[125 years ago this week, the United States Steel Corporation was created. That was and remains one of the most striking moments of incorporation in American history, but it’s far from alone, so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of moments and contexts for that subject. Leading up to this special weekend post on our own, particularly fraught moment!]
On two very frustrating recent trends, and one reason for critical optimism.
- Corporate Conservatism: Like many of us I know, my wife and I have long been big fans of Target as an easy spot to find just about anything for the home. So we were really, really frustrated when in January 2025 the corporation became one of the most high-profile American businesses to quickly and fully bow down to the Trump administration’s immediate and sweeping attacks on “DEI,” radically alteringboth its policies and its merchandise to try to appease these nonsensical and bigoted narratives. Target was far from alone in doing so, of course, and for at least a good bit of 2025 it seemed that most American corporations, a category that to my mind also includes law firms and institutions of higher ed among other entities, were so willing to go along with these extremist attacks that it felt as if they had just been waiting for a chance to retreat from their diversity and inclusive efforts (which would only reify my position from Monday’s post that American corporations are often direct allies of white supremacy).
- Government Grift: And that’s not even the most frustrating way in which corporations have aligned themselves with this fascist regime. For that I’d have to go with the corporations that have directly contributed to Trump’s constant and yet ever-increasing grifting, companies that have offered financial incentives to the president and his allies that make the Bank of the United States look like a non-profit food bank by comparison. Big Tech has been the most consistently guilty of these practices, not surprisingly given how many of its CEOs were front and center at Trump’s second inauguration. But to follow up Thursday’s post on U.S. Steel, we could examine the details of that corporation’s Trump-finagled merger with Nippon Steel, a deal that promises to enrich the administration and its allies while further harming the American economy and its consumers.
- Moral Capitalism: There are all sorts of ways to highlight, challenge, and resist these frustrating trends, including to be sure the kinds of investigative journalism that I highlighted in yesterday’s post and that we’ve seen plenty of inspiring examples of in the last year. But one form of resistance that offers a direct and important alternative to much of what I’ve written about in this week’s series is the concept of moral capitalism, one that can be directly linked to other current ideas such as “No Kings.” I’m not entirely convinced that capitalism can abandon the profit motives and/or competition enough to truly focus on the public good, to go back to the dichotomy about which I wrote in Tuesday’s post—but I’m even less convinced that the U.S. will move away from a capitalist system any time soon, so it’s nonetheless essential that we try to make our capitalism and our corporations alike more moral and just.
Next series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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