----- Original Message ----- From: <topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au>
>
> http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/chomskysept97.htm
>
> "These radical changes in the conception of human rights and democracy were
not
> introduced primarily by legislation, but by judicial decisions and
intellectual
> commentary. Corporations, which previously had been considered artificial
> entities with no rights, were accorded all the rights of persons, and far
more,
> since they are "immortal persons," and "persons" of extraordinary wealth and
> power.
[snip
> The intellectual backgrounds for granting such extraordinary rights to
> "collectivist legal entities" lie in neo-Hegelian doctrines that also underlie
> Bolshevism and fascism: the idea that organic entities have rights over and
> above those of persons. > http://www.zmag.org/chomskyalbaq.htm:
[snip]
>Conservatives a century ago
> denounced the procedure, describing corporatization as a "return to feudalism"
> and "a form of communism," which is not an entirely inappropriate analogy.
> There were similar intellectual origins in neo-Hegelian ideas about the rights
> of organic entities, along with the belief in the need to have a centralized
> administration of chaotic systems--like the markets, which were totally out of
> control."
========================
If the dispute is whether NC asserted that corps. were a manifestation of neo-Hegelian political and legal theories of the firm, there's no problem.
The problem lies with the issue that the heyday of corporate law in the US, from the 14th Amendment through to Berle and Means, was also a time when US jurisprudence was in a decidedly anti-Hegelian mode, epitomized by Justice Holmes. Thus the problem is whether NC is correct in his assertions.
Ian