Views » August 3, 2004

Silence of the Dems

By Joel Bleifuss

The words from the podium were inspiring. Ron Reagan urged voters to chose “between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.” Teresa Heinz Kerry asked Americans to summon “the better angels of our nature.”

Democratic Convention speakers gave voice to the historic choice that is before us in November, but not a word was said about the biggest obstacle standing in the way of our aspiration “to build one America”: multinational corporations that owe allegiance only to the bottom line. Even John Edwards, who made a career of battling corporate lawyers, did not use the word “corporation” once in his speech.

The Democratic National Committee issued a prohibition against Bush-bashing. No such edict is needed when it comes to corporations. You don’t bite the hand that fills your wallet.

A 34-year-old Bill Clinton, the populist governor of Arkansas who battled Arkansas Power and Light Co. and other corporate interests, learned that lesson. In 1980 he lost his reelection bid to Frank White, an investment banker backed by Arkansas’ corporate establishment and a then-impressive $400,000 war chest. Michael Kelly noted in the New York Times Magazine that the message Clinton gleaned was clear: “To be successful, a politician had to appear hugely concerned with bettering the lives of ordinary citizens but had to be careful to avoid acting on those concerns so aggressively that they threatened the interests of the business elite.”

Indeed, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, in this current election cycle corporate interests have contributed $356 million, or 70 percent, of the $511 million in campaign donations Democrats have collected so far.

That money bought silence. Imagine what might have been said at the podium if the Democrats did not have to worry about their masters’ whips. Perhaps some prime-time speaker might have called for much-needed reform of the campaign finance system.

Corporations are the dominant form of economic organization in our world. That is not going to change. However, their basest excesses can be corralled through legislation and trade agreements.

Captains of industry created corporations, in part, to shield themselves from financial liability. And in the mid-1800s, U.S. corporations gained human powers through a judicial system that imbued these bloodless entities with the constitutional rights of flesh-and-blood individuals.

But we allow corporations to do things that we would never allow a person to do. The Corporation, a documentary now in theaters, examines corporations as legal “persons.” Applying the standard diagnostic criteria of psychologists, the filmmakers conclude that corporations are psychopathic personalities.

The documentary makes the case that the corporation’s operating principles give it a highly anti-social “personality”: It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt. In other words, it is evil.

The corporation is not a “person” that you want wielding the gross power it currently holds over you and your community. From the dangers to the earth’s future posed by global warming, to a healthcare system that denies coverage to those who can’t afford it, to an economic system that encourages CEOs to shift production to countries with no labor laws—the list of social ills that result from undue corporate influence on the political process is endless.

Yes, the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, but that freedom is curtailed when the power of money silences our political leaders from speaking out. And no, we can’t look to the corporate media to provide the needed critique.

We the people, especially those of us in independent media, need to work to change the paradigm, to challenge the hegemony of corporations.

Listen to the rallying cry from Boston, but hear the silence surrounding it—the evil that dare not say its name.

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• Reader Comments

  “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Sinclair Lewis

  And that sums it up, the reason why corporations have so much power and why people continue to support it. Everything we do, we justify. Maybe we can’t justify it 10 years later, but at the moment we always justify it, and money always provides justification.

  And explains why so few people have the courage to speak out.  www.wordsareimportant.com/kerry.htm - Mr. Kerry on the Yellow Brick Road, he is in need of a heart…

  AG

  “You can call your ass a turkey, but that don’t make it Thanksgiving.”

  Posted by AG on Aug 4, 2004 at 6:48 AM

  Corporations should not be entitled to the same legal rights as individuals. When corporations commit crimes, they don’t go to jail and they rarely even pay a fine. The National Lawyers Guild “oppose[s] recognition of the personhood of corporations under the Fourteenth Amendment.[1] Protections of the Bill of Rights are given to people out of a concern for human dignity, liberty or equality.”
  The National Lawyers Guild also believes that “[c]orporate participation in politics is presumptively illegitimate” and that “restraints on corporate political participation should be enacted and enforced.”
  Our laws also need to impose an obligation on corporations to respect fundamental human rights. Many of the biggest human right violations are committed by corporations but they are never held accountable for their crimes. It is time to end the Age of the Corporation. Join the National Lawyers Guild and work for the future of humanity.

  Posted by Dave K on Aug 4, 2004 at 5:14 PM

  The moral dilemma is complicated by the fact that a corporation is actually composed of many people: thousands or millions of employees; thousands or millions of shareholders; and many of the shares are held by other corporations, whose shares are held by others, etc.  And most of the employees and “ultimate” shareholders are innocent of, and cannot influence, the day to day actions of a corporation.  They normally do not know what the corporation, in their name, is doing until the news becomes public.  Enron is a good example.

  Thus, an attempt to “imprison” a corporation only succeeds in impoverishing its employees and innocent (and in many cases indirect) creditors and shareholders.  This is even more true of a corporate “death penalty” which has often been suggested.

  What then could be done?  First, we need to change the legal principle of “fiduciary responsibility” by which the ULTIMATE duty of corporate management is to protect their SHAREHOLDERS’ MONEY, by any means not prohibited by law.  Obviously, this includes the duty to attempt to CHANGE the law if possible to enhance their shareholders’ profits (even if such a change is against the “public interest”).  ALL other duties except abiding by the STRICT LETTER OF THE LAW, including employee welfare, customer safety and financial well-being, environment, health of the generatl population, etc, are SUBSERVIENT to this duty.  And it is not only the attitude of many (perhaps not most) executives personally, it is a LEGAL DUTY and the executives can be SUED by shareholders for violating it.

  Thus, it is necessary to modify, by statute or by constitutional amendment if necessary, this doctrine of fiduciary responsibility.  How to do this without being accused of “confiscating” the property of shareholders (as abolitionists were accused of confiscating the property of slave owners) is the problem.  We need to recognize that the “owners” of a PUBLIC corporation are not only the shareholders, but to some extent the employees, the customers, those who drink the water or breathe the air emitted by the operations of a corporation, and the public as a whole.  And since the shareholders all belong to one or more of these other groups as well, this means that their MONETARY investment is only part of their stake; so that protecting their welfare includes a share of these other values as well as money.  The devil, of course, is in the details of how to compute the effect of an executive’s decisions on the public welfare.

  The other problem, of course, is that when the law recognizes a corporation as a “person,” it should not give this fictitious person the right to free speech which belongs to natural persons.  Rather, a corporation is a “person” only in the sense that its treasury is a pool of money for doing business, just as a person’s net worth is available for doing business.  The only “rights” a corporation morally possesses are the rights of its individual shareholders and employees, but those can be exercised on an individual basis more honestly than as a corporation.

  A corporate charter typically allows it to go into “any lawful business,” rather than naming its originally intended activity.  This causes problems for the public interest because of the rise of multi-national and multi-enterprise conglomerates.  Perhaps if a tobacco company, for example, had to petition its chartering authority (a state, usually) to amend its charter in order to buy a quit-smoking clinic, or an animation studio, the public might be a trifle safer.  And imagine the “synergy” of a gun manufacturer making action movies glorifying the use of guns in crime and crime-fighting, thus increasing the sales of guns.

  Come to think of it, the legitimate purpose of any business is to make as much of a product, or provide a service as frequently, as the public needs and can benefit from buying.  But many of the products (such as cigarettes, junk foods, drugs—not only illegal ones) and services (such as tanning booths and credit cards) are actually HARMFUL to those who buy them and use them in excess.  Yet no corporation has an incentive to limit their sales; indeed, they are almost FORCED to advertise for the purpose of urging consumers to purchase TOO MUCH of their products and services.  Brewers and tobacco companies say in their public service ads that they only want customers of legal age and those customers should use their products responsibly; but if this really happened, these companies would suffer financially and employees would be out of work.

  This question needs a great deal more thought applied than it has so far.  I look forward to seeing more discussion, and getting beyond the bilateral name-calling (socialist pinko! greedy capitalist pig!) to some useful dialogue, in this and other media.

  Posted by Allan Richardson on Aug 6, 2004 at 1:39 AM

  There is no magic formula to counteract the effects of corporations, or mass media, or deceitful governments but EDUCATION. The problem is everybody seems to be so busy trying to be successful that few people devote the necessary amount of time and energy to think things over and teach their children to use their capacity of analysis and help them grow as free-thinkers. Most parents feel they are doing their best by sending kids to a “good” school, or buying them clothes with the “right” logo, or buying them “Harry Potter” or a Barbie doll. Children are just subjects to be modeled in a certain pattern so they “fit”. Few parents take the trouble of reading what’s taught to their children at school, or really listen to the junk they are fed on TV, or simply fear that if their children don’t follow the trend of their mates they might become “freaks” or “unpopular”.
  It doesn’t necessarily have to be so.
  When my younger children started to press me because they simply had to have a pair of Nikes, or a Levi jacket, or go to McDonald to gulp the greasy food they sell I took the trouble of explaining them for long hours the reasons for my refusal: I told them it was insane that somebody should pay a high price for some garment which forced them to act as a logo carrier. If the firms wanted sandwich-men to go around the world promoting their name they shlould contract welll-paid workers to do so, not use the customers. I took the trouble of cooking decent meals for them and for their friends, even though I worked long hours outside my home and helped them develop their taste, so that when they by any chance got in touch with junk food they could tell the difference and discard it as an option. I taught them to use their own capacity to consider what they found in books and not take everything for granted. There is a very useful tool in man’s mind, sometimes called common sense which has been suppressed for obvious reasons. A free thinker, somebody who is not afraid to disregard what everybody around him seems to accept, be it in terms of religion, philosophy, politics, or any other field, and is ready to investigate with an unprejudiced mind from scratch, is the only kind of person who is helping his fellow men towards freedom and is a way of true love. 
  I know it takes a lot of energy to do that, it is not easy or popular, and it can sometimes prove to be a lonely road but if we are not ready to make that effort, it is rather silly to complain of state of affairs.

  Posted by María Luisa Etchart on Aug 6, 2004 at 5:34 PM

  I think the moderator should remove this obvious advertising post as being an abuse of the forum.  Advertising does not belong here!

  Posted by James Allan Richardson on Nov 12, 2004 at 9:26 PM

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