ABSTRACT
The modern corporation is emerging, and the period experiences a transition from the small-holder corporation of the guilds and craftsmen to big industrial factory firms. This chapter focuses on the political role of the corporation in the works of Adam Smith, G. W. F. Hegel, and K. Marx to set the stage for the search for foundations of the social liberal corporation. It shows that a balanced liberalism of a social liberal kind is at work here as Smith is positive about small merchants and manufacturers but critical about monopoly. The corporation, according to Hegel, then is more about political representation and social autonomy from the state than about competition and gaining wealth. In the Marxist tradition one finds the most critical views of the corporation and often an outright dismissal of the idea that corporations can be morally responsible agents at all.
