The 1950s Company Man and the Transformation of the American Dream

Abstract

The impact of corporate culture on society is understudied because there is a lack of either an understanding or respect for the “soft sciences” including sociology, psychology, and anthropology that provide context to historical events. My research question incorporates history with these sciences to ask if Corporate America reengineered the American Dream concept through the 1950s “company man” through a mental manipulation of the middle-class white man. My definition of the “company man” is one who places his employer’s needs above his personal and social needs. History cannot be separated from human behavior. History requires understanding why something happened from multiple perspectives. What were the societal and cultural values at the time? What was the mindset of those directly involved? Recording an event without human context is like prosecuting a crime without an investigation of the perpetrator and the victim. A lawyer doesn’t go to court without understanding the behavior, motive, and mindset of those involved in the case. Why should history be any different? This thesis seeks ultimately to set the foundation for future research that explores if the “reengineered” 1950s American Dream correlates to the cultural, social, and political divisiveness experienced in twenty-first century America. My research analyzes the impact of major corporations during the Cold War on American culture by connecting business, economic, sociology and anthropology studies with history. A constructed model of the typical 1950s company man’s life inside and outside of corporate America intersects the physical, managerial, and cultural environment in the office and the home. The mythical American Dream is perpetuated generationally by Corporate America, politicians, and society. The American Dream that established a material benchmark by which people judge themselves in relationship to others has morphed into a weaponized ideology that fuels classism, misogynism, and racism. I hypothesize this pursuit of an elusive benchmark of success for most Americans, either by circumstance or by the continual raising of the bar, produces a demoralizing scenario of personal competition, a sense of failure, and resentment that divides our nation and threatens our democracy. Historian James T. Adams predicted in 1931, “If the dream is not to prove possible of fulfillment, we might as well become stark realists, become once more class-conscious, and struggle as individuals or classes against one another.” My research makes a significant contribution to historical and cultural understanding by correlating the 1950s American Dream, the corporate constructs of the company man model, and its legacy impact on the political and economic divisiveness in modern day America.