Wealth inequality, corporate welfare, and industrial pollution are symptoms-the fevers and chills of the economy. The underlying illness, says Business Ethics magazine founder Marjorie Kelly, is shareholder primacy: the corporate drive to make profits for shareholders, no matter who pays the cost. In The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly argues that focusing on the interests of 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. The Divine Right of Capital exposes six aristocratic principles that corporations are built on, principles that we would never accept in our modern democratic society but which we accept unquestioningly in our economy. Wealth bias is a holdover from our pre-democratic past. It has enabled shareholders to become a kind of economic aristocracy. Kelly shows how to design more equitable alternatives-new property rights, new forms of corporate governance, new ways of looking at corporate performance-that build on both free-market and democratic principles. 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. But in The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly brilliantly demonstrates that it is no more "natural" than any other human creation. People designed this system and people can change it. We need a change of mind as profound as that of the American Revolution. We must question the legitimacy of a system that gives the wealthy few-the ten percent of Americans who own ninety percent of all stock-a disproportionate power over the many. In so doing, we can fulfill the democratic principles of our nation not only in the political sphere, but in the economic sphere as well.
"I have read this work with great pleasure-yes, even joy. It's sharp and right on the dot. It has a wonderful style and great passion." -Rolf Osterberg, former chairman, Swedish Newspapers Association, and author, Corporate Renaissance: Business as an Adventure in Human Development "I've been recommending this book to everyone I know. This is a marvelous, wise, artful, and moving contribution to our world." -Frances Moore Lappé, author, Diet for a Small Planet and Hope's Edge "As the global decision makers search for answers, they should read Marjorie Kelly's book The Divine Right of Capital. The book is an intelligently written, challenging romp through history, philosophy, and economics." -Patricia Panchak, editor-in-chief, Industry Week "This is the back story in the Enron fiasco, the one the mainstream media won't touch. Sure, we care about shareholders who lost their life savings. But what about the rest of us, our communities, and the planet? Kelly takes a reader through heavy conceptual territory with a deft, irreverent touch." -Jonathan Rowe, YES! A Journal of Positive Futures "None of the modest reforms in accounting, disclosure, and governance pro- posed by Washington or Wall Street will do any good unless corporations are encouraged to look beyond shareholder value, Kelly says. People say we need better alignment between management and shareholder interests. Kelly says no-that's the problem." -Rex Nutting, CBS MarketWatch.com "This just might be one of the most important books of the past fifty years." -John Renesch, author, Getting to the Better Future: A Matter of Conscious Choosing "If you want to be current on proposed corporate reform, read The Divine Right of Capital. To read it is to feel present in an Ivy League lecture hall at one moment, only to be transported to your best friend's kitchen table the next. Downright fun." -Susan Wennemyr, SocialFunds.com "Kelly has a way of taking the complex concepts of economics and explaining them in a way that even people who can't balance their checkbooks can understand." -Terri Foley, Minnesota Monthly "Kelly is remarkably clear in her analyses and makes the arcane easy to understand." -David Cogswell, American Book Review "Kelly's book will exhilarate you, because it is such a thorough de-masking of the indefensible." -Paul Hawken, Whole Earth "Until I read The Divine Right of Capital, I never really entertained the thought that stockholders are not even the rightful owners of corporations. This is Kelly's seditious claim. She delivers a provocative plea for a dialogue on ownership and the nature of the corporation, in the bracing tradition of Thomas Paine." -William Bole, America: The National Catholic Weekly "I can think of no volume more worthy of American patriots' attention than Kelly's challenging new book." -E. E. Copeland, The Business Journal, Portland, Oregon