"In the case of England, the Glorious Revolution was an important step on the road to democracy. But it was only a step, for it claimed sovereignty on behalf of the wealthy alone, not on behalf of all. Over time this did change as the voting franchise was extended. but what's curious is that today, more than three hundred years later, corporate governance has not yet made that change. Public corporations are still governed in the name of the propertied class alone.

At root, what really governs corporations is an idea that is the intellectual descendent of the great chain of being: the notion that only those who possess wealth matter. Implicitly, they are a higher class of persons who alone are considered real members of corporate society; hence only they have a vote."

Marjorie Kelly, The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy, 2001