Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Bk Currents) [Paperback]

Ted Nace (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bk Currents | Publication Date: September 1, 2005

From its roots in 17th-century Britain to its modern incarnation in Enron and WorldCom, the modern corporation -- restless, autonomous, and self-perpetuating -- has gained potency. Designed to seek profit and power, the corporation has pursued both objectives with endless tenacity, steadily bending the framework of the law and incurring destruction in its path. Where did the corporation come from? How did it get so much power? What is its ultimate trajectory? Considering the importance of such questions, it is surprisingly difficult to find answers.
Using cutting-edge research from academic historians, sociologists, political scientists, and legal scholars, "Gangs of America attempts to answer these questions in a unique, riveting narrative. The book recounts the settlement of America by corporations, details the surprising impetus for the Revolutionary War, then traces the expansion of corporate rights onto the global stage -- culminating in an assessment of current struggles over such issues as media control and campaign finance reform. Part of the "BK Currents series, the book promotes positive social change.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nace nurtured Peachpit Press from a home-based operation, writing and publishing computer guides, to a business worthy of acquisition by the Pearson conglomerate. The experience inspired him to study the nature of corporate power. He offers a breezy summary of the legal history surrounding the formation of corporations and the parameters of their power, putting an anti-corporate spin on the American Revolution and discussing how the early republic limited corporate power by enabling state governments to issue restrictive charters. But the tight controls didn't remain in place: after the Supreme Court's decision in an 1886 case involving the Santa Clara Railroad, corporations were assumed to be the legal equivalent of people entitled to equal protection under the law and, in subsequent cases, were guaranteed a growing range of constitutional rights. One of Nace's central arguments is that Santa Clara doesn't mean what everybody thinks it means: the original decision doesn't take any stand on whether corporations have constitutional rights; the question comes up in a subsequent version of the decision, but the Chief Justice acts as if it had been resolved in earlier decisions. Although Nace blames the Court's reporter for the shift in emphasis, he illustrates how another justice, Stephen Field, was already buttressing politicians' and financial titans' efforts to eliminate all restraints on corporate power, making their legal supremacy inevitable. Later chapters examine how corporations continue to wield their influence to prevent the government from regulating them too closely, but while the book offers plenty of details about the problem's existence and deftly introduces it, it offers little more than generalities about where to go from there.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"... a joy to read ... clear, straight-forward, and very accessible ... one of those books that can awaken people's consciousness..." -- Corporate Reform Weekly, September 8, 2003

"... an engaging history ... provocative and entertaining ... a surprising and welcome achievement ... lively insights and refreshing research." -- New York Times, September 14, 2003

"... entertaining and sometimes arresting ... the book is a lively read and Nace is an interesting companion." -- New Leader, July/August 2003

"...a wonderfully informative story ... I can't tell you how important and timely this book is." -- Business Journal, September 26, 2003 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 297 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (September 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576753190
• ISBN-13: 978-1576753194
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #100,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ted Nace grew up in California and North Dakota. He earned a bachelor's degree at Stanford University and a master's degree at UC Berkeley. He worked as a consultant to the Environmental Defense Fund and as staff director of the Dakota Resource Council. Returning to the Bay Area, he worked as an editor at PC World magazine and as a columnist for Publish! and Computer Currents magazines. Together with Michael Gardner, he founded the computer book publishing company Peachpit Press in 1985 and served as publisher until 1996, when he and the other owners sold Peachpit to Pearson Plc. In 2007 he founded CoalSwarm, a collaborative information clearinghouse on U.S. and international coal mines, plants, companies, politics, impacts, and alternatives. In addition to several computer how-to books, Nace is the author of Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Berrett-Koehler, 2003, 2005) and Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal (CoalSwarm, 2010). He can be reached at [e-mail].

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening analysis of corporate influence, February 9, 2005

By 

M. Veiluva "sputnik99" (Walnut Creek, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Hardcover)

As an attorney and former college agitator (long, long ago), I read with profound interest Ted Nace's "Gangs of America", which along the line of Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" challenges us to imagine an economic and legal universe other than the one we live in. Most Americans, and especially attorneys who are the high priests to the corporations, take it for granted (kind of like the inhabitants of the "Matrix") that multi-billion dollar corporations should enjoy and have always enjoyed preferential tax treatment, tort immunity, and government handouts by the gazoo.

What is valuable about such authors as Nace and Zinn is that they break free from the trap of blaming our current social and economic inequalities on a select group of evil men in the White House or Congress. While alternative historical analysis became an endangered species when Berlin Wall fell, the need for other voices did not go away. It is not enough to simply bash the current Administration a la Michael Moore, Jim Hightower and Al Franken, although such rants have their place. Nace tells us instead that it is vital to understand that such governments are organic to the same economic and legal system which allows Wall-Marts, Enrons and Worldcoms to flourish. If a non-entity such as Bush were not around to elect, there would be plenty others to take his place to service the machinery. If we do not get the government we deserve, at least we get the best goverment corporate money can buy. This power is enabled by a steadly-built array of laws to establish the modern limited liability corporation and its holding companies as a superior economic and legal entity ahead of the individual, despite the fact that the Constitution nowhere provides such status.

"Gangs of America" stakes out the historical origins of the status of the modern corporation as a preferential legal entity enjoying rights and freedoms superior to that of the individual. This is all true. While I was familiar with the late 19th century cases which gave recognition to the corporation as a "person", Nace adds additional color to the facts of these decisions, which I certainly did not hear in law school. Rather, in corporations class, liberals devoted their time to debating the nuances of "shareholder democracy", a concept which, applied to giant megaliths such as Pepsico, has all the relevance of Stalin's Inner Circle...

It takes considerable courage to tackle such a subject on a macro level without clinging to the conventional icons of either capitalist or Marxian theory, or conventional legal analysis. Rather, what is being attempted is close to a pure historical analysis which follows the paths of money and influence in a very practical way. This is, ultimately, a very important book.

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended!, March 1, 2004

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Hardcover)

This interesting book traces the history and development of corporations from the time of Queen Elizabeth I to the present day. Much of the book focuses on little-known episodes in the corporate chronicle - the cruel Jamestown settlement in Virginia, for example, or the British East India Company's depredations in India. About midway through, the book shifts from such tales to a close examination of Supreme Court justices who tilted the playing field in favor of corporate power. Breezily written and accessible, this book puts a lengthy and complicated history easily within reach of ordinary readers. Its bias is clear - the subtitle leaves no doubt that author Ted Nace is a foe of corporate power - and the closer to the present the story comes, the more accusatory the author's conclusions may seem. Nonetheless, We find this is a worthwhile read for those who seek background information on the dark side of the American corporate success story.

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smart White Men, November 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Hardcover)

If the hijacking of the 2000 presidential election by Stupid White Men incensed you, then take heed of the Smart White Men who have dealt a thousand blows to democracy over the past century. Ted Nace's "Gangs of America" is an intense history of corporate America's deliberate and relentless effort to empower itself aided by congressmen and judges entrenched in a sea of vested interests.

In a Matrix-like prequel, Nace carefully chronologizes the efforts of corporations to gain freedoms and protections as "persons" at the very expense of the people the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect. Even the self-serving ACLU cannot see the "real slippery slope is the ever-increasing tendency to treat corporations as though they were human beings."

Nace's witty and engaging tale compels the reader to follow the roller-coaster ride of corporate dominance which begins by going down the murky path by which the courts came to treat corporations as "persons." As the author of "Be Careful Who You SLAPP" I especially enjoyed Nace's treatment of corporate Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs).

Nace points the reader to the success of this concerted corporate effort to dominate as measured by the public image of the CEO who is once seen as the dutiful bureaucrat and is now transformed into the swashbuckling dot-com "hero" in the likes of Bill Gates. But as the corporate juggernaut rolls forward we find this local boy does good is soon testifying at his company's anti-trust hearing, one of the most egregious examples of corporate abuse of power of the 20th century.

Are we doomed to an Orwellian future where a large unaccountable "modern" entity enjoys more rights and freedom than the citizens who work its factories and offices? Can the same legal system that allowed corporations to add "field to field, and power to power" now check its unfettered growth? Can we as citizens tap into our human propensity for creativity and utilize the restraints that will morph the corporations into welcomed tools of society? Or is our future to be trapped in "The Matrix" where corporations and machines now control our reality?

Nace's answer is practical and inspiring. Just as corporations have bit by bit turned the tables on us, we citizens can take back our liberties by chipping away at the same old block - the legal institutions that have empowered them. One beginning is for each State to simply enact charter revocation by which modern day corporations can be tamed with the threat of dissolution as they once were.

Nace's "Gangs of America" is an insightful view of the basis for the sense of invincible arrogance that fueled Enron, WorldCom and others yet to appear on the public radar. Thanks to Nace, we know the trajectory of corporate America. It's not too late to redirect the flight plan.