corporate power — Bunk History

A magnifying glass on C. Wright Mills's book "The Power Elite."

Whatever Happened to the Power Elite?

The trio of interests atop business, military, and government depicted in C. Wright Mills’s postwar critique is no longer united in setting the national agenda.

by Peter Dreier via The New Republic on May 5, 2025

Tiburcio Parrott sitting holding cane

Birth of the Corporate Person

The defining of corporations as legal “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment rights got a leg up from the fight over a California anti-Chinese immigrant law.

by Evelyn Atkinson, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on March 16, 2024

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The Big Business Campaign That Has Shaped 40 Years of GOP Rhetoric

The philosophy that drives the GOP's attacks on government and how it has fueled some of our biggest problems.

by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway via Made By History on March 9, 2023

Oil refinery

How Polluting Industries Mobilized to Block Climate Action

Since its inception, the IPCC itself has been the target of corporate obstructionism.

by Amy Westervelt via The Intercept on April 12, 2022

Trump and his cabinet sitting around a conference table.

Why the Power Elite Continues to Dominate American Politics

Presidents of both parties stock their Cabinets with corporate leaders.

by Timothy M. Gill via Made By History on December 24, 2018

Company Men

The 200-year legal struggle that led to Citizens United and gave corporations the rights of people.

by Kim Phillips-Fein via The New Republic on March 29, 2018

Huey Long

How ‘the Kingfish’ Turned Corporations into People

Seventy-five years before Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled that newspapers were entitled to First Amendment protections.

by Adam Winkler via New York Review of Books on February 28, 2018

Cartoon silhouettes of elongated business people in suits

Business as Usual: The Long History of Corporate Personhood

The mass defection of CEOs of some of the nation’s most powerful corporations from President Trump’s now-defunct Manufacturing Jobs Initiative.

by Lawrence B. Glickman via Boston Review on August 23, 2017

Political cartoon depicting Standard Oil as an octopus.

When Did Americans Stop Being Antimonopoly?

Columbia professor Richard R. John explains the history of U.S. monopolies and why antimonopoly should not be conflated with antitrust.

by Richard R. John, Asher Schechter via Pro-Market on November 21, 2016

When Big Oil Was "The Great Vampire Squid" Wrapped Around America

Robert Engler's award-winning 1955 investigation into the oil industry.

by Robert Engler via The New Republic on August 29, 1955

David Rubenstein looks toward the Washington Monument.

When Donald Trump Fired David Rubenstein

The private-equity billionaire spent decades building influence in the capital. Then his philanthropy collided with the president.

by Michael Powell via The Atlantic on December 1, 2025

Anthony Kennedy and the Citizens United ruling.

This Former Supreme Court Justice Is Trying to Salvage His Legacy. It’s Too Late.

The story of how corruption became legal in America isn't just about memos, movements, and legal strategies.

by David Sirota, Jared Jacang Maher via Slate on October 21, 2025

Donald Trump in a gold hardhat poses with construction workers at the Trump Palace.

How the Capitalism of the 1980s Created Donald Trump’s Theory of the State

The proliferation of privately held companies during the Reagan years laid the foundations for Trump’s approach to government.

by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Nation on October 14, 2025

Screen shots and captions from a public service campaign about the economy.

The Ad Campaign for Capitalism

In the 1970s, corporate America struck back at the forces attempting to rein it in. One of their tactics was a public service announcement.

by David Sirota, Jared Jacang Maher via The American Prospect on October 13, 2025

Photograph of Jean Muir

Before There Was Jimmy Kimmel, There Was Jean Muir

The "Red Scare" echo in the Kimmel suspension.

by Clay Risen via Politico Magazine on September 20, 2025

Andrew Mellon

This 1920s Treasury Secretary Helped Big Business Drive the Economy

The economic vision of American industrialist Andrew Mellon loomed large over the boom and bust of the 1920s.

via Retro Report on September 12, 2025

Apple Company store in Chongqing, China.

How American Tech Made China an Economic Superpower

"Apple in China" tells the incredible story of China’s industrial development through the lens of America’s most iconic tech giant.

by Daniel Cheng via Damage on September 9, 2025

An illustration of the citizens’ committee in Fort Worth, Texas arresting a striker during the Great Southwest Strike of 1886.

Populism Was Born From a Rural-Urban Alliance

In 1880s Texas, farmers and factory workers discovered they had the same enemy: corporate capitalists.

by David Griscom via Jacobin on July 5, 2025

Tax Season and the Making of the American Fiscal State

As Americans file their taxes this tax season, the Trump administration threatens to unravel the modern fiscal state.

by John Fabian Witt, Ajay K. Mehrotra via Made By History on April 16, 2025

Arrested demonstrators of the University of California Free Speech Movement during their trial in Berkeley, California, 1965.

America Needs a New Free Speech Movement

Donald Trump is showing us what an unaccountable class of corporate decision-makers looks like—and it looks like a lot of fear, and a terrible loss of freedom.

by Zephyr Teachout via The Nation on March 19, 2025

Donald Trump awards the National Medal of Freedom to former Attorney General Edwin Meese.

Trump’s Antisocial State

The administration is trying to neuter the redistributive and protective arms of the state, while exploiting its bureaucratic powers to silence, threaten, and deport.

by Melinda Cooper via Dissent on March 18, 2025

David Rubenstein

King David

Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein has cultivated a reputation as a well-meaning advocate of history education. What does that image mask?

by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on December 24, 2024

View of mountains on the horizon

Who Owns the Mountains?

Hurricane Helene has revived urgent questions about the politics of land — and tourism — in Appalachia.

by Olivia Paschal via New York Review of Books on November 3, 2024

Donald Trump

Donald Trump Would Be Weaker the Second Time Around

Donald Trump wants the ideology of William McKinley and Gilded Age Republicanism, but with a totally different social base. It won’t work.

by Paul Heidman via Jacobin on October 23, 2024

A computer, business documents, envelope, and a broadcast tower.

How Tech Giants Make History

AT&T’s early leaders used PR to sway public opinion, casting their monopoly as a public service and obscuring its political roots.

by Richard R. John via Pro-Market on October 10, 2024

Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates speak during the 'Gates Foundation' press conference at the Annual Meeting 2009 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 30, 2009" by Remy Steinegger.

Philanthropy’s Power Brokers

An in-depth reckoning with the Gates Foundation as a discrete actor is long overdue.

by John Miles Branch via Public Books on July 17, 2024

General president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O'Brien speaks during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 15, 2024.

A Return to Gompers

Sean O’Brien’s speech at the RNC may represent a return to nonpartisan realpolitik for unions. But does that reflect labor's strength or its decline?

by Dustin Guastella via Jacobin on July 17, 2024

Charred ruins of Lahaina following the fire.

After Wildfires Destroyed Lahaina, the Battle to Restore an Ancient Ecosystem Will Shape Its Future.

A wetland restoration project is bringing hope to Maui residents who want to honor Lahaina’s history and return water to the town after last year’s fires.

by Reis Thebault via Washington Post on July 11, 2024

Chiquita Must Pay for Its Crimes in Latin America

70 years since President Árbenz was ousted for standing up to Chiquita, the firm might finally be held to account for its ties to a far-right paramilitary group in Colombia.

by Klas Lundström via Jacobin on July 10, 2024

Engraving of the Battle of Lexington After Alonzo Chappel: American colonists and British soldiers exchange fire at the Battle of Lexington, the first skirmish in the US War of Independence.

Taking Up the American Revolution’s Egalitarian Legacy

Despite its failures and limitations, the American Revolution unleashed popular aspirations to throw off tyranny of all kinds.

by Taylor Clark via Jacobin on July 4, 2024

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