Dutch lady

Following Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super Size Me!, the two docudrama hits of last season, comes The Corporation, bearing accolades from not only the Sundance Film Festival, but Premiere magazine, the LA, and New York Times. Directed by Mark Achbar (previous co-director ofManufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media) and Jennifer Abbot, and based on the book by Joel Bakan — The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power and Profit — this radical Canadian documentary features Left-notables such as Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Naomi Klein, as well as thirty-odd lesser-known corporate experts: “CEOs, whistle blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns, and pundits,” as the film’s promotional blurb proudly declares. As both a critical analysis and a dramatic indictment of the “dominant institution of our era,” The Corporation probes far deeper than Michael Moore’s and Morgan Spurlock’s work. The film merits serious attention and deserves a truly super-sized audience (one that, unfortunately, it seems unlikely to get in the US).

Beginning with a fast-paced overview of the recent explosion of corporate crime scandals, the movie proceeds to satirize the dominant media’s diagnosis of this scandal “crisis” as the product of a few — OK, a few dozen — “bad apples” stinking up otherwise healthy Corporate America. The film breaks down this “bad apple” metaphor, demonstrating again and again how the “rotting” of corporate “apples” is little but the open flowering of the corruption present in these institutions’ very corporate seeds. 3. In its early sequences, The Corporation examines how corporations acquired the status of legal “persons” following the US Civil War, ironically via the Constitutional amendments aimed at guaranteeing equal citizenship to newly freed African Americans. Wittily, the film then charts the corporate “person’s” behavior using an authentic psychiatric checklist from World Health Organization: “Callous unconcern for the feelings of other?”-Check. “Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships?” — Check. “Reckless regard for the safety of others?” — Check. “Deceitfulness; repeated lying and conniving of others for profit?” — Check. “Incapacity to experience guilt?” — Check. “Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior?” — Check. Check. Check. Check. As the evidence mounts, the damning diagnosis emerges: the corporation, examined as a “person,” is a “psychopath.” 4. “Unaccountable, private tyrannies” is how Noam Chomsky describes them — rather less playfully — likening the institution to slavery, which deformed slave-owners — whatever their benevolent intentions or particular personalities — to behave brutally and inhumanely. From its early moments The Corporation thus moves beyond superficial demonization-or fetishization — of “bad” corporations — Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Weapons, Big Fast Food — towards a critical, historical and institutional analysis of corporations’ very structure and nature. In this sense the film goes further than either Fahrenheit 9/11 (anti-Bush, anti-Big Oil and anti-Big Weapons) or SuperSize Me! (anti-Big Fast Food). 5. But not only does the film analyze the origins, history, behavior patterns, and social and environmental effects of corporations; it is also manages to be an entertaining movie, one that is creatively organized and well-produced.

Though it relies heavily on individual interviews, for instance, The Corporation seldom drags, periodically picking up the pace with clever editing and help from a strong beat-driven soundtrack. 6. Conceptually, The Corporation focuses its critique closely on the idea of “externalities,” that is, the external — often undesirable — effects of business transactions between two parties (often two corporations) upon an un-consulted third party (often the surrounding community). Indeed, the film presents a devastating barrage of such “unintended” corporate attacks on the environment, public health, and public access to information, while frequently demonstrating how even those who are planning and ordering these attacks are themselves “personally” opposed to them; i.e. their actions as slaves to the corporate bottom line contradict their own beliefs as private citizens.

Yet in keeping with its “external” approach, The Corporation tends to focus more on the “unaccountability” of corporations and less on their intrinsic “tyranny” as capitalist enterprises, more on the “external” damage done by these institutions than on the internal exploitation and repression which they carry out within their factory walls and office hallways, especially with respect to their labor forces. 7. In fact, while this film boasts a diversity of points-of-view, the perspective of one major group of “corporate insiders” is notably absent: that of the workers whose labor makes these corporations run. 8. For the most part, the only corporate “insiders” the film interviews are CEOs and managers, with the exception of two news-reporter “whistle-blowers” from Fox 13 News in Florida (whose story, I must note, dramatically demonstrates the willingness of the corporate media producers to censor the “news” to fit its corporate sponsors’ interests). But no factory workers, no union organizers, no cubicled white-collar employees appear, at least not for long. 9. To be fair, “harm to employees” is one of the “file categories” examined by the film-makers during their mock psychiatric exam of the corporation as a “person.” Yet there is little to no attention paid to the self-activity of the workers within and against these corporations, or to the role that the state plays in disabling this self-activity. In fact, the only example of labor activism with which we are confronted is that of the American National Labor Council’s external expose of sweatshop and child-labor in Kathy Lee Gifford’s Latin American garment factories.

Though the exploitation of child-labor in third world countries here stands exposed, the workers remain generally passive victims, apparently yet another “externality” for the corporation. However, their status as “internalities” with the potential power to transform — or even to shut down or to take over — the corporation from within is virtually ignored. 10. Related to “externality,” the other central concept of the film’s anti-corporate critique is privatization, the corporate take-over of previously public resources. From the human genome, to the inside of children’s imaginations, to Iraqi oil, to the public water-supply, to the song “Happy Birthday,” the directors bring us a slew shocking and outrageous examples of corporations crossing the line — whether “the line” be ethical, communal, moral, religious, or legal — to take control and to profit off of what instinct or tradition tells us should be free for all. Clearly nothing is sacred, no line impermeable, nothing off-limits to these out-of-control creatures. 11. In addition to these lines of analysis, impressively, Howard Zinn and Chomsky use their camera time to foreground corporations’ historical complicity in the rise of fascism. For instance, they point out how in Europe during the 1930s, in the US during the Roosevelt reign, as well as throughout the 20th century in Latin America, major corporations have routinely supported right-wing coups and dictatorships.

As Chomsky notes, it makes sense: fascists have after all been great defenders of corporate interests, repressing labor unions, destroying left-wing political parties, and issuing large and profitable military contracts. Mussolini as well as Adolf Hitler benefited greatly from corporate aide, the film shows, with IBM in particular coming in for shame for supplying and maintaining the German punch-card machines that kept track of people in the Nazi concentration and death camps, all the way through the early 1940s. 12. The extensive corporate complicity in the rise of fascism is a fact routinely excluded from US history textbooks and mainstream political discourse (a fact which alone should demand that all high school and college students in the US today see this movie). In fact even Edwin Black — author of IBM and the Holocaust and interviewed in the film — tends to understate the broader trend in the course of highlighting the exceptional evil of IBM. Like many writers, Black evades the underlying — and often anti-communist and anti-union — reasons that corporations cooperated with and supported the Nazis early on.

Thus, Black’s book does not so much as mention the labor unionists, socialists, and communists who were among the first to be rounded up and killed by Hitler’s SS. Thankfully, with the help of the graying professors of US radicalism, however, The Corporation puts the ever-more-timely link between big business and the black-shirts back on the table. 13. Lest we become hopeless in the face of seemingly endless corporate tyranny, The Corporation closes with an examination of some of the local victories that mass movements in the third world — as well as consumer and community movements in the US — have won against modern-day corporate encroachments. The film pays special attention to the successful Bolivian mass movement against water privatization, as well as to an anti-corporate town meeting in Arcata, CA, and the internal corporate reform efforts of CEO Ray Anderson. 14. In the end though, what The Corporation left me with was the stark contrast between the movement in Bolivia, which mobilized what amounted to a general strike to face down murderous police state violence (and win!) and the limited, rather unfocused victories of the Arcatans, who manage to succeed in banning fast-food chains from their city limits, not to mention the rather facile optimism and self-righteousness of American corporate reformer Ray Anderson, who hopes to clean up his carpet-corporation from within, while still maintaining its hefty profit margins.

Premiere magazine no doubt has not been alone in deeming Anderson the “bona fide hero” of the movie, as a CEO who has been born-again as an environmentalist and “still has his job.” But really, although The Corporation does let Anderson give his own account of his ecological epiphany, showing him as he lectures his — seemingly apathetic — fellow businessmen on the need to move towards ecological business balance, it is the scenes from the streets of Bolivia — where tens of thousands take to the streets, and where dozens are shot down for simply asserting their human right to public water — that contain the real heroes of this film. “I see dark days ahead for my children,” Bolivian activist Oscar Olivera” tells the camera, “but I have faith in the people . . . El pueblo unido, jamas hara vencido.” The people united, will never be defeated. Speaking softly in Spanish to the camera, Olivera’s comments are hopeful, yet not naïve or self-serving. Indeed, his words remind me of Italian Marxist and communist organizer Antonio Gramsci, who, from within his fascist prison-cell in the 1930s, called for “pessimism of the intellect,” but “optimism of the will.” 15. Still, while this remarkable film depicts plenty of local resistance — from India to Canada, New York to California — one would have liked to see The Corporation (and one would still like to see its viewers) move beyond its extensive discussion of the way that corporations routinely violate the law — moral as well as juridical — to a consideration of political strategy.

Likewise, I believe that we need to move beyond Chomsky’s assertion that corporations are simply “legal institutions,” and hence theoretically capable of being restrained or even abolished by that same law, to a political discussion of the extent to which corporations have effectively taken over the law and the lawmakers as well. Major corporations after all, practically speaking, via campaign contributions, incessant lobbying efforts, and corporate control of media discourse itself, have to a remarkable degree co-opted the leadership of both major US parties, the White House, most of the Congress, and most regulatory agencies. 16. On this note, perhaps the most conspicuous absence in The Corporation’s long line of experts is corporate-raider Ralph Nader, whose biographical trajectory from long-time regulatory and reform advocate to anti-corporate political campaigner could have added a recognizably and explicitly political edge to this otherwise radical work.

Without necessarily implying an endorsement of Nader’s campaign, his presence could have introduced the idea that perhaps not only local direct action and agitation, but also independent, coordinated, national political action is necessary to take down these monstrous multinationals. That instead of Nader-Camejo, the The Corporation’s credited and its website gesture toMoveon.org as their sole “democracy in action” link suggests a limited left-political vision indeed. 17. But I don’t want to understate the radical edges of this movie. More so than Fahrenheit 9/11, The Corporation raises fundamental problems that cannot be answered by supporting corporate-funded candidates or parties (no matter what the film directors or screen credits may tell you), but only by building forms of independent, anti-corporate, political action on a growing, increasingly mass scale. As the treatment of dissenters inside as well as outside the DNC last summer (not to mention the RNC) dramatized, such independent action is something that the Democratic establishment (not to mention the Republicans) seek to control and to co-opt, not create. 18. To me, The Corporation suggests the political impotence of establishment solutions to the current crisis or corporate domination. And while the film doesn’t come to any clear conclusions about what is to be done, it does clearly show us how dire is the international need for a political praxis that goes beyond beating the Bush to unearthing, root and branch, the overgrown corporate forest that has produced him (as well as his rather wooden-looking soon-to-be-doomed opponent, John Kerry).

This film has a deep concern over how corporations use their power and influence. I think one of the goals of this film is to get people to question whether we should continue with the way things are done. Can we move in a different direction so businesses are more accountable to society?

While any documentary will show some signs of bias, I thought this was more
or less even in its execution. If there was a point that an interviewer made such as on sweatshops, they had a section with a business man who would try to defend that position. I found some of the opposing arguments weak, but I didn’t feel that the people behind the film sought out easy targets. It’s hard for anyone to argue in favor of sweatshops that employ children.

Here are some of the central themes:
* A history of corporations through the modern incantation. It focused on how corporations are typically only interested in money even at the expense of society. * Marketing and manipulation that corporations use. There was a section on marketers targeting children through their study of nagging and another on inventing a virtue of being a consumer. If you liked this section, you will probably enjoy Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” film (also here at archive.org). * Expansion of corporations into new areas including water privatization. This section also included patenting genes in humans. Unlike other areas, I don’t think they covered this area in depth enough. There are a lot of issues involving patents, trademarks, and copyrights that weren’t exposed. * Collusion between governments and corporations.

One of the URLs mentioned in the film is multinational monitor which tracks corporate fines: http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/ Here are a few of the books mentioned: “The Ecology of Commerce” by Paul Hawken, “Profits with Principles” by Ira Jackson (appears in the film), “Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America” by Marc Berry (appears in the film), and “IBM and the Holocaust” by Edwin Black (appears in the film).

A poignant quote for me was when Richard Grossman talked about the origins of corporations: “In both law and the culture, the corporation was considered a subordinate entity that was a gift from the people in order to serve the public good.” Can you believe this all started with such humble and honest beginnings? Everyone should watch this because we’re all affected. Unless you follow this topic closely, you’re bound to learn something new. Reviewer: g rated – – A

150 years ago, the business corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. Today, it is all-pervasive. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today’s dominant institution. This documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts, and possible futures of the modern business corporation. Initially given a narrow legal mandate, what has allowed today’s corporation to achieve such extraordinary power and influence over our lives? We begin our inquiry as scandals threaten to trigger a wide debate about the lack of public control over big corporations. Share this

Narrator: Through the voices of CEOs, whistle blowers, brokers, gurus and spies, insiders and outsiders, we present the corporation as a paradox, an institution that creates great wealth, but causes enormous, and often hidden harms. Share this

Ira Jackson: The eagle, soaring, clear-eyed, competitive, prepared to strike, but not a vulture. Noble, visionary, majestic, that people can believe in and be inspired by, that creates such a lift that it soars. I can see that being a good logo for the principled company. Okay, guys, enough bullshit. Share this

Robert Keyes: The word corporate gets attached in almost, you know, in a pejorative sense to and gets married with the word “a-gen-da.” And one hears a lot about the corporate a-gen-da as though it is evil, as though it is an agenda, which is trying to take over the world. Personally, I don’t use the word “corporation.” I use the word “business.” I will use the word… use the word “company.” I will use the words “business community” because I think that is a much fairer representation than zeroing in on just this word “corporation.” Share this

Ray Anderson: The modern corporation has grown out of the industrial age. The industrial age began in 1712 when an Englishman named Thomas Newcomen invented a steam driven pump to pump water out of the English coal mine, so the English coal miners could get more coal to mine, rather than hauling buckets of water out of the mine. It was all about productivity, more coal per man-hour. That was the dawn of the industrial age. And then it became more steel per man-hour, more textiles per man-hour, more automobiles per man-hour, and today, it’s more chips per man-hour, more gizmos per man-hour. The system is basically the same, producing more sophisticated products today. Share this

Noam Chomsky: The dominant role of corporations in our lives is essentially a product of roughly the past century. Corporations were originally associations of people who were chartered by a state to perform some particular function. Like a group of people want to build a bridge over the Charles River, or something like that. Mary Zepernick: There were very few chartered corporations in early United States history. And the ones that existed had clear stipulations in their state issued charters, how long they could operate, the amount of capitalisation, what they made or did or maintained, a turnpike or whatever was in their charter and they didn’t do anything else. They didn’t own or couldn’t own another corporation. Their shareholders were liable. And so on. Richard Grossman: In both law and the culture, the corporation was considered a subordinate entity that was a gift from the people in order to serve the public good. So you have that history, and we shouldn’t be misled by it, it’s not as if these were the halcyon days, when all corporations served the public trust, but there’s a lot to learn from that.

Narrator: Having acquired the legal rights and protections of a person, the question arises – what kind of person is the corporation? Noam Chomsky: Corporations were given the rights of immortal persons. But then special kinds of persons, persons who had no moral conscience. These are a special kind of persons, which are designed by law, to be concerned only for their stockholders. And not, say, what are sometimes called their stakeholders, like the community or the work force or whatever. Robert Monks: The great problem of having corporate citizens is that they aren’t like the rest of us. As Baron Thurlow in England is supposed to have said, “They have no soul to save, and they have no body to incarcerate.” Michael Moore: I believe the mistake that a lot of people make when they think about corporations, is they think you know, corporations are like us. They think they have feelings, they have politics, they have belief systems, they really only have one thing, the bottom line – how to make as much money as
they can in any given quarter. That’s it. Share this

Narrator: To determine the kind of personality that drives the corporation to behave like an externalising machine, we can analyse it like a psychiatrist would a patient. We can even formulate a diagnosis, on the basis of typical case histories of harm it has inflicted on others selected from a universe of corporate activity. Share this

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart: People accuse us of only paying attention to the economic leg, because they think that’s what a business person’s mindset is, it’s just money. And it’s not so, because we, as business people, know that we need to certainly address the environment, but also we need to be seen as constructive members of society. Michael Moore: There are companies that do good for the communities. They produce services and goods that are of value to all of us, that make our lives better, and that’s a good thing. The problem comes in the profit motivation here, because for these people, there’s no such thing as enough. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart: And I always counterpoint out, there’s no organisation on this planet that can neglect its economic foundation. Even someone living under a banyan tree is dependent on support from someone. Economic leg has to be addressed by everyone. It’s not just a business issue. Narrator: But, unlike someone under a banyan tree, all publicly traded corporations have been structured, through a series of legal decisions, to have a peculiar and disturbing characteristic.

They are required, by law, to place the financial interests of their owners above competing interests. In fact, the corporation is legally bound to put its bottom line ahead of everything else, even the public good. Noam Chomsky: That’s not a law of nature, that’s a very specific decision. In fact, a judicial decision. So they’re concerned only for the short-term profit of their stockholders who are very highly concentrated. Robert Monks: To whom do these companies owe loyalty? What does loyalty mean? Well, it turns out that that was a rather naïve concept anyways as corporations are always owed obligation to themselves to get large and to get profitable. In doing this, it tends to be more profitable to the extent that it can make other people pay the bills for its impact on society. There’s a terrible word that economists use for this called ‘externalities’. Milton Friedman: An externality is the effect of a transaction between two individuals on a third party who has not consented to, or played any role in the carrying out of that transaction. And there are real problems in that area.

There’s no doubt about it. Ray Anderson: Running a business is a tough proposition. There are costs to be minimised a every turn, and at some point the corporation says, you know, let somebody else deal with that. Let’s let somebody else supply the military power to the Middle East to protect the oil at its source. Let’s let somebody else build the roads that we can drive these automobiles on. Let’s let somebody else have these problems. And that is where externalities come from, that notion of let somebody else deal with that. I got all I can handle myself. Robert Monks: A corporation is an externalising machine in the same way that a shark is a killing machine. Each one is designed in a very efficient way, to accomplish particular objectives. In the achievement of those objectives there isn’t any question of malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed. Ray Anderson: The pressure is on the corporation to deliver results now and to externalise any cost that this unwary or uncaring public will allow it to externalise. Share this

Naomi Klein: Well, the whole idea of the Export Processing Zone is that it will be the first step towards this wonderful new development, through the investment that’s attracted to these countries there will be a trickle-down effect into the communities. But because so many countries are now in the game of creating these free-trade enclaves they have to keep providing more and more incentives for companies to come to their little denationalised pocket. And the tax holidays get longer. So the workers rarely make enough money to buy three meals a day, let alone feed their local economy. Share this

Charles Kernaghan: To make this stuff as concrete as possible, we purchase all of the products from the factories that we’re talking about. This shirt sells for $14.99, and the women who made this shirt got paid $0.03. Liz Claiborne jackets, made in El Salvador. The jackets cost $178 dollars, and the workers were paid $0.74 for every jacket they made. Alpine car stereos, $0.31 an hour. It’s not just sneakers. It’s not just apparel. It’s everything. Michael Walker: Let’s look at it from a different point of view. Let’s look at from the point of view of the people of Bangladesh who are starving to death. The people in China who are starving to death, and the only thing that they have to offer to anybody that is worth anything is their low cost labour. And, in effect, what they’re saying to the world is they have this big flag that says, ‘Come over and hire us.

We will work for $0.10 an hour. Because $0.10 an hour will buy us the rice that we need not to starve. And come and rescue us from our circumstance.’ And so when Nike comes in they are regarded by everybody in the community as an enormous godsend. Charles Kernaghan: One day in the Dominican Republic we found a big pile of Nike’s internal pricing documents. Nike assigns a timeframe to each operation. They don’t talk about minutes. They break the timeframe into ten thousandths of a second. You get to the bottom of all 22 operations; they give the workers 6.6 minutes to make the shirt. It’s $0.70 an hour in the Dominican Republic. 6.6 minutes equals $0.08. These are Nike’s documents. That means the wages come to three tenths of one percent of the retail price. This is the reality. It’s the science of exploitation. Share this

Michael Walker: What happens in the areas where the corporations go in and are successful? They soon find that they cannot do anymore in that country because the wages are too high now. And what’s that another way of saying, well, the people are no longer desperate. So, okay, we’ve used up all the desperate people there, they’re all plump and healthy and wealthy. Let’s move on to the next desperate lot and employ them and raise their level up. Share this

Samuel Epstein M.D.: Something happened in 1940, which marked the beginning of a new era. The era of the ability to synthesise and create, on an unlimited scale, new chemicals that had never existed before in the world. So, suddenly it became possible to produce any new synthetic chemical, the like of which had never existed before in the world, for any purpose and at virtually no cost. For instance, if you wanted to go to a chemist and say, ‘Look, I want to have chemical, say a pesticide that will persist throughout the food chain and I don’t want to have to renew it very, very often, I’d like it to be relatively non-destructible’, and then he’d put 2 benzene molecules on the blackboard and add a chlorine here, and a chlorine there, that was DDT! As the petrochemical era grew and grew, warning signs emerged that some of these chemicals could pose hazards. The data initially were trivial, anecdotal, but gradually, a body of data started accumulating to the extent that we now know that the synthetic chemicals, which have permeated our workplace, our consumer products, our air, our water, produced cancer, and also birth defects and some other toxic effects. Furthermore, industry has known about this, at least most industries have known about this, and have attempted to trivialise these risks. If I take a gun and shoot you, that’s criminal. If I expose you to some chemicals, which knowingly are going to kill you, what difference is there? The difference is that it takes longer to kill you. We are now in the midst of a major cancer epidemic and I have no doubt and I have documented the basis for this, that industry is largely responsible for this overwhelming epidemic of cancer, in which 1 in every two men get cancer in their lifetimes, and 1 in every 3 women get cancer in their lifetimes. Share this

Samuel Epstein M.D.: Towards the end of 1989, a great box of documents arrived at my office, without any indication where they came from. And I opened them, and found in it a complete set of Monsanto files, particularly dealing with toxicological testing of cows that’d been given RBGH. And at that time Monsanto was saying, ‘There’s no evidence whatsoever of any adverse effects. We don’t use antibiotics’. And this clearly showed that they had lied through their teeth. The files described areas of chronic inflammation in the heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen, also reproductive effects, also a whole series of other problems. Jeremy Rifkin: It is a silly product. The industrial world is awash in milk. We’re overproducing milk. We actually have governments around the world who pay farmers not to produce milk. So the first product Monsanto comes up with is a product that produces more of what we don’t need. Steve Wilson: But the problem was that use of the artificial hormone caused all kinds of problems for the cows. It caused something called mastitis, which is a very painful infection of the udders.

When you milk the cow, if the cow has bad mastitis, some of the, and I don’t know how to say this in a, you know, I hope people aren’t watching at dinnertime but the pus from the infection of the udders ends up in the milk… And the somatic cell count, they call it, the bacteria count, inside your milk goes up. Jane Akre: There’s a cost to the cows. The cows get sicker when they’re infected with RBGH. They’re injected with antibiotics. We know that people are consuming antibiotics through their food and we that that’s contributing to antibiotic resistant bacteria and diseases. And we know we’re at a crisis when somebody can go into a hospital and get a staff infection and it can’t be cured and they die. That’s a crisis. Jeremy Rifkin: Bad for the cow. Bad for the farmer. Bad potentially for the consumer. The jury is out; we see a lot of conflicting evidence about potential health risk. And, of course, as a consumer, my belief is why should I take any risk? Share this

Narrator: Factory farm cows have not been the only victims of Monsanto products. Large areas of Vietnam were deforested by the US military using Monsanto’s Agent Orange. The toxic herbicide reportedly caused over 50,00 birth defects and hundreds of thousands of cancers in Vietnamese civilians and soldiers, and in former American troops serving in South-East Asia. Unlike the Vietnamese victims, US Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange were able to sue Monsanto for causing their illnesses. Monsanto settled out of court, paying $80 million in damages. But it never admitted guilt. Share this

Robert Monks: In our search for wealth and prosperity, we created something that’s gonna destroy us. Share this
Carlton Brown: The traders who are involved in the market are not guys whose moral fibre when it comes to environmental conditions are going to be rattled at all. They seeing dollars and they’re making money. Brokers don’t say away from copper because it violates their religious beliefs, or your environmental policies. There are times when you think about it but it’s fleeting. It really is a fleeting moment. It’s like well, a town is being polluted down there in Peru but, hey, this guy needs to buy some copper. I’m getting paid a commission too. The information that we receive does not include anything about the environmental conditions because until the environmental conditions become a commodity themselves or are being traded then, obviously, we will not have anything to do with that. It doesn’t come into our psyche at all. It’s so far away and you hardly hear anything about it. I mean, keep in mind there things going on right in our backyards. We trade live hogs. I mean, there are so many pigs in the state of Carolina and they’re polluting the rivers but how often do you find out about that? Share this

Robert Monks: Again and again we have the problem that whether you obey the law or not is a matter of whether it’s cost effective. If the chance of getting caught and the penalties are less than it costs to comply, people think of it as just a business decision. Share this

Ray Anderson: Drawing the metaphor of the early attempts to fly. The man going off of a very high cliff in his airplane, with the wings flapping, and the guys flapping the wings and the wind is in his face, and this poor fool thinks he’s flying, but, in fact, he’s in free fall, and he just doesn’t know it yet because the ground is so far away, but, of course, the craft is doomed to crash. That’s the way our civilization is, the very high cliff represents the virtually unlimited resources we seem to have when we began this journey. The craft isn’t flying because it’s not built according to the laws of aerodynamics and it’s subject to the law of gravity. Our civilization is not flying because it’s not built according to the laws of aerodynamics for civilizations that would fly. And, of course, the ground is still a long way away, but some people have seen that ground rushing up sooner than the rest of us have. The visionaries have seen it and have told us it’s coming. There’s not a single scientific, peer-reviewed paper published in the last 25 years that would contradict this scenario: every living system of earth is in decline, every life support system of earth is in decline, and these together constitute the biosphere, the biosphere that supports and nurtures all of life, and not just our life but perhaps 30 million other species that share this planet with us.

The typical company of the 20th century: extractive, wasteful, abusive, linear in all of its processes, taking from the earth, making, wasting, sending its products back to the biosphere, waste to a landfill. I, myself, was amazed to learn just how much stuff the earth has to produce through our extraction process to produce a dollar of revenue for our company. When I learned, I was flabbergasted. We are leaving a terrible legacy of poison and diminishment of the environment for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, generations not yet born. Some people have called that intergeneration tyranny, a form of taxation without representation, levied by us on generations yet to be. It’s the wrong thing to do. Share this

Dr Robert Hare: One of the questions that comes up periodically is to what extent could a corporation be considered to be psychopathic. And if we look at a corporation as a legal person, that it may not be that difficult to actually draw the transition between psychopathy in the individual to psychopathy in the corporation. We could go through the characteristics that define this disorder, one by one, to how they might apply to corporations. They would have all the characteristics, and, in fact, in many respects, the corporation of that sort is the proto-typical of a psychopath. Narrator: If the dominant institution of our time has been created in the image of a psychopath, who bears the moral responsibility for it’s actions? Milton Friedman: Can a building have moral opinions? Can a building have social responsibility? If a building can’t have social responsibility, what does it mean to say that a corporation can? A corporation is simply an artificial legal structure. But the people who are engaged in it, whether the stockholders, whether the executives in it, whether the employees, they all have moral responsibilities. Share this

Noam Chomsky: It’s a fair assumption that every human being, real human beings, flesh and blood ones, not corporations, but every flesh and blood human being is a moral person. You know, we’ve got the same genes, we’re more or less the same, but our nature, the nature of humans, allows all kinds of behaviour. I mean, every one of us under some circumstances could be a gas chamber attendant and a saint. Sam Gibara: No job, in my experience with Goodyear, has been as frustrating as the CEO job. Because even though the perception is that you have absolute power to do whatever you want, the reality is you don’t have that power, and sometimes, if you had really a free hand, if you really did what you wanted to do that suits you personal thoughts and you’re personal priorities, you’d act differently. But as a CEO you cannot do that. Layoffs have become so widespread that people tend to believe that CEOs make these decisions without any consideration to the human implications of their decisions. It is never a decision that any CEO makes lightly. It is a tough decision. But it is the consequence of modern capitalism. Noam Chomsky: When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the insitution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous, but the individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you could imagine.

Benevolent, friendly, nice to their children, even nice to their slaves, caring about other people. I mean, as individuals they may be anything. In their institutional role they’re monsters because the institution is monstrous. The same is true here. So an individual CEO, let’s say, may really care about the environment and, in fact, since they have such extraordinary resources, they can even devote some of their resources to that without violating their responsibility to be totally inhuman. Narrator: Which is thy, as the Moody-Stuarts serve tea to protestors, Shell Nigeria can flare unrivalled amounts of gas, making it one of the world’s single worst sources of pollution. And all the professed concerns about the environment do not spare Ken Saro Wiwa and 8 other activists from being hanged for opposing Shell’s environmental practices in the Niger Delta. Share this

Vandana Shiva: A corporation is not a person. It doesn’t think. People in it think and for them it is legitimate to create terminator technology, so that farmers are not able to save their seeds. Seeds that will destroy themselves through a suicide gene. Seeds that are designed to only produce crop in one season. You really need to have a brutal mind. It’s a war against evolution to even think in those terms. But quite clearly profifs are so much higher in their minds. Share this

Marc Barry: We’re predators. It about competition, it’s about market share, it’s about being aggressive, it’s about shareholder value. What is your stock at today? If you’re a CEO, do you think your shareholders really care whether you’re Billy Buttercup or not? Do you think that they really would prefer you to be a nice guy? Over having money in their pocket? I don’t think so. I think people want money. That’s the bottom line. Michael Moore: The fact that most of these companies white rich men, means that they are out of touch with what the majority of the world is. Because the majority of this planet are not a bunch of rich white guys. They are people of other colours, they are the majority. Women are the majority, the poor, and working poor make up the majority of this planet. So the decisions they make come from not the reality that exists throughout the world. Share this

Ray Anderson: For 21 years I never gave a thought to what we were taking from the Earth or doing to the Earth in the making of our products. And then in the summer of 1994 we began to hear questions from our customers we had never heard before: ‘What’s your Company doing for the Environment?’ And we didn’t have answers. The real answer was not very much. And it really disturbed many of our people, not me so much as them, and a group in our research department decided to convene a taskforce and bring people from our businesses around the world to come together to assess our company’s worldwide environment position to begin to frame answers for those customers. They asked me if I would come and speak to that group and give them a kick-off speech and launch this new task force with an environmental vision, and I didn’t have an environmental position, and I did not want to make that speech. And sort of the propitious moment, this book landed on my desk. It was Paul Hawkins’ book, The Ecology of Commerce and I began to read The Ecology of Commerce, really desperate for inspiration, and very quickly into that book I found the phrase, “The Death of Birth”.

It was E.O. Wilson’s expression for species extinction, “The Death of Birth,” and it was a point of a spear into my chest, and I read on, and the spear went deeper, and it became an epiphanal experience, a total change of mindset for myself and a change of paradigm. Can any product be made sustainably? Well, not any and every product. Can you make landmines sustainably? Well, I don’t think so. There’s a more fundamental question than that about landmines. Some products ought not to be made at all. Unless we can make carpets sustainably, you know, perhaps we don’t have a place in a sustainable world, but neither does anybody else, making products unsustainably. One day early in this journey it dawned on me that the way I’d been running Interface is the way of the plunderer; plundering something that’s not mine, something that belongs to every creature on earth. And I said to myself, “my goodness, the day must come when this is illegal, when plundering is not allowed. It must come”. So, I said to myself, “my goodness, some day people like me will end up in jail”. Share this

Carlton Brown: I’ve got to be honest with you. When the September 11th situation happened, and I must say, and I wanna say this because I don’t want to take it lightly. It’s not a light situation. It was a devastating act. It was really a bad thing. It was one of the worst things I’ve seen in my lifetime, you know. But, I will tell you and every trade will tell you, who was not in that building and who was buying gold and who owned gold and silver, that when it happened, the first thing you thought about was, “well, how much is gold up?” The first thing that came to mind was, “my God, gold must be exploding”. Fortunately, for us, all our clients were in gold. So when it went up they all doubled their money. Everybody doubled their money. It was a blessing in disguise. Devastating, crushing, heart shattering, but on the financial sense, for my clients that were in the market, they all made money. Now, I wasn’t looking for this type of help, but it happened. When the USA bombed Iraq back in 1991 the price of oil went from $13 to £40 a barrel, for cying out loud! Now, we couldn’t wait for the bombs to start raining down on Saddam Hussein. We were all excited. We wanted Saddam to really create problems. “Do whatever you have to do, set fire to some more oil wells, because the price is going to go higher.” Every broker was chanting that. There was not a broker that I know of that wasn’t excited about that. This was a disaster. This was something that was, you know, catastrophe happening. Bombing. Wars. In devastation there is opportunity. Share this

Narrator: The pursuit of property is an old story but there was a time when many things were regarded either as too sacred or too essential for the public good to be considered business opportunities. They were protected by tradition and public regulation. Share this

Elaine Bernard: With deregulation, privatisation, free trade, what we’re seeing is yet another enclosure and, if you like, private taking of the commons. One of the things I find very interesting in our current debates is this concept of who creates wealth. That wealth is only created when it’s owned privately. What would you call clean water, fresh air, a safe environment? Are they not a form of wealth? And why does it only become wealth when some entity puts a fence around it and declares it private property? Well, you know, that’s not wealth creation. That’s wealth usurpation. Share this

Noam Chomsky: Privatisation does not mean you take a public institution and give it to some nice person. It means you take a public institution and give it to an unaccountable tyranny. Public institutions have many side benefits. For one thing they may purposely run at a loss. They’re not out for profit. They may purposely run at a loss because of the side benefits. So, for example if a public steel industry runs at a loss it’s providing cheap steel to other industries. Maybe that’s a good thing. Public institutions can have a counter cyclic property. So that means that they can maintain employment in periods of recession, which increases demand, which helps you to get out of recession. Private companies can’t do that in a recession. Throw out the work force because that’s the way you make money. Maude Barlow: There are those who intend that one day everything will be owned by somebody and we’re not just talking goods here. We’re talking human rights, human services, essential services for life. Education, public health, social assistance, pensions, housing. We’re also talking about the survival of the planet. The areas that we believe must be maintained in the commons or under common control or we will collectively die.

Water and air. Michael Walker: Even in the case of air there’s been some progress and that is the trading of pollution permits. And here the idea is to say, “Look, we can’t avoid the dumping of carbon dioxide. We can’t avoid the dumping of sulphur oxides, at least at the moment afford to stop it so we’re dumping a certain amount of stuff into the environment. So we’re going to say with the current tonnage of sulphur oxides, for example, we will say that is the limit. And we’ll create permits for that amount and give them to the people who’ve been doing the polluting and now we will permit them to be traded”. And so now there’s a price attached to polluting the environment. Now, wouldn’t it be marvellous if we have one of the prices for everything? Interviewer: It sounds like you’re advocating private ownership of every square inch of the planet. Every cubic foot of air, water. Michael Walker: Absolutely. It sounds outlandish to say we want to have the whole universe, the whole of the earth owned. That doesn’t mean I want to have Joe Bloggs owning this square foot. But it means the interests that are involved in that stream are owned by some group or by some people who have an interest in maintaining it. And that, you know, is not such a loony idea. It’s in fact, the solution to a lot of these problems. Share this

Noam Chomsky: The goal for the corporations is to maximise profit and market share. And they also have a goal for their target, namely the population. They have to be turned into completely mindless consumers of goods that they do not want. You have to develop what are called “Creative Wants”. So you have to create wants. You have to impose on people what’s called a Philosophy of Futility. You have to focus them on the insignificant things of life, like fashionable consumption. I’m just basically quoting business literature. And it makes perfect sense. The ideal is to have individuals who are totally disassociated from one another. Whose conception of themselves, the sense of value is just, “how many created wants can I satisfy?” We have huge industries, public relations industry, monstrous industry, advertising and so on, which are designed from infancy to mold people into this desired pattern. Share this

Narrator: Some of the best creative minds are employed to assure our faith in the corporate world view. They seduce us with beguiling illusions. Designed to divert our minds and manufacture our consent. Richard Grossman: Corporations don’t advertise products particularly; they’re advertising a way of life. A way of thinking. A story of who we are as people and how we got here and what’s the source of our so-called liberty, and so-called freedom. You know, so you have decades and decades and decades of propaganda and education teaching us to think in a certain way. When applied to the large corporation, it’s that the corporation was inevitable, that it’s indispensable, that it’s somehow remarkably efficient, and that it’s responsible for progress and the good life. They’re selling themselves, they’re selling their domination, they’re selling they’re rule, and they’re creating an image for themselves, as just regular folks down the block. It’s tough, you know, they’re putting some taxpayer shareholder money into helping and who can say? But that money should be going to the taxpayers to decide what to do. And while they’re doing these sorts of nice things, they’re also playing a role in lowering taxes for corporations and lowering taxes for wealthy people, and reconfiguring public policy. And what we don’t see is all that reconfiguring going on; we don’t see all that vacuuming up of money, vacuuming out the insides of public processes, but we do see the nice facade. Share this

Naomi Klein: When I was researching the takeover of public space when I started off I thought, “Okay, this is just advertising. We’ve always had advertising. It’s just more advertising”. But what I started to understand and what I understand now is that branding is not advertising; it’s production. The very successful corporations, the corporations of the future do not produce products. They produce brand meaning. The dissemination of the idea of themselves is their act of production. And the dissemination of the idea of themselves is an enormously invasive project, so how do you make a brand idea real? Well, a good place to start is by building a 3-dimensional manifestation of your brand. For a company like Disney, it goes even further where it’s actually building a town: Celebration, Florida. Their inspiration, they’re brand image is the all-American family. And this sort of bygone American town. And that’s where you see the truly imperialist aspirations of branding, which is about building these privatised branded cocoons. Which maybe you start by shopping in and then you continue by holidaying in but eventually, “Why not just move in?” Jeremy Rifkin: What happens if we wake up one day, and we find out that virutally all of our relationships that are mediated between us and our fellow human beings are commercial? We find out that virtually every relationship we have is a commercially arbitrated relationship with our fellow human beings. Can civilisation survive on that narrow a definition of how we interact with each other? Share this

Jeremy Rifkin: The Chakrabarty case is one of the great judicial moments in world history. And the public was totally unaware it was actually happening as a process was being engaged. General Electric and Professor Chakrabarty went to the patent office with a little microbe that eats up oil spills. They said they had modified this microbe in the laboratory, and therefore it was an invention. The patent office and the U.S. Government took at look at this “invention”; they said, ‘No way. The patent statutes don’t cover living things. This is not an invention”. Turned down. Then, General Electric and Doctor Chakrabarty appealed to the U.S. Customs Court of Appeal. And, to everyone’s surprise, by a 3-to-2 decision, they overrode the patent office. They said, ‘This microbe looks more like a detergent, or a reagent, than a horse or a honeybee”. I laugh because they didn’t understand basic biology; it looked like a chemical to them. Had it had an antenna, or eyes, or wings, or legs, it would never have crossed their table and been patented. Then the patent office appealed. And what the public should realise now is the patent office was very clear that you can’t patent life. My organisation provided the main amicus curiae brief.

“If you allow the patent on this microbe,” we argued, “it means that without any congressional guidance or public discussion, corporations will own the blueprints of life”. When they made the decision, we lost by 5-to-4, and Chief Justice Warren Berger said, “Sure, some of these are big issues but we think this is a small decision”. 7 Years later the U.S. Patent Office issued a 1 sentence decree, “You can patent anything in the world that’s alive, except a full-birth human being”. We’ve all been hearing about the announcement that we have mapped the human genome. But what the public doesn’t know is now there’s this great race by genomic companies and biotech companies and life science companies to find the treasure in the map. The treasure are the individual genes that make up the blueprint of the human race. Every time they capture a gene and isolate it, these biotech companies claim it as intellectual property. The breast cancer gene, the cystic fibrosis gene, it goes on and on and on. If this goes unchallenged in the world community within less than 10 years a handful of global companies will own, directly, or through license, the actual genes that make up the evolution of our species. And they’re now beginning to patent the genomes of every other creature on this planet. In the age of biology the politics is going to sort out between those who believe life first has intrinsic value, and therefore we should choose technologies and commercial venues that honour the intrinsic value. And then we’re going to have people who believe, “Look, life is a simple utility, it’s commercial fare”, and they will line up with the idea to let the marketplace be the ultimate arbiter of all of the age of biology. Share this

Narrator: In a world economy where information is filtered by global media corporations, keenly attuned to their powerful advertisers, who will defend the public’s right to know? And what price must be paid to preserve our ability to make informed choices? Share this

Steve Wilson: One of the first stories that Jane came up with was the revelation that most of the milk in the state of Florida and throughout most of the country was adulterated with the effects of bovine growth hormone. Jane Akre: With Monsanto, I didn’t realise how effectively a corporation could work to get something on the marketplace. The levels of coordination they had to have. They had to get university professors into the fold. They had to get experts into the fold. They had to get reporters into the fold. They had to get the public into the fold and of course the FDA, let’s not leave them out. They had to get the federal regulators convinced that this was a fine and safe product to get it onto the marketplace. And they did that, they did that very, very well. The federal government basically rubber stamped it before they put it on the marketplace. The longest test they did for human toxicity was 90 days on 30 rats. And then either Monsanto misreported the results to the FDA, or the FDA didn’t bother to look in depth at Monsanto’s own studies. Steve Wilson: The scientists within Health Canada looked very carefully at bovine growth hormone and come to very different conclusions than the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. did. Share this

Jane Akre: Monsanto sent the second letter, and this was more strongly worded. And it said there will be dire consequences for Fox News if the story airs in Florida. And this time they freaked. They were afraid of being sued and they were also afraid of losing advertising dollars. And all of the stations owned by Rupert Murdoch. And he owned more television stations than any other group in America. That’s 22 television stations. That’s a lot of advertising dollars. For Round-Up, Aspartame, Nutra Sweet and other
products. Share this

Steve Wilson: I said, “You know, this is news, this is important. This is stuff people need to know”. And I’ll never forget, he didn’t pause a beat and he said, “We just paid $3 billion for these television stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is”. I said, “I’m not doing that”, and he said, “Well, if you refuse to present this story the way think it should be presented you’ll be fired for insubordination”. I said, “I will go to the Federal Communications Commission and I will report that I was fired from my job by you, the licensee of these public airwaves because I refused to lie to people on the air”. Share this

Narrator: What Fox neglected to report is this: Jane sued Fox under Florida’s whistleblower statute, which proects those who try to prevent others from breaking the law. But her Appeal Court judges found that falsifying news isn’t actually against the law. So they denied Jane her whistleblower status, overturned the case, and withdrew her $425,000 award. Canada and Europe have upheld the ban on RBGH. Yet it remains hidden in much of the milk supply of the United States. Share this

Narrator: The prospect that two thirds of the world’s population will have no access to fresh drinking water by 2025, has provoked the initial confrontations in a world-wide battle for control over the planet’s most basic resource. When Bolivia sought to refinance the public water services of its third largest city, the World Bank required that it be privatised, which is how the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco gained control over all Cochabamba’s water, even that which fell from the sky. Oscar Olivera: All these laws and contracts also prohibited people from gathering rainwater. So rainwater was also privatised. Unpaid bills gave the company rights to repossess debtors’ homes and to auction them off. People had to make choices: from eating less and paying for water and basic services, to not sending their children to school, or not going to the hospital and treating illnesses at home; or, in the case of retired people who have very low incomes, they had to go out and work on the streets. Then, with the slogan: “The Water is Ours, Damn it!” People took to the streets to protest.

Narrator: The price this beleaguered country paid for World Bank loans was the privatision of the state oil industry, and its airline, railroad, electric and phone companies. But the government failed to convince Bolivians that water is a commodity like any other. Oscar Olivera: Then we witnessed how the government defended the transnational interests of Bechtel. People wanted water not teargas! People wanted justice not bullets! Narrator: Bolivia was determined to defend the corporation’s right to charge families living on $2 a day as much as one-quarter of their income for water. The greater the popular resistance to the water privatisation scheme, the more violent became the standoff. Oscar Olivera: There were hundreds of young people, 16 or 17-year olds, who lost their arms or legs or who were left handicapped for life by brain injuries and Victor Hugo Daza was killed. Share this

Narrator: Transnational corporations have a long and dark history of condoning tyrannical governments. Is it narcissism that compels them to seek their reflection in the regimented structures of fascist regimes? Howard Zinn: There was an interesting connection between the rise of fascism in Europe and the consciousness of politically radical people about corporate power. Because there was a recognition that Fascism rose in Europe with the help of enormous corporations. Noam Chomsky: Mussolini was greatly admired all across the spectrum, business loved him, investment shot up. Incidentally, when Hitler came in in Germany the same thing happened there, investment shot up in Germany. He had the work force under control. He was getting rid of dangerous left-wing elements. Investment opportunities were improving. There was no problems. These are wonderful countries. Michael Moore: I think one of the greatest untold stories of the 20th century is the collusion between corporations, especially in America, and Nazi Germany. First, in terms of how the corporations from America helped to essentially rebuild Germany and support the early Nazi regime. And then, when the war broke out, figured out a way to keep everything going. So General Motors was able to keep Opal going, Ford was able to keep their thing going, and companies like Coca-Cola, they couldn’t keep the Coca-Cola going, so what they did was they invented Fanta Orange for the Germans. And that’s how Coke was able to keep their profits coming in to Coca-Cola. So when you drink
Fanta Orange, that’s the Nazi drink that was created so that Coke could continue making money while millions of people died. Share this

Narrator: It should not surprise us that corporate allegiance to profit will trump their allegiance to any flag. A recent U.S. Treasury Department report revealed in one week alone, 57 U.S. corporations were fined for trading with official enemies of the United States, including terrorists, tyrants and despotic regimes. Share this

Narrator: For big business, despotism was often a useful tool for securing foreign markets and pursuing profits. One of the U.S. Marine Corps’ most highly decorated generals, Smedley Darlington Butler, by his own account, helped pacify Mexico for American oil companies, Haiti and Cuba for National City Bank, Nicaragua for the Brown Brothers brokerage, the Dominican Republic for sugar interests, Honduras for U.S. fruit companies, and China for Standard Oil. General Butler’s services were also in demand in the United States itself in the 1930s as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to relieve the misery of the depression through public enterprise and tougher regulation on corporate exploitation and misdeeds. But the country was not entirely behind the populist president. Large parts of the corporate elite despised what Roosevelt’s New Deal stood for. And so, in 1934, a group of conspirators sought to involve General Butler in a treasonous plan. But the corporate cabal had picked the wrong man. Butler was fed up being, what he called, “A Gangster for Capitalism”. A Congressional Committee ultimately found evidence of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt. According to Butler, the conspiracy included representatives of some of America’s top corporations, including J.P. Morgan, Dupont and Goodyear Tire.

As today’s chairman of Goodyear Tire knows, for corporations to dominate government, a coup is no longer necessary. Sam Gibara: Corporations have gone global and by going global, the governments have lost some control over corporations regardless of whether corporations can be trusted or cannot be trusted, governments today do not have over the corporations, the power that they had, and the leverage they had 50 or 60 years ago. And that’s a major change. So, governments have become powerless compared to what they were before. Ira Jackson: Capitalism today commands the towering heights, and has displaced politics and politicians as the new high priests, and reigning oligarchs of our system. So capitalism and its principle protagonists and players, corporate CEOs, have been accorded unusual power and access. This is not to deny the signifiance of government and politicians but these are the new high priests. Marc Barry: I was invited to Washington D.C. to attend this meeting that was being put together by the National Security Agency called, “The Critical Thinking Consortium”. I remember standing there in this room and looking over on one side of the room and we had the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, Customs, Secret Service. And then on the side of the room we had Coca-Cola, Mobile Oil, GTE and Kodak. And I remember thinking, “I am like in the epicenter of the intelligence industry right now”. I mean, the line is not just blurring, it’s just not there anymore. And, to me, it spoke volumes as to how industry and government were consulting with each other and working with each other. Share this

Narrator: As 34 nations of the Western Hemisphere gathered to draft a far reaching trade agreement, one that would lay the groundwork to privatise every resource and service imaginable, thousands of people from hundreds of grassroots organisations joined to oppose it. Canada’s top business lobbyists and its chief trade representative discount the dissent in the streets. For them, the America’s 800 million citizens speak with one voice. Thomas D’Aquino: Nice to see you. Well done on your strong advocacy of truth, justice, wisdom and all those things, eh. Pierre Pettigrew: I was looking yesterday at the statements at the inauguration and opening ceremony. What an extraordinary progress over the last 15 years. When you heard such a common language. Yes, and from the most developed to the least. It was extraordinary that now that we see the benefits of trade, more and more people want to buy in. Because we do realise that it helps everyone. From the poorer to the better off. Robert Keyes: A lot of these countries are not saying they want to get off, they want to get on. Pierre Pettigrew: Exactly, no one wants out, everyone wants in. Share this

Robert Keyes: Does there need to be some measure of accountability? Yes. And, I think the business community recognises that. But that accountability is in the marketplace, it’s with their shareholders. It’s with the public
perception and the public image that they are projecting. If companies don’t do what they should be doing, they’re going to be punished in the marketplace, and that’s not what any company wants. Ira Jackson: There’s a new market. These guys and gals aren’t out there because government’s putting a gun to their head. Or because they’ve suddenly read a book about transcendental meditation and global morality. They’re there because they understand the market requires them to be there. That there’s competitive advantage to be there. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart: I’m listening to your concerns. I worry about climate. I worry about pollution. I do not have all the answers to this, but we are prepared to work with you, with society, with NGOs, with governments to address it. So you rebuild the trust, so that you come back to a new kind of trust, and then the ultimate goal is then to become the corporation of choice. Share this

Ray Anderson: I ask myself often times why so many companies subscribe to corporate social responsibility. I’m not sure it’s because they necessarily want to be responsible in an ultimate way, but because they want to be identified and seen to be responsible. But who am I to judge? It’s better that they belong than not belong. It’s better that they make some public profession than the opposite. Elaine Bernard: Social responsibility isn’t a deep shift because it’s a voluntary tactic. A tactic, a reaction to a certain market at this point. And as the corporation reads the market differently, it can go back. One day you see Bambi, next day you see Godzilla. Milton Friedman: How do you define social responsible? What business is it of the corporation to decide what’s socially responsible? That isn’t their expertise. That isn’t what their stockholders ask them to do. So I think they’re going out of their range and it certainly is not democratic. Robert Monks: I don’t really care what the chairman of General Motors thinks is an appropriate level of emissions to come out the tailpipe of General Motors’ automobiles. He may have a lot of scientists, he may be a very good person, but I didn’t elect him to do anything. He doesn’t have any power to speak for me. These are decisions that must be made by government and not by corporations. Share this

Naomi Klein: You take this to its logical conclusion, one would have the image that we are, in fact, the end of the world is nigh. And we are all completely brainwashed and there’s no space left. And I don’t believe we’re there yet. And I think it’s really important that we don’t overstate the case, and that we admit that there are cracks and fissures in all of these corporate structures. And sometimes when a corporation is concentrating on one particular project they look the other way and all kinds of interesting things happen in the corner. Vandana Shiva: It is the case in every period of history where injustice based on falsehoods, based on taking away the right and freedoms of people to live and survive with dignity, that, eventually, when you call a bluff, the tables turn. Elaine Bernard: Ultimately capital puts it foot down somewhere. And anywhere it puts its foot down it can be held accountable. Share this

Charles Kernaghan: Originally Wal Mart and Kathy Lee Gifford had said, “Why should we believe you that children work in this factory?” What we didn’t tell them was that Wendy Dias, in the centre of the picture, was on a plane to the United States. This is Wendy Dias. She comes to the United States. She’s unstoppable. News announcer: Congress heard testimony today from children who testified they were exploited by sweatshops overseas. Charles Kernaghan: Kathy Lee Gifford apologised to Wendy. It was the most amazing thing I’d seen. This powerful celebrity leans over and says, “Wendy, please believe me, I didn’t know these conditions existed. And now that I do, I’m going to work with you. I’m going to work with these other people and it’ll never happen again.” And that night we signed an agreement with Kathy Lee Gifford. Kathie Lee Gifford: I thought it would be a relatively easy process, and it isn’t. As for every question I have there seem to be five questions that come back at me.

Charles Kernaghan: As far as Wal Mart goes and Kathy Lee, pretty much everything returned to sweatshop conditions but because this was fought out on television for weeks, this incident with Kathy Lee Gifford actually took the sweatshop issue to every single part of the country. And so, frankly, after that, there’s hardly a single person in this country who doesn’t know about child labour or sweatshops or starvation wages. Title Card: Several years after the Wal Mart controversy, Kathy Lee handbags were still being made in China by workers paid three cents per hour. Title Card: Under pressure from the National Labor Committee, Gap Inc. allowed independent monitoring of its El Salvador factories, becoming the first transnational corporation to do so anywhere. Share this

Elaine Bernard: So what we need to do is to look at the very roots of the legal form that created this beast, and we need to think who can hold them accountable. Noam Chomsky: They’re not graven in stone. They can be dismantled. And, in fact, most states have laws, which require that they be dismantled. Jim Lafferty: For too long now giant corporations have been allowed to undermine democracy here in the United States and all over the world. But today the National Lawyer’s Guild and 29 other groups and individuals are fighting back. We are calling upon State Attorney General, Dan Lungren, to comply with California law and to revoke to the corporate charter of the Union Oil Company of California for its repeated and grevious offences. Robert Benson: This is a statute that is well known. It has been used. It can be used. What this will mean is the dissolution of the Union Oil Company of California, the sale of its assets under careful court orders to others who will carry on in the public interest. Jim Lafferty: From its complicity in unspeakable human rights violations overseas against women, gays, labourers and indigenous peoples, to its efforts to subvert U.S. foreign policy and deceive the courts, the public and its own stockholders, Unocal is emblematic of corporate abuse and corporate power run amok.

Don Xui Xziang: Extending a business deal with the Burma army is immoral. Unocal cannot do business in Burma without supporting that hopeless regime. Title Card: The Attorney General of California refused to revoke the corporate charter of Unocal but did acknowledge his office had the power to do so. Share this

Michael Moore: The curse for me has been the fact that in making these, you know, documentary films, I’ve seen that actually can impact change, so I’m just compelled to keep making them. I went to Littleton, Colorado, where the Columbine shooting took place. And, I didn’t know this, but when I arrived I learned what the primary job is of the parents of the kids who go to Columbine High School. The number one job in Littleton, Colorado. They work for Lockheed Martin, building weapons of mass destruction. But they don’t see the connect between what they do for a living and what their kids do at school, or did at school. And so I’m kind of, you know, up on my high horse, thinking about this, and I thought, you know, I said to my wife, we both are sons and daughters of auto workers in Flint, Michigan. There isn’t a single one of us, back in Flint, any of us, including us, who ever stopped to think, this thing we do for a living, the building of automobiles, is probably the single biggest reason why the polar ice caps are going to melt and end civilisation as we know it. There’s no connect between, “I’m just an assembler on an assembly line, building a car”, which is good for people and society, and it moves them around. But never stop to think about the larger picture, and the larger responsibility, of what we’re doing. Ultimately, we have to, as individuals accept responsibility for our collective action and the larger harm that it causes, you know, in our world. Share this

Vandana Shiva: Over the past decade we have been gaining ground. And when I say “we”, I mean ordinary people committed to the welfare of all humanity. All people irrespective of gender and class and race and religion. All species on the planet. We managed to take the biggest government and one of the largest chemical companies to court on the case of Neem and win a case against them. W.R. Grace and the US government’s patent on Neem was revoked by a case we brought along with the Greens of the European Parliament and the International Organic Agricultural Movement. We won because we worked together. We have overturned nearly 99% of the basmati patent of Ricetek. Again, because we worked as a worldwide coalition, old women in Texas, scientists in India, activists sitting in Vancouver, a little basmati action group. We stopped the 3rd World being viewed as the pirate and we showed the corporations were the pirate.

Look how little it took for Gandhi to work against the salt laws of the British where the British decided the way they would make their armies and police forces bigger is just tax the salt. And all that Gandhi did was walk to the beach, pick up the salt and say, “Nature gives it for free. We need it. We’ve always made it. We will violate your laws. We will continue to make salt”. We’ve had a similar commitment for the last decade in India. That any law that makes it illegal to save seed is a law not worth following. We will violate it because saving seed is a duty to the earth and to future generations. We thought it would really be symbolic. It is more than symbolic. It is becoming a survival option. Farmers who grow their own seeds, save their own seeds, don’t buy pesticides, have three-fold more incomes than farmers who are locked into the chemical treadmill, depending on Monsanto and Cargill. We have managed to created alternatives that work for people. Share this

Jeremy Rifkin: There are many tools for bringing back community. But the importance is not the tools. I mean, there’s litigation, there’s legislation, there’s direct action, there’s education, boycotts, social investment. There’s many, many ways to address issues of corporate power. But in the final analysis, what’s really important is the vision. You have to have a better story. Share this

Ray Anderson: [Speech to Civic and Business Leaders, North Carolina State U] Do I know you well enough to call you fellow plunderers? There is not an industrial company on earth, not an institution of any kind, not mine, not yours, not anyone’s that is sustainable. I stand convicted by me, myself alone, not by anyone else, as a plunderer of the earth, but not by our civilisation’s definition. By our civilisation’s definition, I’m a captain of industry. In the eyes of many a kind of modern day hero. But really, really, the first industrial revolution is flawed, it is not working. It is unsustainable. It is the mistake and we must move on to another and better industrial revolution and get it right this time. Share this

Ray Anderson: When I think of what could be I visualise an organisation of people committed to a purpose and the purpose is doing no harm. I see a company that has severed the umbilical cord to earth for its raw materials, taking raw materials that have already been extracted and using them over and over again, driving that process with renewable energy. It is our plan, it remains our plan to climb Mount Sustainability, that mountain that is higher than Everest, infinitely higher than Everest, far more difficult to scale. That point at the top symbolising zero footprint… Title Card: Since 1995, Interface has reduced its ecological footprint by one third. Its stated goal is to be sustainable by 2020. Share this

Richard Grossman: So we’ve got to undo a lot of things in order to be smart
enough to do this really dangerous and risky and difficult work, you know, the best way that we possibly can. And that means coming together and learning a whole lot of stuff that we just don’t know, that has been driven out of the culture, driven out of the society, driven out of our minds. That, to me, is the most exciting thing. That is happening, it’s happening all over the world now. Share this

Charles Kernaghan: Sometimes is surprises me how effective you can actually be. After we beat the Gap I walked past these Gap stores and I looked at them and I think, “My goodness, there’s like 2,000 of these stores across the country. Look at all that concrete, look at the glass, look at all the staff people, look at all the clothing. Look at that power”. You can still reach these companies. You can still have an effect. Share this

Oscar Olivera: Small battles are being won around the world, but, I think people are losing. I do see the present and the future of our children as very dark. But I trust the people’s capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion. Share this

Richard Grossman: We can change the government. That’s the only way we’re going to re-design, re-think, re-constitute what capital and property can do. Share this

Vandana Shiva: Fifteen corporations would like to control the conditions of our life, and millions of people are saying, “Not only do we not need you, we can do it better. We are going to create systems that nourish the earth and nourish human beings”. And these are not marginal experiments. They are the mainstay of large numbers of communities across the world. That is where the future lies. Share this

[last lines]
Michael Moore: You know, I’ve often thought it’s very ironic that I’m able to do all this and yet what am I on? I’m on networks. I’m distributed by studios that are owned by large corporate entities. Now, why would they put me out there when I am opposed to everything that they stand for? And I spend my time on their dime opposing what they believe in.

Well, it’s because they don’t believe in anything. They put me on there because they know that there’s millions of people that want to see my film or watch the TV show, and so they’re gonna make money. And I’ve been able to get my stuff out there because I’m driving my truck through this incredible flaw in capitalism, the greed flaw. The thing that says that the rich man will sell you the rope to hang himself with if he thinks he make a buck off it. Well, I’m the rope. I hope. I’m part of the rope. And they also believe that when people watch my stuff, or maybe watch this film, or whatever, they think that, you know, they’ll watch this and they won’t do anything because we’ve done such a good job of numbing their minds and dumbing them down, you know. People aren’t gonna leave the couch and go an do something political. They’re convinced of that. I’m convinced of the opposite. I’m convinced that a few people are gonna leave this movie theatre or get up off the couch and go and do something, anything, to get this world back in our hands. Share this

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JT’s Movie CollectTHE CORPORATION (2004)

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES: ethics, corporate responsibility

CHARACTERS: Chris Barrett, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn

OTHER FILMS BY DIRECTOR MARK ACHBAR: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1993)

SYNOPSIS: This documentary film is based on the nonfiction book by law
professor Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Like the book, the film maintains that modern Corporations are driven by the motive to generate profits for shareholders, regardless of how this affects the interests of workers, society, or the environment. The corporation, in fact, is so driven by self-interest and financial greed that it fits the personality profile of a psychopathic individual. The film focuses on a select number of areas in which corporations have cause damage, including child labor, low wages, manipulative advertising, unhealthy foods, and environmental damage. The film juxtaposes comments by politically liberal activists with those by morally cynical defenders of the corporate status quo.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. According to the film, the standard metaphor for a corporation is that of an apple within a barrel where most apples are good and just a few bad. Several CEO’s offered alternative metaphors, such as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a sports team, family unity, a telephone system, or an eagle. Less flattering metaphors are that of a devouring monster, a whale, or the Frankenstein monster. Are any of these metaphors more appropriate than others?

2. The movie opens indicating that the world dominance of corporations is a recent historical phenomenon, and in some ways has replaced the power of monarchies, the church, and other governing social institutions. If there will always be dominating, self-serving institutions, why is corporate rule today any worse than the alternatives?

3. Original 19th century corporations were limited in their tasks, shareholders were liable, and many had a finite lifespan. How would this limit the negative impact of corporations on society?

4. Constraints on corporations were lifted after the Civil War when the 14th amendment to the constitution extended the legal rights of persons to corporations. What if anything was so bad about this change?

5. One person stated that corporations “have no soul to save, no body to incarcerate.” What does this mean?

6. The notion of “externalities” is that corporations pass on problems and expenses to the public or taxpayers. What are some examples of this?

7. The film lists several features of psychopathic personality disorder and notes how they apply to corporations. These include the following: (1) callous unconcern for the feelings of others, (2) incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, (3) reckless disregard for the safety of others, (4) deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit, (5) incapacity to experience guilt, (6) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors. Are any of these exaggerations regarding the true nature of corporations?

8. A Monsanto product called Posilac (BST) is artificial hormone for factory farm cows that increase milk production. How does this product benefit the farmer?

9. One side effect of Prosilac is that it causes infection in cows, which results in pus getting into milk. It also requires giving cows antibiotics which cause strains of super viruses. Are these problems counterbalanced by the product’s economic benefits for farmers?

10. A commodities trader stated the following: “our information that we receive does not include anything about environmental conditions, because, until the environmental conditions become a commodity themselves, or are being traded, then obviously we will not have anything to do with that.” What does this imply about corporate concern for the environment?

11. One person in the film stated the following: “Whether you obey the law or not is a matter of whether its cost effective. If the chance of getting caught and the penalty are less than it costs to comply, people just think of it as being a business decision.” In other words, criminal fines are just
another cost of doing business. Might there be a more effective form of punishment that would motivate corporations to follow the law?

12. The narrator asks “If the dominant institution of our time has been created in the image of a psychopath, who bears the moral responsibility for its actions?” How might we answer this question?

13. A former Goodyear CEO stated that “No job in my experience with Goodyear has been as frustrating as the CEO job. Because even though the perception is that you have absolute power to do whatever you want, the reality is that you don’t have that power.” Massive layoffs in particular, he explains, are driven by capitalism and not by the private sympathies of the CEO. Contrast this with the actions of Interface’s CEO Ray Anderson, who imposed an environmental moral agenda. What might account for the differing perspectives of these two CEO’s?

14. Noam Chomsky stated that individual slave owners may be kind people, but in their institutional role they are monsters. Is this an appropriate comparison to corporate CEO’s?

15. A woman from India describes “terminator bio-technology”, that is, seeds that are designed to grow crops for only one season. What is the profit motivation behind terminator technology and what if anything is morally wrong with it?

16. A corporate spy states the following: “It’s about competition, it’s about market shares. It’s about being aggressive. It’s about shareholder value: what is your stock at today. If you’re a CEO, do you think your shareholders really care if you’re Billy Buttercup or not? Do you think they’d prefer for you to be a nice guy over having money in their pocket? I don’t think so. I think people want money. That’s the bottom line.” Is this an accurate portrayal of shareholder’s interests?

17. Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface (the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer), describes a paradigm shift that he experienced when reading
Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce and learning about impact of corporations on species extinction. This motivated him to seek ecological sustainability within his corporation. He states that the day must come when environmental plundering is not allowed and people like him will end up in jail. How far off is that day?

18. The narrator states the following: “The pursuit of profit is an old story, but there was a time when many things were regarded as either to sacred or to essential for the public good to be conspired business opportunities. They were protected by tradition and public regulation.” Today, common goods such as land and water have been turned into private property. How might capitalists defend such privatizing of the commons?

19. A person stated that 20%-40% of children’s products would not have been purchased without children nagging their parents. What is the moral problem with child advertising?

20. Noam Chomsky describes the concept of “creative wants” and how a person’s sense of value is based on how many creative wants he or she can satisfy. What are examples of creative wants, and what’s so bad about them?

21. The movie describes different advertising techniques such as students who became walking billboards for a corporation in exchange for college tuition; product branding (e.g., Disney and the concept of “family magic”), real life product placement. What if anything is wrong with these?

22. The movie discusses the issue of patenting the DNA and genes of living things; according to the Patent Office we can now patent anything that’s alive except a full birth human being. What if anything is so bad about this?

23. The film describes the efforts of the Bechtel corporation to privatize water in Bolivia, which made it illegal for people to collect rain water. Is there any situation in which this might be morally justified?

24. The film describes IBM punch card machines that Nazis used to record data
on holocaust victims. The machines that were regularly serviced by IBM’s German subsidiary throughout the war, and the American IBM company profited from this. To what extent do companies have a moral responsibility to limit the use of their products?

25. The narrator states that “It should not surprise us that corporate allegiance to profits will trump their allegiance to any flag.” Assuming this is true, what is so bad about this?

26. The narrator states “for corporations to dominate government, a coup is no longer necessary.” Similarly, a former CEO of Goodyear states that, through corporate globalization, “Governments have become powerless compared to what they were before.” What makes it so difficult for governments to control the activities of corporations?

27. One person in the film stated the following: “If companies don’t do what they should be doing, they’ll be punished in the market place.” Is this sufficient motivation for businesses to behave morally?

28. Chomsky stated that the existence of corporations is not engraved in stone and that “most states have laws which require that they be dismantled.” Would routine dismantling of law-breaking corporations solve the problem?

29. Michael Moore states that “The curse for me has been the fact that in making these documentary films I’ve seen that they can actually impact change, so I’m compelled to just keep making them.” What kind of change is Moore talking about?

30. A spokesperson for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce criticized efforts in California to dissolve the Unical oil corporation. He stated that opposition to the company came primarily from people at “the left end of the spectrum who don’t produce anything but hot air.” Is his point valid?

31. One person in the film stated the following: “There are many tools for
bringing back community; the importance of litigation, legislation, direct action, education, boycotts, social investment. There are many, many ways to address issues of corporate power. In the final analysis what’s really important is the vision. You have to have a better story.” What kind of story would motivate people to rise up against corporations?

32. Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, stated the following: “The first industrial revolution is flawed, it is not working, it is unsustainable. It is the mistake and we must move on to another and better industrial revolution, and get it right this time.” Anderson’s focus is on the ecological sustainability of manufacturing, which is only part of the problem. What else would be needed in the new industrial revolution?

REVIEWS
This was an interesting examination of Corporations and their bizarre legal status. I forget the exact quote, but someone states that corporations have “no soul to redeem, no body to incarcerate”, which refers to the fact that they have all the legal rights of an individual, but they cannot be punished or held liable for their actions in the same way. It goes on to give a psychoanalysis of corporations and determines that they are, by and large, psychotic. It was fascinating to learn that corporations somehow gained their status from the amendment to the constitution meant to protect black ex slaves, and that in the year it passed, something like 300 corporations used the amendment for legal purposes, as opposed to about 15 black people. There comes a certain point where I envy the ethical system that corporations run on. It’s all numbers. You compare what you’ll make by doing something as compared to how much you’ll be fined, and this is how you make a decision. It’s like a utilitarian calculus, except the numbers aren’t all nebulous value assessments, they’re concrete dollar values.