CORPORATE POWER IN AMERICA

Many years ago H. G. Wells wrote "It is not creative minds that produce revolutions, but the obstinate conservation of established authority," a sentiment that can serve as the text for this proficient if rather stereotyped critique of contemporary American corporate power. The contributors — all participants in a Nader-sponsored colloquium on big business accountability held late last year — want the corporation to become more socially responsible, not out of starry-eyed rapture with the boardroom and the fatcats who run it but because they are pragmatic welfare capitalists who seek to reform rather than revolutionize our economic subsystems. Robert Dahl leads off the proceedings with a call for more competition, more public control, less bigness; John Kenneth Galbraith plumps (once again) for transforming large private corporations into public enterprises; Senator Fred Harris proposes breaking up the monopolies; Mark Green issues a plea for a new corporate moral standard in which the companies "realize their special obligations as dominant citizens"; John J. Flynn looks toward a "corporate democracy"; Willard Mueller discusses the need for public disclosure; Andrew Hacker believes that it will take another serious depression before corporate accountability can be implemented. Not at all a muckraking collection (cf. Nader above), this lacks the intensity of recent similar works like Heilbroner's In the Name of Corporate Profit (p. 235) and the proposed remedies are either stale or too soulful for the soulless.