the companies used violence to try and get their way
And that's exactly where we need the state, in order to protect us from violence. I'd just like there to be limits on the scope of its authority. Corporations are just groups of people.
Corporations may be groups of people but they don't get treated like people. There's no corporate death penalty for companies that end up killing people. There's no corporate jail to remove companies that can't behave out of society for a set amount of time. There's fines that seem to never be greater than the profit the companies earn from breaking the law and it just becomes a cost of business.
If they're going to be treated like people then go all the way, but until then they need to be regulated to prevent the worst of their excesses that have been played out again and again
Corporations may be groups of people but they don't get treated like people
They don't have to be. All we have to do is hold individuals accountable for their actions. If a person in a corporation orders violent suppression of a labour dispute, then they are personally accountable. A corporation is a legal fiction. It can't be held accountable because it doesn't do anything, the people who run it do.
