The Corporate Person and Social Control: Responding to Deregulation

The need for a coherent left position on the issue of public control of business activities has been heightened by the experience of massive deregulation. This paper offers such a position, proposing a policy as a nonreformist reform in Gorz' sense. The patterns of regulatory law development and lack of effective enforcement in the United States and current right-wing attacks on regulation are outlined. Next, the corporation's component "persons": shareholders, directors, managers and workers are examined, to see which sanctions fall on which people, and what might constitute more appropriate "incidence" of sanctions, given the current United States political climate. Third, a proposal for extension of the personal liability logics applied to pension fund managers to the directors of businesses which violate laws, combined with utilization of available and more stringent sanctions on corporations themselves is developed. The rationale and precedent for such actions are presented, and I conclude with an argument over the extent to which debate on such a proposal, let alone its implementation, would move in the direction of Gorzian non-reformist reforms.