Bfgrn
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When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country's founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.
A word that appears nowhere in the Constitution is "corporation," for the writers had no interest in using for-profit corporations to run their new government. In colonial times, corporations were tools of the king's oppression, chartered for the purpose of exploiting the so-called "New World" and shoveling wealth back into Europe. The rich formed joint-stock corporations to distribute the enormous risk of colonizing the Americas and gave them names like the Hudson Bay Company, the British East India Company, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Because they were so far from their sovereign - the king - the agents for these corporations had a lot of autonomy to do their work; they could pass laws, levy taxes, and even raise armies to manage and control property and commerce. They were not popular with the colonists.
So the Constitution's authors left control of corporations to state legislatures (10th Amendment), where they would get the closest supervision by the people. Early corporate charters were explicit about what a corporation could do, how, for how long, with whom, where, and when.
1) Corporations could not own stock in other corporations, and they were prohibited from any part of the political process.
2) Individual stockholders were held personally liable for any harms done in the name of the corporation, and most charters only lasted for 10 or 15 years.
3) But most importantly, in order to receive the profit-making privileges the shareholders sought, their corporations had to represent a clear benefit for the public good, such a building a road, canal, or bridge.
4) And when corporations violated any of these terms, their charters were frequently revoked by the state legislatures.
Corporate Personhood-Demeaning Our Bill of Rights - Reclaim Democracy.org
Thomas Jefferson Feared an Aristocracy of Corporations
"For the general operations of manufacturer, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manner and spirit of a people which preserve a public vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
A word that appears nowhere in the Constitution is "corporation," for the writers had no interest in using for-profit corporations to run their new government. In colonial times, corporations were tools of the king's oppression, chartered for the purpose of exploiting the so-called "New World" and shoveling wealth back into Europe. The rich formed joint-stock corporations to distribute the enormous risk of colonizing the Americas and gave them names like the Hudson Bay Company, the British East India Company, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Because they were so far from their sovereign - the king - the agents for these corporations had a lot of autonomy to do their work; they could pass laws, levy taxes, and even raise armies to manage and control property and commerce. They were not popular with the colonists.
So the Constitution's authors left control of corporations to state legislatures (10th Amendment), where they would get the closest supervision by the people. Early corporate charters were explicit about what a corporation could do, how, for how long, with whom, where, and when.
1) Corporations could not own stock in other corporations, and they were prohibited from any part of the political process.
2) Individual stockholders were held personally liable for any harms done in the name of the corporation, and most charters only lasted for 10 or 15 years.
3) But most importantly, in order to receive the profit-making privileges the shareholders sought, their corporations had to represent a clear benefit for the public good, such a building a road, canal, or bridge.
4) And when corporations violated any of these terms, their charters were frequently revoked by the state legislatures.
Corporate Personhood-Demeaning Our Bill of Rights - Reclaim Democracy.org
Thomas Jefferson Feared an Aristocracy of Corporations
"For the general operations of manufacturer, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manner and spirit of a people which preserve a public vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
