corporate power — Bunk History

Tiburcio Parrott sitting holding cane

Birth of the Corporate Person

The defining of corporations as legal “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment rights got a leg up from the fight over a California anti-Chinese immigrant law.

by Evelyn Atkinson, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on March 16, 2024

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The Big Business Campaign That Has Shaped 40 Years of GOP Rhetoric

The philosophy that drives the GOP's attacks on government and how it has fueled some of our biggest problems.

by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway via Made By History on March 9, 2023

Oil refinery

How Polluting Industries Mobilized to Block Climate Action

Since its inception, the IPCC itself has been the target of corporate obstructionism.

by Amy Westervelt via The Intercept on April 12, 2022

Trump and his cabinet sitting around a conference table.

Why the Power Elite Continues to Dominate American Politics

Presidents of both parties stock their Cabinets with corporate leaders.

by Timothy M. Gill via Made By History on December 24, 2018

Company Men

The 200-year legal struggle that led to Citizens United and gave corporations the rights of people.

by Kim Phillips-Fein via The New Republic on March 29, 2018

Huey Long

How ‘the Kingfish’ Turned Corporations into People

Seventy-five years before Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled that newspapers were entitled to First Amendment protections.

by Adam Winkler via New York Review of Books on February 28, 2018

Cartoon silhouettes of elongated business people in suits

Business as Usual: The Long History of Corporate Personhood

The mass defection of CEOs of some of the nation’s most powerful corporations from President Trump’s now-defunct Manufacturing Jobs Initiative.

by Lawrence B. Glickman via Boston Review on August 23, 2017

Political cartoon depicting Standard Oil as an octopus.

When Did Americans Stop Being Antimonopoly?

Columbia professor Richard R. John explains the history of U.S. monopolies and why antimonopoly should not be conflated with antitrust.

by Richard R. John, Asher Schechter via Pro-Market on November 21, 2016

When Big Oil Was "The Great Vampire Squid" Wrapped Around America

Robert Engler's award-winning 1955 investigation into the oil industry.

by Robert Engler via The New Republic on August 29, 1955

Tax Season and the Making of the American Fiscal State

As Americans file their taxes this tax season, the Trump administration threatens to unravel the modern fiscal state.

by John Fabian Witt, Ajay K. Mehrotra via Made By History on April 16, 2025

Arrested demonstrators of the University of California Free Speech Movement during their trial in Berkeley, California, 1965.

America Needs a New Free Speech Movement

Donald Trump is showing us what an unaccountable class of corporate decision-makers looks like—and it looks like a lot of fear, and a terrible loss of freedom.

by Zephyr Teachout via The Nation on March 19, 2025

David Rubenstein

King David

Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein has cultivated a reputation as a well-meaning advocate of history education. What does that image mask?

by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on December 24, 2024

View of mountains on the horizon

Who Owns the Mountains?

Hurricane Helene has revived urgent questions about the politics of land — and tourism — in Appalachia.

by Olivia Paschal via New York Review of Books on November 3, 2024

Donald Trump

Donald Trump Would Be Weaker the Second Time Around

Donald Trump wants the ideology of William McKinley and Gilded Age Republicanism, but with a totally different social base. It won’t work.

by Paul Heidman via Jacobin on October 23, 2024

A computer, business documents, envelope, and a broadcast tower.

How Tech Giants Make History

AT&T’s early leaders used PR to sway public opinion, casting their monopoly as a public service and obscuring its political roots.

by Richard R. John via Pro-Market on October 10, 2024

Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates speak during the 'Gates Foundation' press conference at the Annual Meeting 2009 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 30, 2009" by Remy Steinegger.

Philanthropy’s Power Brokers

An in-depth reckoning with the Gates Foundation as a discrete actor is long overdue.

by John Miles Branch via Public Books on July 17, 2024

General president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O'Brien speaks during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 15, 2024.

A Return to Gompers

Sean O’Brien’s speech at the RNC may represent a return to nonpartisan realpolitik for unions. But does that reflect labor's strength or its decline?

by Dustin Guastella via Jacobin on July 17, 2024

Charred ruins of Lahaina following the fire.

After Wildfires Destroyed Lahaina, the Battle to Restore an Ancient Ecosystem Will Shape Its Future.

A wetland restoration project is bringing hope to Maui residents who want to honor Lahaina’s history and return water to the town after last year’s fires.

by Reis Thebault via Washington Post on July 11, 2024

Chiquita Must Pay for Its Crimes in Latin America

70 years since President Árbenz was ousted for standing up to Chiquita, the firm might finally be held to account for its ties to a far-right paramilitary group in Colombia.

by Klas Lundström via Jacobin on July 10, 2024

Engraving of the Battle of Lexington After Alonzo Chappel: American colonists and British soldiers exchange fire at the Battle of Lexington, the first skirmish in the US War of Independence.

Taking Up the American Revolution’s Egalitarian Legacy

Despite its failures and limitations, the American Revolution unleashed popular aspirations to throw off tyranny of all kinds.

by Taylor Clark via Jacobin on July 4, 2024

Collage of Stop Cop City protestors and Coca Cola products.

No Atlanta Way

Stop Cop City meets the establishment.

by Sam Worley via The Drift on June 28, 2024

Scale with hundred-dollar bills weighing down one side.

Markets and the Law

Neoliberalism isn’t just a set of economic precepts—it’s also an architecture of laws passed to reinforce those precepts. Those laws must be changed.

by Amy Kapczynski via Democracy Journal on June 24, 2024

An 1863 illustration from “Le Monde illustré” of formerly enslaved people celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation.

What If Reconstruction Didn’t End Till 1920?

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.

by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on June 11, 2024

Soy plantation fields.

Hating the Heartland

Do Americans in rural places really “marinate in a sense of loss and perpetual disappointment”?

by Paul Schwenessen via Law & Liberty on May 29, 2024

Uncle Sam sleeping on the job, avoiding looking at x-rays of damaged lungs.

Asbestos Is Finally Banned in the U.S. Here’s Why It Took So Long.

The carcinogenic effects of asbestos have been known for decades. We should have banned it long ago.

by Naomi Oreskes via Scientific American on May 14, 2024

Starbucks workers on strike.

The Paradox of the American Labor Movement

It’s a great time to be in a union—but a terrible time to try to start a new one.

by Michael Podhorzer via The Atlantic on April 18, 2024

A hand reaches for stacks of coins and bills, superimposed on photos of factory smokestacks.

Profit, Power, and Purpose

The greatest challenge presented by modern corporations, small as well as large, involves purpose.

by Michael Lind via The Hedgehog Review on November 1, 2023

Milton Friedman in front of a graph.

The Myth of the Friedman Doctrine

Friedman's viewpoint went far deeper and has been more lasting than the politics of 1970.

by Kyle Edward Williams via The Hedgehog Review on November 1, 2023

Wikimedia Foundation servers.

Dead Links

Maintaining the internet data of dead people.

by Tamara Kneese via Public Books on October 31, 2023

Eugene V Debs speaking at a rally, c1912-18. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress.

For Socialism and Freedom: The Life of Eugene Debs

How Eugene V. Debs turned American republicanism against the chiefs of capitalism – and became a true crusader for freedom.

by Tom O’Shea via Aeon on October 2, 2023

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