I am not American, though I lived there. All I can say is that this polarization is a XXI century thing. People used to look at the parties less like part of their identities and more like something that a choice of values and trade-offs.

Anyway, I think that this has little to do with the main point. Left or right, the main issue is that the idea of "The Corporation" has helped tremendously to improve productivity, but it is used as a moral shield by individuals to justify their acts. No matter how high in the ladder someone is, as long as they want to go up, they are all complicit.