For Profit: A History of Corporations

by William Magnuson

Overview

A history of how corporate innovation has shaped society, from ancient Rome to Silicon Valley 
 
From legacy manufacturers to emerging tech giants, corporations wield significant power over our lives, our economy, and our politics. Some celebrate them as engines of progress and prosperity. Others argue that they recklessly pursue profit at the expense of us all.
 
In For Profit, law professor William Magnuson reveals that both visions contain an element of truth. The story of the corporation is a human story, about a diverse group of merchants, bankers, and investors that have over time come to shape the landscape of our modern economy.  Its central characters include both the brave, powerful, and ingenious and the conniving, fraudulent, and vicious. At times, these characters have been one and the same.
 
Yet as Magnuson shows, while corporations haven’t always behaved admirably, their purpose is a noble one. From their beginnings in the Roman Republic, corporations have been designed to promote the common good. By recapturing this spirit of civic virtue, For Profit argues, corporations can help craft a society in which all of us—not just shareholders—benefit from the profits of enterprise.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541601581
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	11/08/2022
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	310,036
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

William Magnuson is a professor at Texas A&M Law School, where he teaches corporate law. Previously, he taught law at Harvard University. The author of Blockchain Democracy, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg. He lives in Austin, Texas. 

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Corpus Economicus 15

2 The Bank 39

3 The Stock 69

4 The Monopoly 103

5 The Assembly Line 145

6 The Multinational 181

7 The Raider 217

8 The Start-Up 253

Conclusion 297

Acknowledgments 325

Notes 327

Index 345

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/12/2022

Corporations present a Jekyll and Hyde face, boosting business efficiency and acumen while exploiting workers and suborning government, according to this probing study. Texas A&M corporate law professor Magnuson (Blockchain Democracy) surveys landmark corporations past and present, including Roman societates publicanorum, which collected taxes and provisioned the legions while also selling slaves; the British East India Company, which grew a global trading infrastructure with its innovative joint stock structure, but turned itself into a despotic state in India; the Ford Motor Company, which brought cars and consumerism to the masses, but imposed torturous work regimens on assembly-line employees; ExxonMobil, the multinational that keeps oil flowing, but also does business with dictators and impedes decarbonization; and Facebook, which connects users while invading privacy and empowering Russian election meddling. Magnuson’s lucid, elegantly written account illuminates sharp tensions between management, labor, and shareholders and between public responsibility and private profit seeking. He paints colorful, sometimes inspiring narratives of corporations’ achievements, such as the Union Pacific Railway’s spanning of the American continent with epic feats of engineering and organization (before it became a corrupt monopoly), while highlighting the need to rein in their excesses and kick them out of politics altogether. Far from an anti-corporate polemic, this is an evenhanded, richly nuanced examination of the modern economy’s central institution. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

—Named a Best Book of 2022 by The Economist and the Financial Times

“Magnuson eloquently explains how issues such as principal-agent problems, competition law and environmental and labour rights have cropped up throughout history.”—The Economist

“A historical tour de force.”—Bloomberg Opinion

"A comprehensive and lively account of eight corporations that have changed the world...A valuable, discerning assessment of these enormously influential societal actors—and a clear set of recommendations to make them serve the good."

—Shelf Awareness

“… I can pay Magnuson no higher compliment than to say that For Profit is a book I would be proud to have written.”
 —Martin Vander Weyer, The Spectator (UK)

“…For Profit is a well-written history of the corporation, an unexpectedly important topic for us all.”—Charter

“Brilliantly conceived and enlightening at every turn, For Profit is a thrilling history of an institution that has shaped all our lives—for better and for worse.”—Lawrence Wright, author of The Plague Year

“In this lively and informative history of the corporation, William Magnuson shows that corporations were born to serve the public interest—only to be used and abused time and again to maximize profits for shareholders and executives. A must-read for any student of the world’s most influential form of economic organization.”—Adam Winkler, author of We the Corporations

From the Publisher

09/09/2022

Magnuson (corporate law, Texas A&M Univ.; Blockchain Democracy) offers an in-depth examination of capitalism, told through the history of corporations and the notable people behind them. The work is organized thematically, with each chapter delving into a single company. The book ranges from the first semblances of businesses in ancient Rome, to the Medici Bank, to the Ford Motor Company, and expands its focus to today's private equity firms, start-ups, and multinational corporations. The author does an excellent job depicting the circumstances and environment each entity stemmed from. While enlightening and captivating, it is not a quick reference. Magnuson provides plenty of history and detail for each theme and enterprise, sometimes painstakingly so; each profile takes time to unfurl. Surprisingly, he is able to weave each together as the book progresses over the centuries. VERDICT Readers interested in business and history will appreciate the depth of Magnuson's research and the lessons it reveals about corporations, past and present.—Jen Clifton

Library Journal

2022-08-26
A law professor examines corporations through history and finds recurring themes.

Magnuson walks us through relevant eras of history, from the Roman Empire to the East India Company to Silicon Valley. In the early 1900s, Henry Ford provided the blueprint for the modern corporation, and firms like Exxon took the idea to the multinational level. There have always been questions about what a corporation should do. The usual answer is to maximize profits for shareholders, although there is a crucial caveat that corporations must not only obey the law, but should also heed unwritten social rules. Aside from this, there is another line of thinking that corporations have a responsibility to do good social works, although defining that is surprisingly difficult. Magnuson looks at tech giants like Facebook, which might have started with good motives but have become known for dubious ethical behavior and astonishing arrogance. As the author rightly points out, too many corporations now look only toward profit maximization, with no regard for anything else. This raises a key problem with the book. His descriptions of corporations throughout history focus largely on their negative aspects, but Magnuson concludes that “it is important to remember that corporations have been behind man’s greatest creations” and that “they are institutions for bringing people together to work toward common ends.” This position arrives abruptly near the end of the text, contradicting many of the author’s previous discussions. A bigger issue, however, is that the book offers little fresh information about a well-worn topic. Writers have been examining corporations, usually critically, for centuries. Even the reforms to encourage better corporate behavior that Magnuson presents have been well covered. It’s clear the author knows his subject well, but there’s just not much more to say about it.

Magnuson looks at how corporations operate in society but struggles to find a fresh perspective.

Kirkus Reviews