Public Purpose and Private Ownership: Some Implications of the 'Great Capitalist Restoration' for the Politicization of Private Sector Firms in Britain

The business firm carries the burden of delivering many aspects of "the satisfactory life" in the developed world of the late twentieth century. It is a fundamental unit of social organization. Analogous in many ways to the family, it takes many forms, can be defined in several different ways, and performs a multiplicity of direct and indirect functions. While most evidently economic in character, firm interactions with, and impact on, social life are considerable and are an important feature of the politics of capitalist societies. In its modern forms, the firm created by political actions in the past century and a half (in Britain and especially by the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1856) is enshrined in a complex set of laws and practices. 1 In the wake of the "great capitalist restoration," it is interesting to consider the politics of the capitalist firm in the political economy of late twentieth century Britain.