InstitutionClaim Cited
Zeiss links scientific optics, specialist production, employee commitments, and science funding through foundation ownership. Its changing history also exposes ownership's limits: the statute was altered under National Socialism, Zeiss made military instruments and used forced labor, the Jena operations were expropriated, and later reunification required institutional reconstruction.
Can ownership be designed to preserve a scientific-industrial community across generations, and what prevents durable purpose from becoming durable self-preservation or accommodation to destructive power?
Thinker PractitionerClaim Cited
At New Lanark, Robert Owen joined factory management to housing, schooling, retail, recreation, shorter hours, and character formation. Contemporary worker-petition evidence and later historical work document meaningful reforms, while private ownership, behavioral classification, partner conflict, resistance, and Owen's self-promotion make it an employer-led paternalist experiment rather than worker self-government or a causal test of welfare's effect on profit.
Can an industrial enterprise improve workers' lives and develop human capability without leaving the power to define improvement in one owner's hands?