Political theory today has expanded its scope to debate business corporations, conceiving of them as political actors, not (just) private actors in the market place. This article shows continuing relevance Thomas Hobbes’s work for this debate. Hobbes is commonly treated a defender so-called concession theory, which traces legitimacy corporations their being chartered by sovereign state authorit...

Thomas Hobbes postulates that men are driven by "a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death." The miserable consequences of this drive for power and the competing "desire of ease and sensual delight" and "fear of death and wounds" lead them to establish and obey. Substituting "profit" for "power" yields a description of the modern corporation, but without t...