The Corporation, Law, and Capitalism

In ‘The Corporation, Law and Capitalism’, Grietje Baars offers a radical Marxist perspective on the role of law in the global political economy. Closing a major gap in historical-materialist scholarship, Baars demonstrates how the corporation, capitalism ’s main engine from city-state and colonial times to the present multinational, is a masterpiece of legal technology. The symbiosis between law and capital becomes acutely apparent in the question of ‘corporate accountability ‘. Baars provides a detailed analysis of corporate human rights and war crimes trials, from the Nuremberg industrialists ‘ trials to current efforts. The book shows that precisely because of law ’s relationship to capital, law cannot prevent or remedy the ‘externalities ‘ produced by corporate capitalism. This realisation will generate the space required to formulate a different answer to ’the question of the corporation ‘, and to global corporate capitalism more broadly, outside of the law.