Richard D. Wolff

"B" corporations are a way to protect mildly progressive corporate boards to pursue some social betterment goals without thereby becoming vulnerable to suits from shareholders claiming such boards have violated their fiduciary duties to maximize profits, etc.

As such they are a small step in the right direction, but given capitalism's massive production of inequality, environmental degradation, and social instability they are far too little and too late. Production should never have been subordinated to profit for the few (major shareholders and the boards of directors they select) when the well-being of the many is at stake. That violated the most elementary principles of democracy and risked the social destructiveness that capitalism has imposed on the world for many decades. A transition to a democratic enterprise structure - worker coops or worker self-directed enterprises - is a far more appropriate and adequate response to the dead end of modern capitalism than the "b" corporation.