As the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments.

Corporations now govern society, perhaps more than governments themselves do; yet ironically, it is their very power, much of which they have gained through economic globalization, that makes them vulnerable.

Quotes from the Underground is a remarkable resource and must-read for writers, researchers, activists and indeed anyone who embraces progressive values and hopes to rescue politics from corporate control.

The whole difficulty I think that that we're facing now is the question of who is going to ensure that corporations are accountable. The problem with leaving it to activists and non-governmental organizations-even with the tool of the Internet at their disposal-is that those organizations and those people don't have the legal right to compel corporations to disclose information, and that is something that governments can do.

As institutional psychopaths, corporations are wont to remove obstacles that get into their way.

The corporation was originally conceived as a public institution whose purpose was to serve national interests and advance the public good.

As the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments.