Re: HOMESTEAD: TAKE OVER ExxonMobil/Esso !

[MarjorieHK@aol.com]

The Divine Right of Capital
By Marjorie Kelly
$24.95, Berrett-Koehler, October 2001. 
www.DivineRightOfCapital.com  

We Can Create Genuine Economic Democracy 
and Unfetter the Genius of the Market Economy

As public opinion increasingly turns against corporate power, The Divine 
Right of Capital exposes the fundamental ills of the corporate system. 
Marjorie Kelly argues that focusing on making profits for 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.

Why is it taken for granted that stockholder earnings are the proper measure 
of a company's success? Wouldn't the rising incomes of employees be a 
reasonable measurement? Kelly points out that although stockholders 
supposedly "fund" corporations, most invested dollars remain in the 
speculative market and don't reach companies.

The Divine Right of Capital shows how to design more equitable alternatives 
-- new property rights, new forms of citizenship in corporate governance, new 
ways of looking at corporate performance -- that build on both democratic and 
market principles. 

Wealth inequality, corporate welfare, and industrial pollution are symptoms 
-- the fevers and chills of the economy. The underlying illness, says 
Business Ethics magazine cofounder Marjorie Kelly, is shareholder primacy: 
the corporate drive to make profits for shareholders, no matter who pays the 
cost.

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. 
In The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly brilliantly demonstrates that this 
corporate aristocracy is in fact unnatural and irrational. She articulates 
six aristocratic principles that corporations are built on, principles that 
we would never accept in our modern democratic system but which we accept 
unquestioningly in our economy. People designed this system and people can 
change it, Kelly says. She calls for a movement to build economic democracy 
in two stages: first, by raising consciousness about wealth discrimination, 
and second, by aiming for structural change in corporate institutions.

In the traditional model, the corporation is a piece of property owned by 
shareholders and responsible only to them. Kelly argues that we need a new 
model of the corporation as human community -- with both external and 
internal constituents to whom it must be accountable. We need a change of 
mind as profound as that of the American Revolution. We must question the 
legitimacy of a system that gives disproportionate power to the wealthy few: 
the ten percent of Americans who own ninety percent of all financial wealth. 
In so doing, we can complete the design of democracy, building its principles 
not only into our political institutions, but into economic institutions as 
well.


Author Bio
Marjorie Kelly is the cofounder and publisher of Business Ethics, a national 
publication on corporate social responsibility based in Minneapolis. Kelly's 
writing has appeared in many publications, including the Utne Reader, the 
Progressive Populist, Lapis, Tikkun, Earth Island Journal, and Hope magazine, 
as well as in a weekly column in 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. She has been featured in 
the Wall Street Journal, quoted in the New York Times, and interviewed 
frequently on National Public Radio and other radio networks.

"I loved reading this. Marjorie Kelly has systematically deconstructed a 
sacred cow – that corporations exist to maximize shareholder wealth – and 
reconstructed a vision for a truly democratic economy that rewards all who 
are responsible for profits, particularly employees. I hope everyone who 
reads this can identify a way to contribute to reaching the goal of true 
democracy."
Leslie Christian, President, Progressive Investment Management, Portland, 
Oregon.

"The book brims -- actually spills over -- with unsanctioned ideas and 
imaginative new directions. Yet the style is like a loose and friendly 
conversation, an invitation to think and talk about what is possible, what 
might work. The strength of Kelly's case is that it demonstrates that 
structural changes in business, far from being radical, are grounded in the 
founding ideals of America."
From the Foreword by William Greider, author of One World, Ready or Not.

"I am quite astonished at the clarity and sophistication of this work. It is 
a fresh voice in the corporate responsibility movement."
David Ellerman, Economist, The World Bank.

"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

"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

For more information see www.DivineRightOfCapital.com 
or e-mail info@DivineRightofCapital.com