TAMING THE OCTOPUS

How reformers have taken on—and might yet transform—big business in the U.S.

In this astute history, Hedgehog Review senior editor Williams charts the evolution of the corporation into its outsized and seemingly predatory role in American life, along with prominent efforts undertaken to reform it. Drawing on “the stories of businesspeople, employees, consumers, and activists who have waged battles over business decisions, managerial strategies, and public policy,” the author traces key stages of the corporation’s rising autonomy and activists’ resistance to its undemocratic powers. The severing of “noneconomic considerations from the ability to act on them,” Williams argues convincingly, “is nothing less than a moral fracture at the heart of the corporation—a fatal and rarely understood flaw that makes its history over the past century a regrettable tragedy.” The author provides a detailed and accessible account of reform movements that have checked corporate power, and he reminds us that neoliberal deregulation is a recent phenomenon that might, in spite of daunting obstacles, be reversed or revised. Williams shows how a view of the corporation as necessarily being responsible to more than shareholders’ profits is not only familiar from history, but should be reinvigorated. Though some of the economic and legal minutiae of the topic can be dry, the author’s consistently lively presentation of the drama involved in battles over profits and social welfare creates an engaging narrative. Williams memorably renders the personalities of key figures in debates about the corporation’s role, such as Ralph Nader, and we gain a vivid sense of the passions informing competing ideologies. The author makes it clear that a moral reckoning for corporations is possible, and a thoroughgoing reformation of the institution would promise enormous benefits for the common good.

A fascinating account of efforts to rein in the excesses of capitalism.