Despite their inefficiencies, wrongdoing, and the vagaries of the marketplace, large corporations throughout almost the entire history of America have generally been aided and sometimes kept afloat by government's soft pedaling of corporate wrongdoing and generous handouts. Originally intended to do the public's bidding, corporations quickly coopted government by "marrying" it shortly after the birth of America. I have called it the "Devil's Marriage." It was not a shotgun wedding. Politicians' palms get greased. Corporations get virtual immunity from accountability for their endless wrongdoing and handouts to prop up and enrich the bottom line. There has yet to be an incentive or an outside force to compel either partner to get a divorce. But there are rumbling signs the halcyon "Age of the Corpocracy" (i.e., the "marriage") may not endure later in this century. The book is not intended to be a blanket indictment of people in or associated with the corpocracy. None of us is a saint. Every one of us yields occasionally to temptations and pressures and corporate and public leaders especially encounter more than their share. Instead, the book is intended to be first a wake-up call to corporate America that her day of reckoning is coming if she stays on course and second a guide for her to change course. The book is organized into three parts. Part One, with its two chapters, sets the stage for the rest of the book by describing corporate dependence on government and how that dependency leads to corporate wrongdoing of crisis proportions, which in turn will eventually lead to a day of reckoning for corporations if they don't reform themselves. Part Two is written with the conviction that corporations are not inherently deficient or psychopathic as some claim. Corporations can heal themselves, and, indeed, they must to survive in the long run. The eight chapters show what corporate reforms are needed and how they can be accomplished. Part Three considers non corporate ways of organizing to meet society's needs and also alternatives to socially irresponsible capitalism.
