Adolf A. Berle

“As Adolf Berle, a fellow cold warrior, once remarked, 'Being vindicated by history is cold comfort.' For one thing, the political scars of those with whom one has polemicized seem more long-lasting and painful than their memories of the political issues that gave rise to them. And yet indifference to the political life of one's times I deem a flagrant expression of moral irresponsibility. Those who profess such indifference owe the intellectual and cultural freedoms in which they luxuriate to the commitment and sacrifices of others.”

“Now appears the fourth stage. In this situation emerge the newer mechanisms, the fiduciary institutions, by which these dispersed stockholdings are at once more becoming concentrated.”

“No large concentrated stockholding exists which maintains close relationship with the management or is capable of challenging it, so that the board of directors may regularly expect a majority... to follow their lead. Thus they need not consult with anyone when making up their slate of directors... They select their own successors.”

“Essentially these stockholders, though still politely called "owners", are passive. They have the right to receive only. The condition of their being is that they do not interfere in management.”

“[The corporation is an invaluable auxiliary to the conduct of foreign affairs by the Government, and] has become an international as well as a national instrument. It is a mighty institution which thus far has not become, and has manifested no great desire to become, an independent political force. In international life it is an experiment in non-national organization, pledged only to discharge certain economic functions.”

“[Corporations must manifest in this area a conscience, or be required to] accept direction from the conscience of the government. This conscience must be built into institutions so that it can be invoked as a right by the individuals and interests subject to the corporate power... For twentieth-century capitalism will justify itself not only by its out-turn product, but by its content of life values.”

“Major corporations in most instances do not seek capital. They form it themselves.”

“[The communist state has thus far proved itself a] brutal, blunt, and fumbling instrument, [while elsewhere capitalism has been evolving its own”

“The Russian revolution was nominally based on Communist dogma; but its significant struggle was to find some instrument by which a vast backward country could be mauled into industrialization. The capitalist revolution in which the United States was the leader found apter, more efficient and more flexible means through collectivizing capital in corporations.”

“The property owner who invests in a modern corporation so far surrenders his wealth to those in control of the corporation that he has exchanged the position of independent owner for one in which he may become merely recipient of the wages of capital... [Such owners] have surrendered the right that the corporation should be operated in their sole interest...”