The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power

In this revolutionary assessment of the history, character, and globalization of the modern business corporation, Bakan backs his premise with the following observations:

• The corporation's legally defined mandate is to pursue relentlessly and without exception its own economic self-interest, regardless of the harmful consequences it might cause to others.

• The corporation's unbridled self-interest victimizes individuals, society, and, when it goes awry, even shareholders and can cause corporations to self-destruct, as recent Wall Street scandals reveal.

• Governments have freed the corporation, despite its flawed character, from legal constraints through deregulation and granted it ever greater authority over society through privatization.

But Bakan believes change is possible and he outlines a far-reaching program of achievable reforms through legal regulation and democratic control.

Featuring in-depth interviews with such wide-ranging figures as Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, business guru Peter Drucker, and cultural critic Noam Chomsky, The Corporation is an extraordinary work that will educate and enlighten students, CEOs, whistle-blowers, power brokers, pawns, pundits, and politicians alike.

Indeed congress has gotten its piece of the action as corporate leaders share part of their profits with the very politicians charged with regulating them. Some politicians even own stock in the companies they regulate.

What else would explain why congress has failed to strongly intervene in the blatant corporate corruption of late? Is there any question that, were money not changing hands at the political level, corporate CEOs would have been allowed to form sweetheart deals with the very corporate boards charged with their oversight, when instead they should be protecting the shareholders? In virtually every congressional vote, one needs only to follow the money to predict its outcome.

Bakan has many good ideas for cleaning up the corporate system, but his (and any) proposed fixes simply will not happen under the current moneyed political system. Until we stop the cash that flows from those who want laws written to those who write them, corporate abuse of shareholders and the taxpayers will continue. Only full public financing of our electoral system (at a cost of about $10 per taxpayer) will stop the abuses and the $1500 per taxpayer congress soles out each year to its funders.

In any other country we?d call our system bribery and payola; in America we call it freedom of speech. In the corporate world we fire employees who take money from vendors; in the political world we reelect them. Where are our heads?

This book is a must read for anybody interested in cleaning up the political system before we pass it on to the next generation.


You absolutely must read this book   July 14, 2004
Spiral Highway (Ithaca, New York, USA)
20 out of 23 found this review helpful

You are very likely to have worked for a corporation. You certainly get almost everything you eat, drink, read, watch and buy from corporations. These are very rich and increasingly powerful institutions. Through their ads, their news channels and their newspapers, you regularly hear about their good deeds and get their side of every story. This book powerfully presents the other side.

Rather than being forces for good in the world, its central thesis is that their motivations and actions are (metaphorically) psychopathic - by their very legal and organizational structure, they are incapable of putting any concern ahead of their own self-interest. Any purportedly altruistic or generous actions can be understood as merely enlightened self-interest, carried out because of the financial benefit gained from any good will created. The strength of these arguments is underscored by the fact that they are acknowledged by the corporations themselves - when speaking honestly to their shareholders, rather than dishonestly through public relations spokespeople.

This book achieves a rare balance between readability and factual substance. Like a fast-paced novel, I found it hard to put down. Although it makes bold, gutsy claims, it avoids bombastic rants, instead allowing the force of examples and interviews to carry its argument. (It is definitely worth seeing the movie too - details are at www.thecorporation.com.)


Well worth your time and money   May 12, 2006
Francois-Xavier Jette (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful

For those who don't want to read long reviews to know what this book is about, here's its essence:
1) According to laws, corporations can't do anything that would reduce or impede shareholder profits.
2) This can lead to very horrifying situations, since all that counts when managers make decisions is the cost vs the benefit of those decisions. For instance, if a company makes more money by letting people die, breaking laws, or spoiling the environment, managers have no choice but to make those decisions in order to fulfill their legal requirements towards shareholders.
3) Bakan concludes that since it is laws voted by governments that compell corporations to behave the way they do, it is also the role of government to vote laws to limit the destructive effects of the corporate structure.

This book is basically a thesis on the need for governements to regulate the corporations they have helped create, in order to prevent them from becoming too dangerous to the societies they were created to serve.

In my opinion, in this age of free-trade, deregulation, and corporate-owned media and their propaganda, this book is a must read for anyone who wants to hear the other side of the story...