The Modern Corporation and Private Property: A Reappraisal
![handle is hein.journals/jlecono26 and id is 285 raw text is: THE MODERN CORPORATION AND
PRIVATE PROPERTY: A REAPPRAISAL
ROBERT HESSEN
Hoover Institution, Stanford University
I. INTRODUCTION
FEW American books have been as highly acclaimed as The Modern
Corporation and Private Property, and fewer still enjoy as illustrious a
reputation fifty years after they were published. This book is a living
classic, with an enduring influence on public opinion and public policy.
John Kenneth Galbraith did not exaggerate when he wrote that The Mod-
ern Corporation and Private Property was, with Keynes's The General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, one of the two most impor-
tant books of the 1930s.'
In the popular press, reviews ranged from enthusiastic to euphoric.
Writing in the Nation, Ernest Gruening declared that it was an epoch-
making volume, while in the New Republic, Stuart Chase said, There
may have been a better book than this published in 1932, but I did not see
it. By 'better' I mean more significant, clearly organized, lucid, scrupu-
lously documented. It is seldom that one finds such epoch-shattering
material in such scholarship.2 On the front page of the highly influential
book section of the New York Herald-Tribune, Professor Charles A.
Beard wrote: In the time to come this volume may be proclaimed as the
most important work bearing on American statecraft between the publica-
tion of the immortal 'Federalist' by Hamilton, Madison and Jay and the
opening of the year 1933. He added that its publication will mark a
sharp turning point in fundamental, deep-thrusting thinking about the
American State and American civilization.,3
John Kenneth Galbraith, Review, 13 Antitrust Bull. 1527 (1968).
2 Ernest Gruening, Capitalist Confiscation, The Nation, February 1, 1933, at 116; Stuart
Chase, Ticker Tapeworms, The New Republic, January 25, 1933, at 299.
3 Charles A. Beard, Who Owns-and Who Runs-the Corporations, New York Herald
Tribune, February 19, 1933, §10 (Books), at 1.
[Journal of Law & Economics, vol. XXVI (June 1983)]
© 1983 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-2186/83/2602-0016$01.50
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The Modern Corporation and Private Property: A Reappraisal
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