Machen held corporations exist as real entities without inherent personhood.

Evidence

But through logical, metaphorical arguments, comparing the corporation to other “real” entities that could be broken down into parts (such as a river, broken down into atoms of oxygen and hydrogen, or “the Church,” the “Republican Party,” or “any other aggregation of men for good or evil”), Machen concluded that a corporation must be real, even if it cannot be said to be either ideal or material. Machen differs from Maitland in arguing that the corporation is not inherently a legal fiction; he does not believe that the state, essentially, produces the corporation for the sake of legal regulation. The same, however, cannot be said for the corporation as a person. Or, for Machen, corporations exist as real things, but there is nothing to say that corporations have rights, have abilities, have obligations, until the state claims it to be a “person.” — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 381

Categorization

• DEFINE: Machen’s key distinction: corporate existence (real) vs. corporate personhood (state-granted fiction).