Corporate Power and Individual Freedom: Some General Analysis and Particular Reservations

Abstract

The political sociology of the business corporation hardly sounds promising as a topic for popular, or even semi-popular, consumption. But in the last few years, a stream of more or less scholarly literature on the subject has caught the fancy of the public in an astonishing way-some of it even rising to the dizzy heights of paperbackdom. Not all these works are in full agreement, nor are they identical in emphasis. They are close enough together, however, to permit a composite to be drawn of their view of the world of the big company and the individual.