Corporate Reform
MILLER, ARTHUR S.
Corporate Reform WHERETHE LAW ENDS: THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF CORPORATE BEHAVIOR, by Christopher D.Stone. Harper & Row. 273 pp. $12.95. ARTHUR S. MILLER Christopher D. Stone'sbook, Where the Law...
...The corporate rich—in the United States and in the "rich man's club" of the Western world—are getting richer and t he poor are getting poorer...
...It advances the level of discourse from abstract notions of telling corporations to b e good by suggesting some concrete proposals...
...Kaplan said twenty years ago that Americans are ambivalent about the supercorporations, and so they are: They want the benefits (the consumer goods) produced, but at the same time they yearn for a simpler society...
...His new book, "The Modern Corporate State: Private Governments ndtheAmerican Constitution, "willbe mblished in 1976 by Greenwood Press...
...ARTHUR S. MILLER Christopher D. Stone'sbook, Where the Law Ends, comes at a time when the ugly face of capitalism is being exposed once again...
...It has a careening momentum of its own, heedless of little else than an incessant search for short-term profits...
...Miller is professor of constitutional law at George Washington University...
...Even assuming that can be done, is that enough...
...More recently, Senator Frank Church's Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations has unmasked payoffs by major American corporations to government officials in such countries as Gabon, South Korea, Bolivia, Italy, and various Arab lands...
...Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California, accepts the system but suggests changes...
...Stone notes that the dialogue must be continued by others...
...It is not enough simply to recommend •eform of the internal operations of t he corporation...
...Stone blames t h e law's shortcomings on the attribution of artificial personality to the corporation, with the consequent adoption of legal norms useful for natural persons against the disembodied economic man that is the corporation...
...One of t he obvious products of the present depression is the gradual creation of an industrial lumpenproletariatin the United States...
...Nevertheless, Where the Law Ends has value for t h e layman toward whom it is aimed...
...The Ford Administration's attempted •esurrection of Adam Smith, whose xx>k, The Wealth of Nations, coincidenally was published in 1776, will merely exacerbate an already grievous social problem...
...There are basic reasons for being pessimistic about bringing the giant corporations to heel...
...Stone fails to come to grips with the problem of how to get his corporate reforms enacted into law, or, if they are enacted how to get them administered adequately...
...A remarkable recent book published by the Campaign for Human Development of the United States Catholic Conference, entitled Poverty in American Democracy: A Study of Social Power, should be read in conjunction with Stone...
...ArthurS...
...The rewards of corporate capitalism are far too unequally dispersed...
...Ponder also the messages, bleak and gloomy though they be, of Robert Heilbroner's An Essay on the Human Prospect and Geoffrey Barraclough's trioof articles in the New York Review of Books on the breakdown of "neocapitalism...
...Just how a secret campaign contribution differs in fact and theory from a bribe has not yet been demonstrated...
...A.D.H...
...But should the corporate system be accepted, as Stone implies, with some Band-Aids plastered on to effect internal reforms...
...There is no public consensus about the need to curb big business...
...He begins by demonstrating that the corporation is out of control—beyond the law and other means of limiting its activities...
...The system fosters gross economic inequality, which makes political equality a farce...
...Stone proposes some remedies, such as "general public directors" and "special public directors...
...the unfinished American •evolution (of equality) must be corn- Meted...
...It sets out the human costs of the corporate state...
...The system itself needs restructuring...
...He is not optimistic that this will be done, nor should he be...
...The Watergate investigations revealed massive "campaign contributions" to American politicians...
...That is a lawyer's "solution" to an economic and political problem— one that is far deeper and more pervasive than Stone cares to admit...
...The law itself, as Stone mentions but does little to develop, is greatly influenced by the corporations and their minions in the legal profession...
...The history of American law generally has been one of the protection of business enterprise...
...All of his remedies are aimed at reforming the internal politics of the corporate community...
...What has been demonstrated is that institutionalized corporate corruption exists throughout the world...
Vol. 39 • December 1975 • No. 12
