The Powell Memo Play in Australian higher education

The Powell Manifesto aka the – Attack on American Free Enterprise System – was a memo sent on August 23, 1971 to the US Chamber of Commerce by lawyer, Lewis Powell, who had been hired by the Chamber to craft a strategy to restore the dominant position of corporate America, which had felt diminished by the gains made by workers and citizens from social democratic policies. The dominant narrative in the late 1960s was focused on the so-called ‘profit squeeze’, which related to the redistribution of national income towards wages as a result of various government policies which increased workers’ protection, used taxation and spending as a redistributive vehicle, grew public services and infrastructure. Powell produced a path to reverse these gains by workers and citizens, in general, and ensure that corporate interests were dominant in public decision making. Conservative forces are still using it as a blueprint for their agendas. The recent decision by the Australian government to divert university students out of humanities and social science courses is a classic application of the blueprint.

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