Joel Bakan

The corporation's legally defined mandates to pursue, relentlessly and without exception, its own self interest, regardless of the often harmful consequences it might cause to others. As a result, I argue, the corporation is a pathological institution, a dangerous possessor of the great power it wields over people and societies.

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.

A century and a half after its birth, the modern business corporation, an artificial person made in the image of a human psychopath, now is seeking to remake real people in its image.

Corporations have no internal constraints to stop them from flouting the law. Their legal makeup compels them to pursue profit and growth but say nothing about whether they have to abide by the law in doing so. As a result, decisions to break the law depend, as do all others, on whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

These are the elements of an emerging order that may prove to be as dangerous as any fundamentalism that history has produced. For in a world where anything or anyone can be owned, manipulated, and exploited for profit, everything and everyone will be.