Società commerciali, Stato e individuo / The Corporation: An individualist's perspective

Abstract disponibile solo in lingua inglese

In this essay, the modern phenomenon of the corporation and the moral problems it poses are examined in a perspective of methodological individualism. The author argues that the corporation came into being as the result of an evolutionary process; it was, he claims, an arrangement which men came upon through spontaneous individual interaction and used to cope with the uncertainty and dispersion of information typical of economic activity. In this sense, the corporation is comparable to other phenomena such as money or the market. It is a fruit of Smith's system of natural liberty, hence of common law as opposed to positive law. The author refutes the thesis of the corporation as a holistic entity, a non-biological person. Likewise, he refutes the thesis which explains the corporation through a theory of rights understood as vetoes. The consequence of the perspective he chooses to adopt is that government regulation of the corporation is admissable only in so far as it seeks to solve real problems of public goods. The idea of attributing penal responsibility directly to the corporation as opposed to the individuals active within it thus breaks down, as does the idea that corporations have unspecified social responsibilities. Also in vain, finally, is the attempt of contemporary business ethics to impose on corporations – and their management in particular – exogenous constraints, particular moral obligations arising from a specific moral code and not from ordinary morality.