ABSTRACT
In Crimes of the Powerful (CotP), Frank Pearce established that it is the intrinsic nature of capitalism that leads its principal tool, the for-profit corporation, to engage in wrongdoing. To maintain legitimacy for corporate capitalism, this needs to be covered up. Law does its bit. Assumptions built into the legal doctrines governing the employment contract are used as an example of how this is done. The chapter observes that directing attention away from the intrinsically coercive nature of capitalism in this way causes reformers to concentrate on capitalism’s instrument, the corporation, as the source of social and political problems. It becomes the enemy and, as it is just a legal tool, it is seen as reformable and becomes the focus of reform and regulation. The chapter argues that these valiant efforts at amelioration, not taking Pearce’s caution into account, will fall short of their stated aims. The essay elaborates this contention with an account of the nature of regulatory reforms. It is concluded that Pearce’s twinned insight about the coercive and illiberal nature of capitalist relations of production and that there are real flesh-and-blood capitalists who profit from this coercion and illiberality must be taken more seriously if progressive change is to be wrought.
