The Corporation as a Body Politic

Abstract For most radical social theorists, it goes almost without saying that the business corporation is and always has been, by its very nature, an essentially economic entity. As such, one would expect the corporation to measure its performance according to the standard of profit maximization. However, the validity of that assumption has been under constant challenge ever since the appearance, in 1932, of Berle and Means' classic work, The Modem Corporation and Private Property. In that book, Berle and Means set out to demonstrate that the modern corporation had effectively undermined what they called “the traditional logic of property,” thereby calling into question the continued efficacy and relevance of the profit motive to the modern business enterprise.