Patink-in book is: "More like them." And that's probably a mistake, a tragic mistake from which we might not recover.

Fallows lays out a much more daunting challenge. He suggests that we do have something special, but in many respects we've been working to undermine that specialness for the best part of a century. It's true that American parents are still far more willing than Japanese or German to see their children engage in entrepreneurship. On the other hand, most American parents probably harbor a sneaking desire for their carefully nurtured young man or young woman to end up as an IBM marketer, a business school professor, or a lettered professional in the medical services.

While at work on this review, I was also conducting some research in Austin, Texas at 3M's new "breakaway" facility-the big, entrepreneurial company's first major move beyond St. Paul, 3M has stayed more vigorous than most of its giant-firm peers, and executive after executive explained why in terms that Fallows would find comforting. One said, "You get the chance from the outset to say what you want to say. You make your own career around here. . . .The chances are unlimited." Of course, 3M is an anomaly among big outfits in America, but there are tens of thousands of would-be 3Ms sprouting up all over the United States, from the Rust Belt to the Asian- and Hispanic-founded entrepreneurial firms that are causing the economic surge in the Los Angeles Basin.