----- Original Message ----- From: "Shane Mage" <shmage at pipeline.com>
> >========================
> >
> >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
>
> The "problem" is much bigger than that. The corporatist jurisprudence
> stems from John Marshall's "Dartmouth College Case" decision (1819),
> at a time when Hegel was very much alive, and very much unread
> by American intellectuals (let alone by that Federalist hack Marshall)! And
> the 14th Amendment was written intentionally in such a way
> as to permit the Supreme Court (then as now the most
> reactionary branch of the US government) to enfranchise
> corporations as super-"persons". The problem is Chomsky's
> pathologically arrogant anti-Marxism.
>
> Shane Mage
>
> "Thunderbolt steers all
> things."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
=====================
Like I said earlier the problem goes back to Protestant Reformation, military organizations etc. In addition to the earlier refs., see "The Divine Corporation and the History of Ethics" by J B Schneewind which is in a book titled "Philosophy in History ed. by Richard Rorty and some other folks.
The issue at hand was whether NC's assertions of the neo-Hegelian roots of corporations are accurate. They aren't. The Dartmouth case was rather about contracts and "privatization." Joint stock companies had been around for a couple of hundred years by that time and the dominant mode of jurisprudence was Lockean-Blackstonean.
Ian