Shareholder control over large corporations is worryingly weak and the unrestrained hunt for profits is taking a toll on the environment and society. In Corpocracy, corporate lawyer, venture capitalist, and shareholder activist Robert Monks reveals how corporations abuse their power and what we the people must do to rein them in. In a clear and careful analysis, Monks outlines a plan for reconciling the competing interests of corporations and society through thoughtful shareholder activism.

Democratic capitalism-the source of America's vast wealth, the foundation of our entire economic system-is threatened as never before, not from without but from within. Shareholders today no longer own, except in the narrowest legal sense, the corporations they have invested in. Emboldened by the Supreme Court and enabled by a compliant Congress and compromised regulators, America's CEOs have staged a corporate coup d'etat. They, not the titular owners of the businesses, decide where and how company resources will be deployed, what laws will be evaded in the pursuit of short-term gain, what...