Taming the Octopus

November 27, 2023
Williams, senior editor of the Hedgehog Review, debuts with a sharp study of the struggle to hold corporations accountable in the 20th century. Focusing on the politicians, economists, and activists involved, Williams tells how aggressive advocacy from lawyer Adolf Berle, a member of FDR’s “Brain Trust,” helped secure the 1934 establishment of the Securities Exchange Act, which “brought more specialized professional standards” to the New York stock exchange. New Deal regulation, Williams notes, came under intense scrutiny in the latter half of the 20th century from such conservative economists as Henry Manne, who argued that corporations should pursue profit without regard for “mutual fairness and individual morality.” Williams’s thought-provoking analysis pushes back against the notion that corporations are not public institutions, highlighting how grassroots accountability campaigns—including the 1950s push for Kodak to start a job-training program for Black workers, who were severely underrepresented at the company—“harkened back to an older view” of corporations as “concessions of state power created for the good of society.” The fascinating history also presents glimpses into legislative roads not taken, such as an abandoned 1907 proposal championed by Theodore Roosevelt that would have granted the federal government a direct role in the administration of private companies. The result is a riveting look at corporations’ ever-shifting role in American society.

January 1, 2024
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.

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