Corporate Capitalism, Corporate Crime

Abstract

This article considers the structural relationships between corporate crime and American corporate capitalism. Large corporations are assumed to pursue profit, growth, and market share expansion subject to constraints imposed by markets and the state. State or legal regulation of corporate behavior is in turn assumed to be constrained by the need to promote capital accumulation and to satisfy diverse economic interests. Discussion of product safety, environmental, antitrust, and antilabor violations allows some insight into the manner of resolution of these conflicts among corporate and state goals as well as some insight into the distribution of the associated private and social costs and benefits. It is argued that the real economic impact and the control over information and financial resources which characterizes large corporations grant to them an economic and political power that is great relative to that generally possessed by the victims of corporate crime. This historical imbalance of power is seen to be institutionalized in law and in the funding and priorities of regulatory and enforcement agencies. It is manifest in an ineffective legal constraint and in the consequent reproduction of corporate crime. In light of these conclusions, I consider the characteristics of an effective legal constraint, the political economic transformation associated with its implementation and with the rational, democratic, and equitable absorption of the opportunity costs of corporate crime reduction.