Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable But Corporations Think It Is

Sunday 22 January 2012
“7 signs the corporatocracy is losing its legitimacy ... and 7 populist tools to help shut it down.”
Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable

You may re­mem­ber that there was a time when apartheid in South Africa seemed un­stop­pable.

Sure, there were in­ter­na­tional boy­cotts of South African busi­nesses, banks, and tourist at­trac­tions. There were heroic ac­tivists in South Africa, who were going to prison and even dying for free­dom. But the con­ven­tional wis­dom re­mained that these were prin­ci­pled ges­tures with lit­tle chance of up­end­ing the en­trenched sys­tem of white rule.

“Be pa­tient,” ac­tivists were told. “Don’t ex­pect too much against pow­er­ful in­ter­ests with a lot of money in­vested in the sta­tus quo.”

With hind­sight, though, apartheid’s fall ap­pears in­evitable: the le­git­i­macy of the sys­tem had al­ready crum­bled. It was harm­ing too many for the ben­e­fit of too few. South Africa’s free­dom fight­ers would not be si­lenced, and the global move­ment sup­port­ing them was like­wise tena­cious and prin­ci­pled.

Most news sources are funded by cor­po­ra­tions and in­vestors. Their goal is to drive peo­ple to ad­ver­tis­ers while push­ing the cor­po­rate agenda. Na­tionofChange is a 501(c)3 or­ga­ni­za­tion funded al­most 100% from its read­ers–you! Our only ac­count­abil­ity is to the pub­lic. Click here to make a gen­er­ous do­na­tion.

In the same way, the le­git­i­macy of rule by giant cor­po­ra­tions and Wall Street banks is crum­bling. This sys­tem of cor­po­rate rule also ben­e­fits few and harms many, af­fect­ing nearly every major issue in pub­lic life. Some ex­am­ples:

•Pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions so­cial­ize their risks and costs, but pri­va­tize prof­its. That means we, the 99 per­cent, pick up the tab for en­vi­ron­men­tal clean ups, for help­ing work­ers who aren’t paid enough to af­ford food or health care, for bailouts when risky spec­u­la­tion goes wrong. Mean­while, prof­its go straight into the pock­ets of top ex­ec­u­tives and oth­ers in the 1 per­cent.
•The fi­nan­cial col­lapse threw mil­lions of Amer­i­cans into poverty. 25 mil­lion are un­em­ployed, un­der-em­ployed, or have given up look­ing for work; four mil­lion have been un­em­ployed for more than 12 months. Poverty in­creased 27 per­cent be­tween 2006 and 2010. And stu­dents who grad­u­ated with stu­dent loans in 2010 had bor­rowed 5 per­cent more than the pre­vi­ous year’s grad­u­at­ing class—owing more than $25,000. Mean­while, those who caused the col­lapse con­tinue the same prac­tices. And the un­will­ing­ness of the 1 per­cent to pay their fair share of taxes means the the pub­lic ser­vices we rely on are fray­ing.
•Sci­en­tists say that we are on the brink of run­away cli­mate change; we only have a few years to make the needed in­vest­ments in clean power and en­ergy ef­fi­ciency. This tran­si­tion could be a huge job cre­ator—on the order of the in­vest­ments made dur­ing World War II, which got us out of the De­pres­sion. But fos­sil fuel in­dus­tries don’t want to see their in­vest­ment in dirty en­ergy un­der­mined by the switch to clean en­ergy and con­ser­va­tion. So far, by pay­ing mil­lions to cli­mate de­niers, lob­by­ists, and po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns, they’ve suc­ceeded in stymieing change.
•Agribusi­ness get tax­payer sub­si­dies for foods that make us sick; for farm­ing prac­tices that de­stroy rivers, soils, the cli­mate, and the oceans; and for trade prac­tices that cause hunger at home and abroad.
•Through ALEC, the pri­vate prison in­dus­try crafts state laws that boost the num­bers be­hind bars, lengthen sen­tences, and pri­va­tize pris­ons.
•Big Pharma jacks up prices; in­sur­ance com­pa­nies raise pre­mi­ums and de­liv­ers fewer ben­e­fits; the bur­den of in­flated care drags down the econ­omy and bank­rupts fam­i­lies. But only a very few politi­cians stand up to the health care in­dus­try's war chests and ad­vo­cate for Cana­dian-style sin­gle-payer health care, which would go a long way to­ward solv­ing the cost prob­lem.
•Cor­po­ra­tions and wealthy ex­ec­u­tives fund an army of lob­by­ists and elec­tion cam­paigns, spread­ing un­truths and self-serv­ing pol­icy pre­scrip­tions.
It’s not that we, the peo­ple, haven’t no­ticed all this.

In a re­cent poll by the Pew Re­search Cen­ter, 77 per­cent of Amer­i­cans said too much power is con­cen­trated in the hands of a few rich peo­ple and large cor­po­ra­tions. In a poll by Time Mag­a­zine, 86 per­cent of Amer­i­cans said Wall Street and its lob­by­ists have too much in­flu­ence in Wash­ing­ton.

And 80 per­cent of Amer­i­cans op­pose Cit­i­zens United, the pro-cor­po­rate Supreme Court rul­ing that turns two years old today. Eighty per­cent—that’s among Re­pub­li­cans, De­moc­rats, and In­de­pen­dents.

Some say cor­po­ra­tions have such a strong grip on politi­cians and big media that it is im­pos­si­ble to chal­lenge them, no mat­ter how many of us there are.

But I be­lieve we can do it. In the past few months, YES! Mag­a­zine has been re­search­ing ways that or­di­nary peo­ple can chal­lenge cor­po­rate power (look for strate­gies in our spring issue, out in Feb­ru­ary). And we found that there are ac­tu­ally a lot of tools at our dis­posal:

•Cor­po­ra­tions were cre­ated by pub­lic law to pro­vide a pub­lic ben­e­fit. If we the peo­ple no longer feel that a cor­po­ra­tion is pro­vid­ing a ben­e­fit—or if we feel that it is op­er­at­ing in a law­less and de­struc­tive man­ner—we can re­voke their char­ter. That’s what Free Speech for Peo­ple has asked the at­tor­ney gen­eral of Delaware to do to Massey En­ergy, which has been one of the worst cul­prits in moun­tain­top re­moval and which has op­er­ated its mines in a law­less and neg­li­gent man­ner, re­sult­ing in 29 deaths at the Upper Big Branch Mine.
•We can in­sist that, in ex­change for use of our pub­lic air­waves, broad­cast­ers pro­vide free air­time to can­di­dates for pub­lic of­fice. If they don’t need to raise mil­lions for media buys, they don’t need to be as be­holden to the 1 per­cent.
•We can get our gov­ern­ments to quit bank­ing with Bank of Amer­ica and Chase, and start our own state banks—14 states, in­clud­ing Cal­i­for­nia and Wash­ing­ton, are con­sid­er­ing such a move. And while we're at it, we can lo­cal­ize food, en­ergy, and other as­pects of our econ­omy so local, in­de­pen­dent busi­nesses and co­op­er­a­tives can thrive.
•We can stand up to spe­cific parts of the cor­po­rate agenda by en­gag­ing in the sort of di­rect ac­tion that halted the KXL Pipeline.
•We can call for a con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment over­turn­ing Cit­i­zens United, cor­po­rate per­son­hood, and the ridicu­lous no­tion that money is the same thing as speech. So far, Los An­ge­les, New York City, and about 50 other towns and cities have done so far.
•We can use mech­a­nisms like clean elec­tions, elec­toral trans­parency, cit­i­zen re­view of leg­is­la­tion, and re­calls to keep cor­po­rate con­trol of our democ­racy in check.
•Fi­nally, the rea­son I am most hope­ful today: We can take a cue from Oc­cupy Wall Street and con­tinue to name the source of po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion—some­thing the po­lit­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment and main­stream media have re­fused to do. We can oc­cupy homes that are slated for fore­clo­sure, as peo­ple have been doing all over the coun­try. We can mic check places like Wal­marts that in­tim­i­date and fire work­ers who want to union­ize. We can set up tents in pub­lic places and in other ways join with the Oc­cupy move­ment to take a stand for a world that works for the 100 per­cent—a world where we all ben­e­fit.
None of these ac­tions will be easy. It will take time—po­ten­tially years of work—to make big change. But just as the le­git­i­macy of apartheid crum­bled well be­fore the in­sti­tu­tions of apartheid went down, the le­git­i­macy of cor­po­rate rule is crum­bling. So I’m con­vinced that, with you and me and all the oth­ers out there cre­at­ing al­ter­na­tives and tak­ing a stand, we will see change.

Sarah van Gelder will de­liver these com­ments at Seat­tle's rally on the sec­ond an­niver­sary of the Cit­i­zens United rul­ing. Sarah is YES! Mag­a­zine's co-founder and ex­ec­u­tive ed­i­tor, and ed­i­tor of the new book: "This Changes Every­thing: Oc­cupy Wall Street and the 99% Move­ment."