Adolf A. Berle: Corporation

Adolf A. Berle was American diplomat. Explore interesting quotes on corporation.

Adolf A. Berle: 28 quotes1 like

“Why have stockholders?… What contribution do they make, entitling them to heirship of half the profits of the industrial system, receivable partly in the form of dividends, and partly in the form of increased market values resulting from undistributed corporate gains? Stockholders toil not, neither do they spin, to earn that reward. They are beneficiaries by position only. Justification for their inheritance must be sought outside classic economic reasoning…. [and] can be founded only upon social grounds… that justification turns on the distribution as well as the existence of wealth. Its force exists only in direct ratio to the number of individuals who hold such wealth. Justification for the stockholder's existence thus depends on increasing distribution within the American population. Ideally the stockholder's position will be impregnable only when every American family has its fragment of that position and of the wealth by which the opportunity to develop individuality becomes fully actualized.”

1967, p. xxiii
The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967

“The property owner who invests in a modern corporation so far surrenders his wealth to those in control of the corporation that he has exchanged the position of independent owner for one in which he may become merely recipient of the wages of capital… [Such owners] have surrendered the right that the corporation should be operated in their sole interest…”

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 355

“The Russian revolution was nominally based on Communist dogma; but its significant struggle was to find some instrument by which a vast backward country could be mauled into industrialization. The capitalist revolution in which the United States was the leader found apter, more efficient and more flexible means through collectivizing capital in corporations.”

Source: The 20th century capitalist revolution. 1954, p. 23

“[Corporations must manifest in this area a conscience, or be required to] accept direction from the conscience of the government. This conscience must be built into institutions so that it can be invoked as a right by the individuals and interests subject to the corporate power… For twentieth-century capitalism will justify itself not only by its out-turn product, but by its content of life values.”

Source: The 20th century capitalist revolution. 1954, p. 113-114; as cited in Prashker (1954)

“In its new aspect the corporation is a means whereby the wealth of innumerable individuals has been concentrated into huge aggregates and whereby control over this wealth has been surrendered to a unified direction. The power attendant upon such concentration has brought forth princes of industry, whose position in the community is yet to be defined. The surrender of control over their wealth by investors has effectively broken the old property relationships and has raise the problem of defining these relationship anew. The direction of industry by persons other than those who have ventured their wealth has raised the question of the motive force back of such direction and the effective distribution of the returns from business enterprise.”

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 2 (1967, p. 4)

“Major corporations in most instances do not seek capital. They form it themselves.”

Source: The 20th century capitalist revolution. 1954, p. 40

“[The corporation is an invaluable auxiliary to the conduct of foreign affairs by the Government, and] has become an international as well as a national instrument. It is a mighty institution which thus far has not become, and has manifested no great desire to become, an independent political force. In international life it is an experiment in non-national organization, pledged only to discharge certain economic functions.”

163 ; as cited in Prashker (1954)
The 20th century capitalist revolution. 1954

“The rise of the modern corporation has brought a concentration of economic power which can compete on equal terms with the modern state - economic power versus political power, each strong in its own field. The state seeks in some aspects to regulate the corporation, while the corporation, steadily becoming more powerful, makes every effort to avoid such regulation… The future may see the economic organism, now typified by the corporation, not only on an equal plane with the state, but possibly even superseding it as the dominant form of social organization. The law of corporations, accordingly, might well be considered as a potential constitutional law for the new economic state, while business practice is increasingly assuming the aspect of economic statesmanship.”

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 357 (1967, p. 313)