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Insocial science andeconomics,corporate capitalism is acapitalistmarketplace characterized by the dominance ofhierarchical andbureaucraticcorporations.
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In thedeveloped world, corporations dominate the marketplace, comprising 50%[citation needed] or more of all businesses. Those businesses which are not corporations contain the same bureaucratic structure of corporations, but there is usually a sole owner or group of owners who are liable tobankruptcy and criminal charges relating to their business. Corporations havelimited liability.[citation needed]
Corporations are usually called public entities or publicly traded entities when parts of their business can be bought in the form of shares on thestock market. This is done as a way of raisingcapital to finance the investments of the corporation. Theshareholders appoint the executives of the corporation, who are the ones running the corporation via a hierarchical chain of power, where the bulk of investor decisions are made at the top and have effects on those beneath them.
Corporate capitalism has been criticized for the amount of power and influence corporations and large businessinterest groups have overgovernment policy, including the policies ofregulatory agencies and influencingpolitical campaigns. Many social scientists have criticized corporations for failing to act in the interests of the people, and their existence seems to circumvent the principles ofdemocracy, which assumes equal power relations between individuals in a society.[1]
Dwight D. Eisenhower criticized the notion of the confluence of corporate power andde facto fascism,[2] but nevertheless brought attention to the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry"[3] (themilitary–industrial complex) inhis 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation, and stressed "the need to maintain balance in and among national programs—balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage".[3]
