How corporations came to be viewed as "people"

[Dill]

(03-07-2018, 08:08 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: So, correct me if I am wrong, but what you seem to be saying is that progressive movements were aimed at insuring the citizens retained the liberties that classical liberalism had worked to enshrine, but in an atmosphere where corporate interests thrived. Something that classical liberals were unable to account for in their establishment of our republic as the industrial revolution had not been dreamed up.

Or something along those lines.

Not just "progressive" movements.

Fred said it better, but yes.  And I would go a step further and add that, in the U.S., strict adherence to tenets of classical liberalism (like freedom of contract, right to private property, and limited government) was used to deprive many of all but the legal formality of inalienable rights during the last quarter of the 19th century.  (The problem appears earlier in England, Germany and France.)  As you well know, the struggle for and against government protection, the role of government in market and private life, continues today.

Classical liberals of '76 (Jefferson, Madison, Adam Smith) were understandably unable to foresee child labor, "neighborhood effects" like pollution, 13-story buildings with no fire escape, and the willingness of unscrupulous meat packers to can and sell already rotten beef, etc.  In 1790 they were rightly focused on the problem of majority "factions" capturing the government; the massive wealth of a Rockefeller or Morgan, and the power it brought private individuals, they could not envision. (Imagine the powerful German government negotiating massive state loans with J.P. Morgan, a "mere" private citizen.)

Post Civil War, the new "social" or "progressive" liberals invoked the state's duty to protect citizens and secure their freedoms in order to challenge the classical liberals' appeal to freedom from government. That is where we stand today, with new liberals (or "far leftists" as they are laughably called) battling old liberals over budgets and policy.