Class Privilege
Description
Capitalism's agenda is the endless pursuit of private accumulation of socially produced wealth. In our system, the corporation-created by law-is meant to hide this agenda, to distract us so that flesh and blood capitalists can do what they like. But when the workings of the corporation are examined, they reveal a betrayal of the very values and norms that, for their legitimacy's sake, capitalists in our parts of the world purport to share.
Harry Glasbeek highlights one of capitalism's weak spots-the perverting economic, political, and ethical roles played by the prime instrument of private wealth accumulation: the legal corporation. Once the corporate mask is ripped off, those who hide behind it become visible. Stripped of their protective garb, the capitalist class will be just as naked as the rest of us are when we face their corporations.
More details
Person
Harry Glasbeek is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. He has also taught at the universities of Melbourne and Monash in Australia, and the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of ten books including Wealth by Stealth: Corporate Crime, Corporate Law, and the Perversion of Democracy.
Content
- Introduction: Confronting Flesh-and-Blood Targets
- Part I: The Corporation: Law's Gift to Capitalists
- Chapter 1: A Corporation Is Born
- Chapter 2: Cooking the Books
- Chapter 3: Gaming the System
- Part II: The Shareholder: The Privileging of a Class
- Chapter 4: The Shareholder as Gambler
- Chapter 5: The Shareholder as Toxin
- Chapter 6: The Shareholder as Victim
- Part III: The Corporate Actor: Piercing the Veil
- Chapter 7: The Ideal of Individual Responsibility
- Chapter 8: The Ideal Abandoned
- Chapter 9: Too Hard to Find? The Anecdotal Riposte
- Chapter 10: Too Hard to Find? The Empirical Riposte
- Chapter 11: The Role of Limited Liability
- Chapter 12: Social Welfare
- Chapter 13: A Step off the Road to Serfdom
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Index
