Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/837

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VI£ IV OF SOVEREIGNTY 821

joint property, require for the unity of administration of the coercive sanctions intrinsic in private property a further coercive power on the part of a portion of their stockholders over the remaining portion. A corporation is in law a unity, an artificial person, and by this can only be meant that all stockholders must submit to the controlling interest. The state, without tak- ing ethical questions into account, but merely recognizing the natural unreflective relations which property owners assume to each other, legalized these relations as it found them, and deter- mined the controlling interest in the corporation on the basis of the shares of stock rather than the number of stockholders. The will of the corporation is therefore the will of the owners of a majority of the stock. The process of socialization of these corporations has begun through legislation protecting, or rather creating, rights of the minority stockholders in determining the will of the institution. The state has not gone as far as to oblit- erate the plutocratic basis, " one share one vote," but it has in some cases, under a new ethical motive, authorized associations to be formed on the humanitarian basis, " one member one vote." These are known as cooperative associations, and the fact that they have not survived in the struggle with corpora- tions shows how difficult it is for the state to create outright the Structure of a new institution. Structure is a matter of private, competitive, unethical, coercive survival, and the state can intro- duce the ethical notions of right into it only after its period of struggle is past and after its monopolistic character has guaran- teed immunity from the disciplined organizations based on private coercion. Since the public opinion controlling the state has not yet recognized the inevitable monopoly of corporations and is still busied with plans for their democratization, our search will find as yet but occasional steps toward their socialization. It can only be said that such steps will probably be directed to pro- viding further rights for minority stockholders and to creat- ing rights within the corporation for the laborers employed. The rights of the laborers turn especially upon the right to free- dom from capricious employment and discharge, that is, to the introduction of order and right into the structure of the