Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy

The authors provide an encyclopaedia of subversive essays, speeches, sermons and letters that turn over the stones under which pale, anonymous corporate executives normally conduct their business in secret. And the authors call for a democratic offensive to oppose this malign corporate influence. The 70-odd short chapters cover subjects such as ‘Ending Corporate Governance’, ‘Citizens Over Corporations’, ‘Justice For Sale’ and – leaving us in no doubt as to their preferred solution -‘Revoking The Corporation’. The book’s main strength is its thorough grounding in law, both current and historical, and its grasp of just how corporations play the legal game to outsmart us, the citizens. The legal case the authors make against corporations and their undermining of democracy is so thorough and so devastating that it leaves one hungry for more concrete details of this or that company subverting the democratic process, bribing elected officials or corrupting the judicial process. A few corporate crooks are named and shamed here, but perhaps there is room for a companion volume listing the guilty and indicting them for their crimes.