Rating: 
Summary: Essential reading
Review: As much information as I absorb about our state of government, there are still some very broad assumptions which pass under my radar. This book shines a brilliant light on issues that are critically important for ANYONE who wishes to consider themselves 'informed'. The most basic mythology exposed: that those who speculate have superior & perpetual rights over those who earn by labor. The bias in our mass media & legal institutions is so outrageous that at first it's difficult to accept just how deeply we are being bluffed. I am now on my second reading. If you only read one nonfiction book this year (instead of the Wall Street fiction & PR positioned as fact) do yourself a huge favor & buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Worst book I read in 2002
Review: Blah, blah, blah. I forced my way thru most of this, but found nothing new to the stale, uneducated argument of the left. I hope one day the socialists get the government they want so that they can see how horribly it fails. No, wait, that has happened about 30 times already with millions dead and they still don't get it. This book is so bad I don't even know where to start. You can get the same effect by reading some hippie poetry about how we need to all just smile and wash our brother. If you want to know about global economic policies that work or freedom, look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Necessary New Perspective
Review: For anyone who's ever felt a disconnect between what they're hearing about the economy and what they're experiencing personally, Marjorie Kelly's book is very enlightening. She challenges some of the fundamental assumptions we hold about the stock market's role in the overall economy. Particularly in the context of current debates about corporate responsibility legislation and the privatization of Social Security, this book is very important. "The Divine Right of Capital" is a must-read for social justice activists and market conservatives alike as we all try to figure out what to do with this broken system in post-Enron America. Love them or hate them, the ideas Kelly offers up are innovative and groundbreaking. Note: I've talked to a couple of more radical/anarchist/extreme whatever types who found this a little on the tame side because it's so darn grounded in reality. If you're really about tearing down the whole system (not my approach, but best of luck), there might be more satisfying extremist rants out there. For everyone else, read this now!
Rating:
Summary: Necessary New Perspective
Review: For anyone who's ever felt a disconnect between what they're hearing about the economy and what they're experiencing personally, Marjorie Kelly's book is very enlightening. She challenges some of the fundamental assumptions we hold about the stock market's role in the overall economy. Particularly in the context of current debates about corporate responsibility legislation and the privatization of Social Security, this book is very important. "The Divine Right of Capital" is a must-read for social justice activists and market conservatives alike as we all try to figure out what to do with this broken system in post-Enron America. Love them or hate them, the ideas Kelly offers up are innovative and groundbreaking. Note: I've talked to a couple of more radical/anarchist/extreme whatever types who found this a little on the tame side because it's so darn grounded in reality. If you're really about tearing down the whole system (not my approach, but best of luck), there might be more satisfying extremist rants out there. For everyone else, read this now!
Rating:
Summary: Reasons why Enron and Worldcom happened
Review: I bought this book a while ago, but only now finished it. What the author wrote about feudal capitalism has become very painfully obvious with the Enron and Worldcom meltdowns. I found the section on comparing Feudal Lords to CEOs a rather enlightening section (and sadly, all too true.) If you want to understand why Lay and Ebbers, et al did what they did, then this book is for you.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: In The Divine Right of Capital, Marjorie Kelly has written a thoughtful, somewhat revolutionary book questioning the basic paradigm of corporate capital: maximizing shareholders' earnings. She compares stockholders who own corporate wealth to feudal European aristocracy as she contends that the current system bestows riches on owners - who add little value to the company - while the employees do all the work. She focuses on this argument despite recent history, during which managers have extracted more value from companies than owners. Her book is a fascinating, clearly written and cogently argued attack, although she repeats some of the central points. Kelly covers the six principles that uphold the economic aristocracy and the six qualities needed to shift to the economic democracy she advocates. While we from getAbstract don't agree with Kelly's philosophy, we suspect that her lively book will intrigue economists, academics and others who like to contemplate the way whole systems function, whether for good or ill.
Rating:
Summary: Animal Farm Revisited
Review: Marjorie Kelly stands heads above her comrades in shouting the old adage "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" from the father of wealth discrimination, Karl Marx. She pounds her pulpit to not just reform our economic society but to invert it. Her scheme for change requires more government intervention and less free capitalism. She is clearly in left field. The fedgov through their meddling in forbidding areas has created the mess we are seeing today. Corporations are abiding to compliant ethics (established by meddling government bureaucrats) and no more. Free capitalism abides to the divine ethics and does unto others as they would want done unto them. Ms. Kelly and those who like this book should reread Animal Farm, visit the Von Mises website or check economic books by Carson, Hazlitt or Sennholz.
Rating:
Summary: Historic, Essential, & Correct.
Review: Ms. Kelly's book is essential. It should be ready by every representative, government official, CEO, lawyer, activist, and business student.
Kelly asks many important questions whose answers demand change in our system.
Why should public corporations strive for maximum return for investors by minimizing returns for their workers?
Why do stock holders have maximum control of a public corporation, when it is the employees and public that are the real investors/creators of a company's wealth?
Why are corporations given rights of individuals?
She examines current issues and historical precedent of property, inheritance, aristocracy, and ownership. It is a wonderful book for the historian as well as a guidebook for the activist.
I recommend three books without reservation. The Dalai Lama's "Ethics for the New Millennium", Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, and Marjorie Kelly's "The Divine Right of Capital". Read these and make a better world with the gifts they offer.
Rating:
Summary: For years I've been wondering
Review: One of the many reasons why I loved this book was because it answered a question I have had for years: Long after the initial public offering, how does the money used to buy a share of stock become available to the company that issued the stock? I read many books in the public press that aimed to explain stocks and bonds to the unknowing, but I could never find the answer to this question and decided that it was a dumb question. The Divine Right of Capital begins with the answer to my question: A public company only gets capital from a share of stock once: when it initially issues the stock. Any further increase in the stock price goes only to speculators also known as stockholders. These speculators provide needed liquidity but law stipulates that in return they get compensated inordinately to the detriment of the corporation and its employees. I think that the author's arguments might win the day (despite the readiness of some reviewers here to dismiss them as the rantings of yet another leftist) if emerging companies choose to raise capital by means other than issuing public stock. Meanwhile however, Supreme Court decisions giving corporations the rights of natural persons are ludicrous and I do not understand why saying this is enough to earn a person the label of hippie leftist.
Rating:
Summary: How capitalism and democracy should work
Review: The Divine Right of Capital expands on a theme that many Leftist writers allude to but rarely explore in depth: the correlation between the profit motive and the co-optation of our democracy by private corporate interests. Inspired by the work of Thomas Paine -- who in an earlier era helped build support for the American Revolution by communicating to ordinary people in clear, uncluttered prose -- Marjorie Kelly makes her case for the democratization of capital in an accessible manner, making this a highly readable book. The work challenges our basic assumptions. Why are balance sheets constructed to highlight the rate of return from a shareholder perspective only? The author points out that accounting practices could easily be changed to create a more balanced view of the company's value to society. It could measure things such as the value of its employees, the amount of financial support corporations may have siphoned off the public trust, the depletion of natural capital, etc. Kelly explains that such exercises are rarely taken because shareholders make infinite demands on capital, in much the way that Monarchs declared perpetual domain over land and people in an earlier time. The author refers to writings by Jefferson and other revolutionaries to support her case that the colonists were concerned about limiting the power of corporations even while they were struggling to overthrow the King: corporate charters were usually awarded during this era for limited time periods and were often revoked when companies misbehaved. Regrettably, corporations later used their power to petition the courts and eventually claimed status as "persons", leading to numerous abuses of power (such as the relatively recent argument that corporate campaign contributions are equivalent to free speech and are therefore protected); these abuses unfairly skew the democratic process in favor of big money. This is just one of many reasons why Kelly believes that citizens must reclaim their rights and cast off the corporate aristocracy. Could it be that in the wake of the Enron scandal -- which so compellingly shows how deeply corporate money and political power are connected -- the people will demand the kind of change that Kelly advocates? If so, they would do well to consider some of the ideas in this outstanding book.
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