Capitalism’s agenda is the endless pursuit of private accumulation of socially produced wealth. In our system, the corporation—created by law—is meant to hide this agenda, to distract us so that flesh and blood capitalists can do what they like. But when the workings of the corporation are examined, they reveal a betrayal of the very values and norms that, for their legitimacy’s sake, capitalists in our parts of the world purport to share.

Harry Glasbeek highlights one of capitalism’s weak spots–the perverting economic, political, and ethical roles played by the prime instrument of private wealth accumulation: the legal corporation. Once the corporate mask is ripped off, those who hide behind it become visible. Stripped of their protective garb, the capitalist class will be just as naked as the rest of us are when we face their corporations.

Harry Glasbeek is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. He has also taught at the universities of Melbourne and Monash in Australia, and the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of ten books including Class Privilege: How Law Shelters Shareholders and Coddles Capitalism and Wealth By Stealth: Corporate Crime, Corporate Law, and the Perversion of Democracy.

Harry Glasbeek's profile page

• Winner, Errol Sharpe Book Prize

Glasbeek cleverly and completely exposes the imaginary ideological clothing of the ersatz corporate royalty and shows how the real mechanisms of modern market society work to concentrate capital.

Howard A. Doughty, The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal