Corporate Capitalism and Political Philosophy

This book is a political philosophical critique of corporate capitalism. Corporate capitalism is usually examined from a sociological or economic viewpoint, and this book breaks new ground in providing a thorough account of the mechanisms which define it from a philosophical perspective, revealing how these processes determine the way we live today. Marxist and other left-oriented political philosophies had ideological roots that were based, sometimes incongruously, on particular economic and sociological readings of the capitalist process. Political philosophies associated with conservatism and neo-liberalism have either been assimilated within capitalist discourses, or they have been designed to justify corporate capitalist processes. This book re-examines these issues with an unusually dispassionate approach, providing a systematic view of contemporary corporate capitalism in all its complexity, without expecting the reader to have a specialist knowledge of sociology or economics. It clarifies the scope of political philosophy by reflecting on its own methodology and practice, and offers a controversial conclusion--that within contemporary corporate capitalist modes of organisation there is actually no space left for political philosophy at all, as corporate capitalism systematically denies all political agents an ability to exercise their political will.