ABSTRACT
The dominant role that corporations play in people's lives makes them appear as a fact of life. This chapter introduces the concept of corporate criminal, explaining what is a dominant corporation, the differences between an efficient corporation and the criminal corporation, and the myth of the autonomous corporation. It provides an overview of the concepts discussed in the various chapter of this book. The book shows, through a combination of historical, empirical, conceptual and theoretical observation, that the problematic consequences of corporate activity are not merely side-effects. They are not marginal aberrations, or deviations that are easily dealt with by either self-regulation or law enforcement. The book also talks about piecemeal reform strategies such as law, regulation, enforcement, political challenge, and argues that such efforts need to be placed within and judged against the wider more compelling political goal of meaningfully challenging corporate power through dismantling the corporate form itself.
