Corporatism Vs. Democracy -- THE CORPORATION; What FAHRENHEIT 9/11 Doesn't Tell You!
Written: Jun 29 '04 (Updated Jun 11 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Amazingly engrossing, informative, entertaining; many memorable examples, illustrations: Focused. Ray Anderson, Jane Akre, Steve Wilson.
Cons: Lengthy Movie. "Dry" subject. Some may think it goes too far; some, not far enough.
The Bottom Line: THE CORPORATION sums up the content of a number of recent documentaries which attempt to explain what's gone wrong with America in the last 25 years. Applicable to many problems.
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| macresarf1's Full Review: The Corporation |
You can't afford to drive to MacDonald's for a feed of fries and a greasy hamburger?
Must pay 24% interest on an average monthly credit card balance of $30,000?
Have to re-finance your home to make payment on your bills?
You've been laid off and your job has been out-sourced?
You say, your children's milk is being poisoned?
Must sacrifice health care for atom bombs?
Attempts made to patent your water?
Think pesticide is in fruit cocktail?
A lawyer controls your genes?
Terminally all p*ssed off?
Who's to blame?
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Thea-dora Ima Corporation, that's who!
Known simply, in this male-chauvinist world, as THE MAN.
Thea is a son-of-ab*itch economic-witching sibling of the Frankenstein Monster, originally an Anglo-Saxon, but in recent decades a multi-racial, transsexual transnational, and at his/her most insufferable, despite what Paul Goebels might have said, an evangelical and hypocritical Christian. There are tens of thousands of Thea's around the would, so forget your fears of Saddams and Osama's because about a dozen of the biggest Theas (General Motors, Exxon-Mobil, Monsanto, Royal Dutch Shell, GE, Philip Morris, Dupont, IBM, Bechtel, Halliburton, Boeing, etc.) are on the verge of owning the World, not to mention the Universe and everything in it. And once they have all of real economic value sewn up, in 20 years or so, you and I are not going to amount to Rick and Ilsa's "hill of beans."
That is the message of the new documentary, THE CORPORATION, by Jennifer Abbot and Mark Achbar (who did MANUFACTURING CONSENT).
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Based on a book by law professor Joel Bakan (The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power); and a screenplay by Harold Crooks [THE WORLD IS WATCHING (1988); THE CHAMPAGNE SAFARI (1995), etc.], a broad spectrum of the usual suspects is marshaled to describe just who Thea-dora Ima Corporation (my characterization, to be sure) represents: Ray Anderson (CEO of the World's largest carpet manufacturer), Noam Chomsky (long time critic of corporations), Milton Friedman (champion of Supply Side Economics), Michael Moore (Mother Jones of all corporate gadflies), Howard Zinn (alternative historian author: The People's History of the United States) -- as well as Kathy Lee Gifford (tearful), Martha Stewart (glum), Bart Simpson (knowing the score, as usual), Joseph Cotton (throttled by an Italian Frankenstein Monster, INFIGLIA DI FRANKENSTEIN, 1971) and Gregory Peck (carried to his doom by a corporate[?] MOBY DICK, 1956).
Six years in the making, shown at several lengths (from 145 to 165 minutes), held up for a year like so many recent movies uncomfortable to our Power Elite, THE CORPORATION begins with a clever montage clipped from our daily TV "news" shows about the recent trillion dollars worth of corporate scandals at Enron, World Com, Arthur Anderson, etc. [We have, of course, completely forgotten the trillion dollars lost by Americans in the Savings and Loan corporate swindles of the Reagan Administration.] Talking heads intone: "There are only half a dozen Bad Apples/ A few bad Apples/ a couple of bad apples/bad apples/a bad apple/apple/ . . . apple." If one has seen FAHRENHEIT 9/11, it is not surprising to find Michael Moore popping up here to comment on how many corporate bad apples there are, and how many excuses and apologists for corporations appear on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the regular Network news or commentary shows.
[Moore also says, intriguingly, without taking an opportunity to "bash" the Bush Family, that a first rate documentary could be made on the bad apples, American and otherwise, who put Adolph Hitler in power in Germany and the Fascisti on the balconies of Italy.]
Why are there so many "bad corporate apples"?
The documentary suggests that it is inherent in the definition, history and the power thrust of corporations.
By definition, a corporation is a group of people gathered together for the expansion of financial activity, in such a way as to form an economic entity, which is regarded as having the rights of an individual (plus the added one of being immortal) but with advantageous limitations on its liabilities. These limitations may vary from state to state, nation to nation, but their "bottom line" is . . . well . . . their Bottom Line. A corporation is encouraged, in fact is often required, to do anything necessary to "make a profit."
Profit is a corporation's sole reason for being.
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The film takes us back to the beginning of the corporation: late 18th Century Britain, after the rise of the aristocratic "royal companies," where a hundred-year-evolution of Christian Capitalism culminated in a group of pit-head owners gathering together "as one person" to request a royal charter in order to provide buckets and other equipment to make the draining of their coal mines more efficient. (An improvement which did little for miners except keep their heads above water.) The real power of the corporate entity took form, the film shows us, with the passing of the 14th Amendment to the American Constitution in 1871, which was designed to give freed slaves the same rights as other male citizens of the United States. Section 1 of the Amendment states:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Ironically, some 188 of 200 cases brought to American appeal courts in the next 30 years argued, not that former slaves be given equality, but that the constitutional provision should instead be applied to corporations; it was the basis of giant companies, the huge fortunes of the Robber Barons, and it stoked the vampirish need for American political, economic and military expansion into Central America, South America and the Pacific. So great became the power of these new corporations that even President Teddy Roosevelt, a drumbeater for Manifest Destiny, was prompted to propose among the first anti-trust, anti-monopoly Federal laws.
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We are shown a variety of CEO's from these and other corporations, several of them charming. [Ray Anderson, the carpet man, a repentant reformer; or the chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, who has his wife serve protesters tea on the lawn of his British estate.] But we learn that the chairmen -- stereotypical money grubbers or idealistic humanitarians alike -- need to make money or they are out. Whether they support the Arts like Mobil Oil or they ruthlessly foment CIA coups and civil war as United Fruit did in Guatemala, etc, corporations and their leaders must justify their acts as a strategem to increase profit.
[The whispered about, legendary General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC, winner of two Congressional Medals of Honor early in the 20th Century, discusses in documentary footage how he led American attacks in the Philippines, Mexico, the Canal Zone, Haiti, etc., largely he concludes, for what he characterizes as the profit margin of greedy, heartless American corporations. He also describes, matter-of-factly, how he was approached to take part in a coup to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal Administration, early in the 1930's. It is a story seldom explored in our mainstream newspapers and media.]
The last 25 years have seen the elimination of limits put on corporations by Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and FDR. "Deregulation" has been the cry of this recent quarter century, and the inexorable erosion of health, safety, and economic well-being statutes for ordinary people has been the result.
A central example given us in THE CORPORATION is that of two investigative reporters, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson. In the late 1990's, a flashy news program was created for them by the Fox Network, entitled "The Investigators." One of their investigations pertained to the introduction of Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) into the American milk supply by Monsanto Chemical Corporation (widely known for its pesticide, herbicide and biochemical products). The product in question speeds up the function of a cow's udder, creating something almost like continuous orgasm, greatly increasing the production of milk. Akre and Wilson (who I learned are married at the American Premiere of THE CORPORATION, in San Francisco) documented the fact that the Federal Drug Agency had approved rBGH, even though lab studies showed that the side effects of hormone caused infections in the cows' udders and reproductive organs. These infections required constantly stronger and higher doses of antibiotics, which resulted in even more stubborn strains of the infection. What's more, Akre and Wilson showed that milk from these cows was being co-mingled in bulk tanks with that of other cows, and mixed with other American food products. Trace amounts of the infections have been linked to higher rates of prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women.
Monsanto pressured Fox News to yank the story, as did the Administration of Governor Jeb Bush in Florida, where much of the research was done.
Akre and Wilson stood by their story, though they were willing to negotiate modifications in it. Not good enough for Fox, nor for Federal and State officials. The reporters were offered sums of money to sign off on the withdrawal of the story, which they refused to do. They were threatened continuously from that point, and then fired. The team sued and, in August 2000, they won their case and were awarded $425, 000. Fox then hired a top Washington law firm (the guys who came up with "what 'is' is" for Bill Clinton) to appeal the ruling, on a basis that "it's-not-llegal-to-lie-on-the-news."
With Jeb Bush's Administration acting as "amicus curiae," Florida's Second District Court of Appeals reversed the decision and awarded Fox damages and costs from Akre and Wilson of $1,761,162.02.
[Akre has not worked since her firing. Wilson now commutes from Florida to Detroit, where he has the only job (at a Scripps-Howard Station) he could find in Media. He told us, at the Castro Theater earlier this month, that Fox's Washington law firm had just sued for and been awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional costs against him and his family. Asked, whether if he knew then what he knows now, he would take on American corporate and aggregate political power to defend our First and Second Amendment to the Constitution, Wilson just looked at the ceiling.]
And according to THE CORPORATION, the pollution of our milk supply continues.
It is not wise, perhaps, to challenge Mother/Father Corporation!
This example is only one of many shown in the lengthy film of how corporations have moved to control the elemental necessities of life: milk, food, wood, oil, etc. The most incredible example came from San Francisco's Bechtel Corporation (currently big in Iraq, and practically a retirement sinecure for former members of the Reagan and Bush Administrations). A couple of years ago, Bechtel made an agreement with the Government of Bolivia to "patent water." The average peasant, who has a per capita income of $2.00 a day, was to pay Bechtel under the agreement fifty cents for his daily water ration. Some Bolivian citizens, when they tried to collect rainwater instead, were arrested for circumvention of the law. When hired professional snipers killed some of the protestors, an almost-revolution occurred in that troubled country, and the Government/Bechtel consortium backed off . . . for the present.
A dozen of the World's most powerful corporations now own, control or hold patents on everything of the Earth, and soon, if America and the World Bank gets its way, in the Universe. Through the Genome, they own, in principle, all living things, even a portion of human beings.
No event, act or condition is without possibilities for profit. A gold trader interviewed in THE CORPORATION, for example, wonders at the unexpected opening for sudden "windfall" profit provided by the horrific tragedy of 9/11 and its aftermath: "In devastation," he observes, "there is opportunity."
No nation on Earth can stand up to The Corporation, as Soviet Russia discovered, and Red China is coming to terms with. The views of the radical right and radical left surprisingly agree, when Milton Friedman and Howard Zinn nod to the proposition that "Profit rules Multi-Nationals and trumps National Interest."
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Why, then, is the corporation so fawned upon by average Americans, not to mention other Westerners and Asians? Why is the corporation seen as both comfortingly stable, yet so unreliable?
Our documentary literally examines the corporation by definition, and asks, "If it WERE a man, what kind man would The Corporation be?" The film applies "The Guidelines to The Psychopathology Checklist DSM IV," and the results are that a corporation is checked off as follows: self-absorbed, manipulative, irresponsible, lacking in empathy, and without any genuine feelings of remorse. Thus, despite liberal CEO's, proud corporate spies, armies of corporate lawyers, ambitious speculators, soothing behavioral psychologists, and cross-firing hack journalists on its payroll, the Corporation is diagnosed as . . .
A PSYCHOPATH!
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An Interpretation of THE CORPORATION:
He's THE MAN! Or should we say The Men since there are thousands of them scattered over the world. But in a modern sense, THE MAN is a multi-racial trans-sexual, despite a long and continuing history of racism, male chauvinism, and homophobia.
By extrapolation, if we look at the current U.S. Government Administration, that of George W. Bush, which is the most corporate friendly, radically reactionary in American History, we see that many of its ideologues (Wolfowitz, Rove, Chaney, Abrams, Pearle, Frume, Feith, Negroponte, etc) frankly regard themselves as Corporatists. They follow the Machiavellian philosophy of Leo Strauss: Corporatism.
What is "Corporatism"? you ask. Corporatism, sometimes called Corporativism, is a theory of political economy in which the public collaborates with industry and/or an elite class in creating a system which guarantees goods to a consumer society. Paralleling the growth of industry, the emerging dominance of the corporation, owing something to an adaptation of Darwin's "survival of the fittest," corporatism promised to cushion the decline and fall of the great Western monarchies and empires. Based partly on an 1891 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, who was concerned about class conflict, the concept was given form by Italy's Benito Mussolini: Just have citizens turn power over to an industry friendly State, "and the trains would run on time."
In fact, Mussolini said in the Encyclopedia Italiana, early in the 1930's: "Fascism should more properly be called Corporatism because it is the merger of the State and the Corporate."
Italy and Germany were the principal corporate states formed before World War II, but there were many others. In addition to sheer growth of industry, they hoped to triumph economically by using Cartels to spread their influence across the World. Inevitably, conflicts arose between the corporate states and the old established empires, and between them and the new, unproven experiment of Soviet Russia. During the ensuing World War II, it was widely understood that the Western Allies were fighting to end cartels in these Corporate States which had caused the War.
And so we beat the Axis, and then triumphed in the Cold War over Communism, so everything was okay at last.
Right?
Well, no.
What went wrong?
America emerged trumphantly, in the last 25 years, as the World's Greatest Corporate State: It's goal World Domination!
Sound familiar?
Monopoly was recognized as a way of life for the Corporatist -- and much so for the Corporation. According to the neocon Corporatists, World Domination and the New World Order of the United States was our only option. (It is quite amazing how the average American fell in with this insane notion, just as the average burger in 1935 accepted the need for Germany to create a Eurasian Empire, hopefully through economic means, but by force if necessary.) At first, the Corporatists attacked Environmentalists as "eco-terrorists."
And then, came along the much more satisfactory "Pearl Harbor of 9/11," which provided a relatively small group of real terrorists to confront when we invaded Afghanistan. It sent America against the God-sent Kiplingesque Villains of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, Al Quada, and the largely superfluous Saddam Hussein. The childish Corporatists were off on their boy's Crusade against two billion convenient Islamists. With all its advantages for large corporations, the Perpetual Warfare State was almost a reality.
I should say, "IS all but a reality."
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As THE CORPORATION in a sense suggests, the Corporatist paradigm is as follows: The decline of the old colonial monarchies caused have-not capitalist nations (Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, Franco's Spain) to create Fascism/Nazism, which appealed particularly to those nations and peoples who came late to Colonialism. [LIGHT BULB: In some sense, the United States, too?] The have-Capitalist nations defended themselves against the have-nots and their "cartels" (primitive transnational monopolies and conglomerates). World War II resulted.
After World War II, Western Capitalism fought the only other force in its way, the really backward nations of Communist Russia, China, and their mostly Third World allies, which opted for an unworkable economic system. Once Communism was defeated, recognizing that Environmentalism was too attractive to be seen as Evil, the Corporatist State, in its need for an enemy, turned to Islam, Western Civilization's unholy enemy from the Dark Ages, but if the Osama's and the desperate, wretched people of Central Asia were neutralized, the only real enemy left would be . . . Democracy.
In schema, it looks like this: Nation State leads to Monarchy leads to Capitalism leads to Communism vs Fascism; Democracy vs Communism;Corporatism vs Islam;Democracy vs Corporatism=
Corporatism vs all life on the planet.
Corporatism wins! The Universe awaits!
[Halliburton signed contracts with NASA in February 2001 to provide drilling equipment and services on Mars, during the next 25 years.]
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The only question remaining is, "Did Thea-dora Ima Corporation, in his/her boardroom aerie, celebrate 'Gay Pride Day'"?
Probably not. He/she/it remains almost solidly homophobic.
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See THE CORPORATION, if you possibly can!
The time is late. Perhaps too late.
How many warnings do we need?
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Here are reviews of other films on the subject of corporate power:
THE BANK --
http://www.epinions.com/content_75625893508
POWER TRIP --
http://www.epinions.com/content_122446188164
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THE CORPORATION is now on DVD.
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Recommended:
Yes
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macresarf1
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Location: San Francisco, Ca.
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