Synopses & Reviews
Wealth inequality, corporate welfare, and industrial pollution are symptoms-the fevers and chills of the economy. The underlying illness, says Business Ethics magazine founder Marjorie Kelly, is shareholder primacy: the corporate drive to make profits for shareholders, no matter who pays the cost.
In The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly argues that focusing on the interests of stockholders to the exclusion of everyone else's interests is a form of discrimination based on property or wealth. She shows how this bias is held by our institutional structures, much as they once held biases against blacks and women.
The Divine Right of Capital exposes six aristocratic principles that corporations are built on, principles that we would never accept in our modern democratic society but which we accept unquestioningly in our economy. Wealth bias is a holdover from our pre-democratic past. It has enabled shareholders to become a kind of economic aristocracy. Kelly shows how to design more equitable alternatives-new property rights, new forms of corporate governance, new ways of looking at corporate performance-that build on both free-market and democratic principles.
We think of shareholder primacy as the natural law of the free market, much as our forebears thought of monarchy as the most natural form of government. But in The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly brilliantly demonstrates that it is no more "natural" than any other human creation. People designed this system and people can change it.
We need a change of mind as profound as that of the American Revolution. We must question the legitimacy of a system that gives the wealthy few-the ten percent of Americans who own ninety percent of all stock-a disproportionate power over the many. In so doing, we can fulfill the democratic principles of our nation not only in the political sphere, but in the economic sphere as well.
Review
"Brilliant. So simple. So direct. And so beautifully written. I think we have found our Thomas Paine for the new millennium." David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World
Review
"In the second part, [Kelly] examines a thought-provoking course of action that would improve matters a new set of paradigms and laws that would result in economic democracy, insuring that corporations exist for the public good. Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, John Locke, and Adam Smith are some of the luminaries she cites to support her points of view. This [is a] well-documented and readable book." Library Journal
Review
"Instead of alternatives, Kelly offers a 'diagnosis' aimed at smashing conventional wisdom so that new ideas may flourish. As such, [the book] will more likely inspire a future, more mature, probably influential work than gain popularity itself." Publishers Weekly
Review
"A marvelous piece of work clear, concise, and beautifully written. It raises all the right questions with insight and provocative observations." Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus, Visa International
About the Author
Marjorie Kelly is the cofounder and editor of Business Ethics, a national publication on corporate social responsibility. Kellys writing has appeared in publications such as The Utne Reader, The Progressive Populist, Tikkun, Earth Island Journal, Hope magazine, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Her work has been anthologized in a half-dozen books, including The New Entrepreneurs and The New Paradigm in Business. Kelly is a regular speaker and commentator on business ethics and corporate social responsibility featured in The Wall Street Journal, quoted in the New York Times, and interviewed frequently on NPR and other radio networks.