Corporation

Corporation: A changing pool of money owners defined by a unitary legal goal of profit maximization for its shareholders and their non-liability for the corporation’s actions. The corporation is the sole right holder as “the investor” in transnational treaty legal mechanisms whose rules since 1988 govern the global market and whose articles exclude labor and citizens rights. Above the lines of natural life and death – “lacking both a body to be kicked and a soul to be damned, they therefore do as they like” in words attributed originally to the words of Lord Chancellor Thurlow (1731-1806) – the corporation is the sole agent inducing obligations in contemporary international trade with a unilateral rights to sue governments for “loss of profit opportunity” through binding tribunals with unlimited powers of financial penalty. In domestic law, the private corporation writes its own charter of incorporation as distinct from its original reception of power by sovereign government conferral.

Source: ‘What is Good? What is Bad? The Value of All Values across Time, Place and Theories’ by John McMurtry, Philosophy and World Problems, Volume I-III, UNESCO in partnership with Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems: Oxford, 2004-11.