Yesterday I posted about David Korten’s book, When Corporations Rule the World. This author is one of the leading thinkers in the area of anti-corporatism, and has published extensively on the subject. Although I don’t agree with much of what he writes, I do like reading him and others to keep abreast of anti-corporate thinking, both current and historic.
When I read much of the anti-corporate literature, I keep coming back to the thought of “who is really responsible for the corporate power” that we see today? Of course, “corporate power,” and its degrees, is a relatively defined term and is the subject for many, many other posts. But for today and the purposes of this discussion, let’s just go with the overarching theme of “corporate power” as it is often referred to in anti-corporate literature.
Throughout When Corporations Rule the World, David “points the finger” of the genesis of corporate power at the corporations themselves. I suppose that would seem logical, but to me it seems logical only in a superficial way. For example, on page 64 of my edition, David talks about how corporate power in America coalesced after the Civil War.
The huge profits pouring in from military procurement contracts allowed industrial interests to take advantage of the disorder and rampant political corruption to virtually buy legislation that gave them massive grants of money and land to expand the Western railway system. The greater its profits, the tighter the emergent industrial class was able to solidify its hold on government to obtain further benefits.
Let’s look more deeply at the logic. (Perhaps you already realize where I’m going with this.)
I didn’t check David’s reference for this statement, but, for the sake of this discussion, let’s just assume that he is reporting accurately. I’ll repeat the question which is the title of this post.
Who is Really Responsible for Corporate Power?
In the quoted example David gave, how about placing at least some of the blame on the folks in government? Talk about personal responsibility.
One of the themes of anti-corporate thinkers is that they maintain that the corporate form, and the legal protections it affords, abdicates the personal responsibility of the people that run the corporation. From my readings of anti-corporate thinkers and writers, this neglect of personal responsibility appears to be anathema and is one of their “pet peeves.” So, then, in anti-corporate thinking, why isn’t the idea of personal responsibility applied back against government? In my readings of anti-corporate literature, I rarely see the idea of lack of personal responsibility thrown back into the face of politicians.
Corruption is a two-way street. The corruption to which David alludes in the quote above could not have taken place had the government officials had a sufficient level of personal responsibility and integrity.
So, again, who is really responsible for corporate power?
It takes two to tango.
