Last summer I reviewed Charles
Derber's book People Before Profit, and commended him on teaching us an
important lesson from history -- that when corporations wield too much
power, the consequences are disastrous for all but a tiny elite. Derber
reminds us of the terrible era of the corporate "Robber Barons", at the turn of the 20th century:
[US sovereignty] shifted
from the people toward the large corporations and financiers. The new
system of American government, essentially federalized democracy with a
corporate logo was "a government by Wall Street, of Wall Street and for
Wall Street." As the robber barons integrated the economy from New York
to California, they deformed democracy and unhinged the social
order...The robber barons "overran all the existing institutions which
buttress society...they took possession of the political government,
the school, the press, the church." Business, that is, began to absorb
all of society into itself.
Drawing parallels to the present day, Derber goes on:
In today's
corpocracy...business and government forge an intimate relationship,
both within the nation-state and the larger world order. In the new
system, government still wields sovereign authority, but sovereign
power has actually been transferred to a partnership increasingly
dominated by the business sector.
Adam Cohen's editorial in yesterday's New York Times echoes Derber's warning, describing a book written by Lincoln Steffens in 1904 called The Shame of the Cities, which laments the extent to which corporate interests corrupt governments and the democratic process:
What opened the door to public corruption, Steffens concluded, was the
blurring of the line between business and government. The average
American "deplores our politics and lauds our business," Steffens
wrote, and therefore wants more businessmen involved in government. But
this impulse ignores what business is all about: generating profits. It
is folly, Steffens argued, to expect businessmen to look after any
interest broader than their own...In this age of Enron and Halliburton,
of huge campaign contributions and reckless deregulation, [Steffens']
arguments about the corrosive effect of business on government feel up
to the minute. Every bit as timely is its call to arms. Steffens
believed, as his book title makes clear, that the shame of corruption
lay not with those who engaged in it, who could hardly be expected to
act otherwise, but with the cities, which is to say their citizens, for
not actively stepping in and putting a stop to it.
So while Derber's call goes beyond activism and advocates a change to
corporate charters, campaign finance reform and a 'firewall' between
government and corporations, Steffens' call one century earlier was a
more modest call for greater citizen vigilance -- a simple refusal by
citizens to re-elect or put up with governments that obviously pandered
to corporate interests above citizens'.
These different perspectives speak volumes about the changes to
education and the social fabric of the West in the intervening century.
At the turn of the 20th century, America was still a country proud of
its revolutionary recent past, and a country that, shortly thereafter,
would rally around labour union leaders and suffragettes to demand
equality for all Americans in
the political process, and ultimately oust the corrupted politicians
who stood in the way of these sacred democratic principles. Though it
would take the agony of the Great Depression to finally get there.
A century later, calling for revolution is no longer patriotic -- it is
more likely to get you branded a terrorist under the ironically named
Patriot Act. Although the corrupting influence of large corporations is
every bit as evident today as it must have been a century ago, there
are very few standing up for the rights of citizens and decrying the
evils of concentration of power. In denial of the basic inevitability
of the corporate model -- the concentration of more and more power and
wealth in fewer and fewer hands -- the poor, the unemployed and the
destitute actually feel ashamed, and personally responsible,
for their plight, rather than angry and victimized. Our education
system has now joined the ranks of corporatist handmaidens,
brainwashing our young people to believe that economic growth and
unrestricted trade are inherently good and government and regulation
are inherently bad.
Brad DeLong's dot-com-era paper on the Robber Barons draws the parallels well. And Derber's book clearly describes what is needed to correct the imbalance:
- re-regulation of global money flows and corporations
- redistribution of income and wealth
- resurrecting 'global commons'
- full, equal and informed political participation
- rebuilding the firewall between government and
corporations
- revoking corporate citizenship and rights as
'persons'
- rewriting corporate charters to mandate serving the
common good
- end to hidden corporate subsidies
- limiting US power in the world
What will it take, this time around, to bring about these critical
changes, when today's corporate-owned political parties are moving
America, and to a lesser extent the rest of the West, in exactly the
opposite direction? Will it take more deaths of demonstrators in the
streets, fighting for the rights of 'ordinary citizens', or another
Great Depression brought about by reckless deficit financing, currency
speculation and corporate greed? What will it take for us, finally, to
learn the important lessons of history, and stop repeating our mistakes?
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