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Fri 27 Jun, 2003 05:06 pm
The United States of America was born of a revolt not just against British monarchs and the British parliament but against British corporations....
The Declaration of Independence, in 1776, freed Americans not only from Britain but also from the tyranny of British corporations, and for a hundred years after the document's signing, Americans remained deeply suspicious of corporate power. They were careful about the way they granted corporate charters, and about the powers granted therein....
Corporations were "artificial, invisible, intangible," mere financial tools. They were chartered by individual states, not the federal government, which meant they could be kept under close local scrutiny. They were automatically dissolved if they engaged in activities that violated their charter. Limits were placed on how big and powerful companies could become. Even railroad magnate J. P. Morgan, the consummate capitalist, understood that corporations must never become so big that they "inhibit freedom to the point where efficiency [is] endangered." ...
The two hundred or so corporations operating in the US by the year 1800 were each kept on fairly short leashes. They weren't allowed to participate in the political process. They couldn't buy stock in other corporations....
So what happened? How did corporations gain power and eventually start exercising more control than the individuals who created them?
The turning point was the Civil War. Corporations made huge profits from procurement contracts and took advantage of the disorder and corruption of the times to buy legislatures, judges and even presidents.
Shortly before his death, [Lincoln] warned that "corporations have been enthroned . . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the republic is destroyed." ...
In Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute over a railbed route, the US Supreme Court deemed that a private corporation was a "natural person" under the US Constitution and therefore entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights. Suddenly, corporations enjoyed all the rights and sovereignty previously enjoyed only by the people, including the right to free speech. ...
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas concluded of Santa Clara that it "could not be supported by history, logic or reason." One of the great legal blunders of the nineteenth century changed the whole idea of democratic government...
Corporations, these legal fictions that we ourselves created two centuries ago, now have more rights, freedoms and powers than we do. And we accept this as the normal state of affairs.
We go to corporations on our knees. Please do the right thing, we plead. Please don't cut down any more ancient forests. Please don't pollute any more lakes and rivers (but please don't move your factories and jobs offshore either). Please don't use pornographic images to sell fashion to my kids. Please don't play governments off against each other to get a better deal. We've spent so much time bowed down in deference, we've forgotten how to stand up straight....
The unofficial history of America, which continues to be written, is not a story of rugged individualism and heroic personal sacrifice in the pursuit of a dream. It is a story of democracy derailed, of a revolutionary spirit suppressed, and of a once-proud people reduced to servitude.
Excerpted from Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America (Kalle Lasn, William Morrow/Eaglebrook, 1999).
Are corporations actually modern-day "kingdoms",
outranking even local governments?
They don't publish their own clear code of law, and they only follow governmental law when it is profitable to do so.
Castles, moats, business defenses, spies, treaties, predatory business practices, mercenaries, indoctrination, flag-waving and blind patriotic allegiance ... all exist within the corporate world, no?
Well, Benito Mussolini hit the nail on the head:
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power."
This confluence of politics, media, and mega-conglomerates is extremely bad for democracy.
Short of revolution....any suggestions?
We've got to find out how to slow it down, then we can worry about stopping it.
There seems to be a movement to reverse "Santa Clara" and the amendment which empowers corporations. Also recommend nimh's post about the need for a new kind of free-market party in another discussion.
Saddam had to cut the tongues out of the mouths of his opposition to silence them, Bush's opposition seem to have nothing to say.
The fight against the Bushes will grow, just watch.
Wolf -- Not to deny that the Bushies need severe trimming, but it was the corporations which put Bush in power, not the reverse. My instinct is to go for the root system, not the little branches at the top.
Bush is just a wart on the corporations' behind. Bush swept away reveals the true power that enslaves: the corporations, which includes the military. All too many Democrats are part of this game, but we have a better chance with them just now - temporarily.
Mind you, corporations can also be good for us, if they are politically sanitized. There will always be entrepreneurs and hence there will always be corporations. The point is to put democratic politics in control of our society, not economics. Therefore, you need to be able to put decent political representatives in place. Corporations, from there upon, will bend to their more democratic, socially and environmentally justifiable laws. The Clinton era, and the promising Gore reform of energy sources, needed corporations as well. But they latter would have been subjected to the will of the people, more or less: to the rightfully elected Mr. Gore. We would be in another world as for now, debating art and exchanging optimistic futurisms.
The problem we're facing in the US is not that of corporations but of a coup by obsessed power players, paranoid imperialists and ideologically motivated fascists, who use corporations they are afilliated with to thrive upon their false political views.
A silent revolution by the people is what we need. A general strike.
That, of course, is the key problem. I don't see a bit of difference between the two parties in this problem, Edgar, except as a matter of scale. Nimh once again raised the issue of the need for additional parties, and I have to admit I think that's a likely part of the answer. It's just possible (a mere whisper of possibility) that the MoveOn "PAC" (as it's now called) is the new Democratic Party even as the DLC moves the old party deeper into corporationland. If MoveOn doesn't do the trick, I think it's possible something may start up elsewhere. As I googled this Santa Clara stuff, I found quite a few anti-corporate-power groups (vs. Luddites!!) a-formin' up.
There appears to be no galvanizing force that will unite enough ex and present Democrats in sufficient numbers.
I just noted in the "Democratic contenders" thread that Dean has raised (according to a note, today) a significant amount of money from small contributors. A sign of widespread activism. Where it will go, no one knows, but in itself it's a good sign after all the anomie and low turn-outs.
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