The legal form that allows a group of investors to pool capital under a single artificial person — shielding them from personal liability, enabling the accumulation of wealth at a scale no individual could sustain, and producing an institution whose power to shape law, labor, and politics has made it the defining economic structure of the modern world.
In 1720 the South Sea Company collapsed, destroying fortunes across Britain. The panic it set off was so severe that Parliament passed a law effectively banning the formation of new corporations for more than a century. Legislators had looked at this new device — the joint-stock company with limited liability — and decided it was too dangerous to exist. They were right about the danger. They were wrong that the danger could be contained. The corporation came back. It reshaped trade, colonialism, and industry. It became the vehicle through which the modern economy runs. Understanding what a corporation is — legally, economically, politically — is the first step toward understanding who actually controls the world you live in.