BERLE AND THE CORPORATE SOUL
Seligman, Ben B.
A. A. Berle and the Corporate Soul THE ~ O T H CENTURY CAPITALIST REVOLUTION, by Adolph A. Berle, Jr. Harcourt, Brace and Co., N. Y. 192 pages. 43.00. The tendency for these companies to...
...The tendency for these companies to spread into fields originally alien to their purposes is overlooked...
...Unfortunately for wich gone bad...
...for public welfare or the equally The solution to this dilemma rests strange notion that corporate gifts power in our constitutional frame- of his theory of conscience...
...The passionate reof equity within the corporate struc- gard for the individual personality ture would guarantee personal free- that this would imply seems most condom...
...What troubles ! practicable lines of control...
...he defines as public opinion, counBerle’s thesis in seriatim...
...defense nor a critique: it is best deHowever, the notion of a compe- scribed as a safe squat in the middle...
...Elsewhere, reflecting on his prudence is more thorough and penetrat- own intellectual equipment, he had noted ing, and some Consideration is given his “lack of vigorous following through...
...Berle does come fairly close to it, only to back away at the last moment in fear and confusion...
...Berle tervailing power and the threat of is disturbed by the quasi-political be- state intervention...
...But 6 per cent of corporate capital is ob- politically the intertwining of governtained from venture sources, that is, ment and private corporation creates stock purchases, while the remainder a tangled web of rights and obligaWinter 1955 93 DISSENT tions...
...of mind that managers and govern- Berle is asking for is a kind and gentle ment officials will exhibit: they must garrison state...
...In all this there must be some Mr...
...BEN B. SELICMAN The Quality of Liberal Thought AMERICAN THOUGHT, Morris Raphael Cohen...
...Ori- raises a question about their social ginating in the get-rich-quick boom role...
...After the appearance of this once knew and understood more clearbook it was difficult to argue that ly than most the pervasive impact of competition, at least in its Smithian corporatioiis on contemporary existor Ricardian visage, was meaningful ence...
...Only cally, its benefits are unbounded...
...Technologiderived from internal savings...
...e or governmental conscience way of protecting the individual: perhaps, says Berle, an appeal to a court is poorly drawn...
...The personnel director of a large cor- wrapped in a mephitic ideology, and poration, a vice-president in charge of sales, a conscientious security officer ing of discomfort with the hard realiin a government agency, a contract- ties of 20th century capitalism...
...But readers will only Means showed also that the 200 larg- meet disappointment here...
...This, though, is done but portant...
...Especially enjoyable are the thumbnail profiles of such individual yana...
...Siming officer in a defense department, ply put, the beliefs in Mr...
...Berle’s must all be aware that this is still a book are soft and so,gy, like a sandworld of people...
...What Mr...
...sion made it possible for self-perpetuating oligarchies to decide on price and production without regard to the concerns of legal ownership...
...Some recent newspaper reviews suggested that: Mr...
...American philosophy and re- writine...
...Berle was offering an eloquent defense of the corporate way titive economy dies hard...
...Yet Bcrle urges upon us the proposition that political security problem and its effect on corporate behavior...
...But what roots in ordinary sense, that are whose very mysticism betrays a feelwork is intolerable...
...Yet 92 Winter 1955 DISSENT is either borrowed on a short-term basis or privately placed with investment bankers, Even the tenuous control that might be exerted through stock holdings is now nothing more than a copywriter’s slogan...
...The Free Press, Glencoe, Ill., 1954...
...Corporations are no longer private domains, he says, but carriers these “controls” will enforce truthful of public responsibility, in which practices on corporations: by this he attempts are always made to balance doubtless means that business mansupply and demand...
...Berle recognizes that in such a matrix the limitation of corporate power is essential and he discovers somewhere in his political-economic horizon what he believes to be meaningful and generally the evidence has demonstrated that they have seldom worked in any effective manner...
...to Ameriean ideas on history, science, No bold strakes...
...Berle, the picture of a growing corpora...
...A. A. Berle and the Corporate Soul THE ~ O T H CENTURY CAPITALIST REVOLUTION, by Adolph A. Berle, Jr...
...The most est non-financial corporations held charitable statement that may be made about half the nation’s corporate is that it is a strange work for one who assets...
...Even the one- government property are being time check exerted through “owner- mingled, yet this, a “consequence of ship” is no longer available, for almost galloping capitalism”, is in many ways 65 per cent of industrial capital is now a welcome development...
...The anomaly is more have a conscience about these things- frightening than Mars himself...
...Much may be said havior of corporations...
...Here there is an apparent clash of government and private power, for ought not a corporation, under capitalism, possess the right to decide for itself whom it shall employ...
...they must love liberty deeply...
...Berle would come up with some fresh insights concerning the modern structures made stockholder control a myth...
...There are economists today who will argue that the share which large corporations hold of total assets is relatively unim- of life...
...Berle is that the corporation, by PERHAPS THE BEST THING TO DO, and thesis of two decades ago, Mr...
...Unable to deny his still viable Mr...
...that their impact on society hyperbolically: there is no direct has been exaggerated: and that any- statement that corporate monopolies way we possess ample controls to check may be justified by what they do, in their forays into non-economic areas...
...Only the growth is one to say of ideas that have no of conscience offers a hope for sanity...
...about a period as brilliant as the ligion engage Cohen’s attention for al- Enlightenment...
...Mr...
...Berle accepting a government contract, has concedes that the question of who converted itself into an ally of the controls this overwhelming aggrega- state...
...None of the vitality and economics...
...The book, however, is neither a to modern man...
...No longer did property carry with it the right to dispose of its usu- harden and congeal atomistic compefruct, since widespread stock disper- titive capitalism...
...ing, apparrntly inhibited the flow of his But the section on American juris- thought...
...More and more, private and tion of power is crucial...
...ing them, has become so institution- One wonders too what to make of alized that not even divesting it of its the long disquisition on the internal legal status would hamper its ability to get things done...
...But Cohen’s gift for most half the book, while political criticism, when trained on his own writthought receives a scant twenty pages...
...If Cohen lacks the substantiality and While this series of sketches of American thought was intended to be comprehensive, it was far from complete at thk time of Cohen’s death, and the result incisiveness of a Cassirer, it must also is lees thorough than could have been be admitted that, after all, he was not wished...
...5.00...
...He recognizes about these notions as useful devices: that old-fashioned competition has been displaced by a more genteel rivalry among huge aggregations of capital...
...These in a way the fairest, is to present Mr...
...Corporations are at the center of society: an example is General Motors, which extends its influence far beyond its own industry, on to gas stations, tire shops and accessory establishments...
...Berle and corporation...
...But more important is the state spicuous by its absence...
...Its line of argument has the consistency of warmedover taffy which, clinging to the fingers as it comes apart, slowly stretches itself out in all directions...
...A gov- Nothing has been said of the ernment run like a private business is author’s praise for the behavior of tyranny...
...thinkers as Pound, Cardozo, Peirce, Whitehead, and C. I. Lewis...
...and flare . . . cf Yet wniiic withal of a James tenacious or SantaclingWinter 1955 94 DISSENT...
...This explains why it is hard to pin the book down and come up with a specific characterization of its content...
...a private business run like corporations in international affairs or in the . recognition that unlimited to universities demonstrate the validity a government agency is “irresponsible his artless belief in business planning socialist bureaucracy...
...It is, in other words, the socioloof the Twenties, it demonstrated that gical and political aspects of corpothe growing complexities of corporate rate reality that become important: otherwise it is difficult to explain how corporate oligopoly has been able to One might hope that in a new book Mr...
...Yet it is the frequent use of covert political The place of monopoly in the modern world was highlighted some twenty years ago when Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means published their explosive study, The Modern Cor- pressure to attain econamic ends that poration and Priuate Property...
...the manner, say, of Schumpeter...
...The corporate agers walk in trepidation, thus makway of extracting raw materials, fabri- ing the public a remarkable defender cating goods, and distributing and sell- of its own interests...
Vol. 2 • January 1955 • No. 1
