“Bernie of Wall Street” and “Bernie the Beatnik” - A Half a Century of American Capitalism
Team Latte
April 13, 2009

We all know about Bernard Madoff and that archetypal Bernie of Wall Street. So much has been written about them that it is getting almost boring.

But who is Bernie the Beatnik? Newspapers don’t write about him and nobody talks about him. There are no blogs, no websites, and no news channel where one can hear about Bernie the Beatnik. Every one is talking about Bernie Madoff; but no one ever talks about Bernie the Beatnik. As a matter of fact, in the last fifty years no body has ever talked about Bernie, the Beatnik.

Bernie the Beatnik is a guy in sandals and jeans with a guitar slung over his shoulders standing somewhere on East 85^th Street in New York wondering what happened to his world. He does not want to work, at least not in the conventional sense, and go to an office. He does not want to get shackled by corporate rules and ethics. He is free spirited, adventurous, and full of enthusiasm to explore new worlds. He dreams of conquering minds and hearts of people around the world.

He detests this huge multitude of people wearing suits and ties – they all look alike to him – all walking in the same direction to tall glass buildings, their offices with this dour look on their faces. He is all alone and frightened. In short Bernie is not an Organization Man. And, like the sets of some Hollywood movie, you need to travel backwards to meet Bernie because this loner, this Bernie inhabits the 1950s America.

He is no longer amongst us; he has totally disappeared into that very same crowd that he was so frightened of. Gone, gobbled up, and forgotten.

In the fall of 1956, William H Whyte’s The Organization Man was published in America. The purpose of the book was, perhaps, to capture the spirit of the new Industrial Age that was unfolding after the World War II. However, this book ended up defining the corporate landscape in the United States for the next fifty years. This seminal work, in the Orwellian genre, described how the modern day corporate America was then shaping up in the post War period and how large corporations were exerting their influence over minds of young American men and women. Not only were a suit and a tie, together with an office cubicle becoming a symbol of the uniformity and conformity of corporate life, but even the mind of a an American youth was being totally plundered by the Corporation to purge it of any trace of creativity and imagination. For the essence of the new Industrial Age that was being ushered in after the Second World War was a triumph of the machine over the mind. The only way a corporation can triumph is to collectivize human spirit and individual enterprise.

Within a year of the publication of Whyte’s The Organization Man, Du Pont Corporation came out with a print advertisement in the paper with the same headline. In the advertisement, the top right hand corner was a sketch of 1950s-style men in suits and tie, walking with great purpose towards and unseen office tower. In the bottom left hard corner was the sketch of a lonely guy, “Bernie, the Beatnik” who was wearing sandals and jeans and holding a guitar. Composed in small print, sandwiched between these two sketches, was around 200 words of copy*. In the advert Bernie the Beatnik promises never to take up a job with a big company and obey orders and lose his freedom.

As Joseph Nocera comments in his foreword to the 2002 edition of Whyte’s book, Du Pont Corporation was indeed sending out a message to the people. It was effectively repudiating Whyte’s thesis that conformism and managerial collectivism, fostered by discipline and rigour, in big companies is indeed a good thing, a virtue. Du Pont’s message to the people was that in big corporation people go to work every day not to lose their freedom but to pursue a freedom that is possible as long as there is a strong, productive and creative nation.

Is America today, fifty odd years later, a strong, productive and a creative nation? Arguably, yes. But this strong, productive and a creative nation is under siege from that very institution that made it strong, productive and creative – the big Corporation. It is beholden to the power and the megalomania of the beast that we call modern day corporation. Be it a bank, an automotive company or an internet search engine, the power of the corporation is ubiquitous and the Organization Man is omnipotent and omnipresent.

And this corporation has given us another kind of Bernie. Bernie Madoff and his close cousin, Bernie of Wall Street. This Bernie wears a suit, goes to office everyday and billions of dollars are transacted everyday at his whims and fancy, and all in the name of creating a strong, productive and a creative society. This Bernie is conformist, donates generously to charity, talks in important seminars and conferences and takes home hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and salary. This Bernie is an Organization Man, who has tamed and re-engineered his entire organization such that it can plunder the society and the environment to benefit him personally. This Bernie is a Manager who has no ethics and a broken compass. He lives for himself and only for today.

Bernie the Beatnik is gone, long gone. Long live the Organization Man!

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