U.S. Chamber of Commerce Reaches 2.5 Million Members Through Anti-Communist Mobilization

At the dawn of the 1960s, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce membership has grown to over 2.5 million dues-paying members, unified behind the organization’s aggressive support of capitalism and anti-communist mobilization in the face of what it characterizes as domestic and foreign threats. The Chamber spends much of the late 1950s training 150,000 businessmen to serve as what one account describes as “a cadre of pro-business, anticommunist militants” deployed “to make sure capitalism won the 1960 elections,” demonstrating systematic political mobilization of the business community years before the Powell Memo supposedly awakened corporate political consciousness.

The Chamber’s explosive growth stems from its leadership role in fostering what researchers describe as an anti-Communist network with institutional bases in the nation’s most important patriotic organizations and small business groups. Working alongside organizations like the American Legion (a veterans’ organization founded in 1919), the Chamber subscribes to an anti-communism with targets encompassing far more than the Communist party itself—seeing little difference between “parlor pinks” and “flaming Bolsheviks” while considering nonconformity as dangerous as actual communism. The organizations adhere to a dualistic worldview in which anyone disagreeing with them is labeled an enemy, enabling systematic attacks on labor unions, progressive legislation, and social welfare programs under the guise of fighting communist infiltration.

By far the most important use of anti-communist rhetoric serves segments of the business community opposing organized labor. From the 1870s until the McCarthy period, employers identify the labor movement with the Red menace of the moment—whether anarchists, socialists, Communists, or Wobblies—making Red-baiting a tactic to confront unions without addressing legitimate economic grievances. Father John Cronin, the Catholic Church’s leading anti-Communist, writes an influential pamphlet for the Chamber in 1946 and serves as liaison between the FBI and HUAC member Richard Nixon, demonstrating the Chamber’s integration into networks connecting business interests, religious institutions, law enforcement, and congressional investigating committees. The Chamber’s 2.5 million member milestone in 1960 represents the culmination of systematic anti-communist political mobilization, establishing the organizational infrastructure and membership base that makes the Chamber the largest lobbying organization in U.S. history—spending almost $1.4 billion on federal lobbying from 1998 through 2013, more than three times as much as the next largest spender.