Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 15:10:40 -0500
From: Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Corporate Crime
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http://www.sfbg.com/focus/71.html
Crime of the Century
The corporate century ends with private enterprise unanswerable to the public.
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
AS WE MOVE to the end of the millennium, it is important to remind
ourselves that this has been the century of the corporation, when largely
unaccountable, for-profit organizations of unlimited longevity, size, and
power took control of the economy and of the government. And did so largely
to the detriment of the individual consumer, worker, neighbor, and citizen.
Let us again remind ourselves that corporations were the creation of the
citizenry (thanks here to Richard Grossman of the Project on Corporations,
Law, and Democracy for resurrecting and teaching us a history we would have
collectively forgotten).
In the beginning, we the citizenry created the corporation to do the
public's work build a canal or a road and then go out of business. We asked
people with money to build the canal or road. If anything went wrong, the
liability of these people with money * shareholders, we call them today *
would be limited to the amount of money they invested and no more. This
limited liability corporation is the bedrock of the market economy. The
markets would deflate like a punctured balloon if corporations were
stripped of limited liability for shareholders.
And what do we, the citizenry, get in return for this generous public grant
of limited liability? Originally, we told the corporation what to do. You
are to deliver the goods and then go out of business. And then let us live
our lives.
But corporations gained power, broke through democratic controls, and now
roam around the world inflicting unspeakable damage on the earth. Let us
count the ways: price-fixing, chemical explosions, mercury poisoning, oil
spills.
Need concrete examples? These are five of the most egregious of the century:
Archer Daniels Midland and price-fixing
In October 1996, Archer Daniels Midland, the good people who bring you
National Public Radio, pled guilty and paid a $100 million criminal fine at
the time, the largest criminal antitrust fine ever for its role in
conspiracies to fix prices to eliminate competition and allocate sales in
the lysine and citric acid markets worldwide.
Union Carbide and Bhopal
In 1984, a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, released
90,000 pounds of the chemical methyl isocyanate. The resulting toxic cloud
killed several thousand people and injured hundreds of thousands.
Chisso Corporation and Minamata
Minamata, Japan, was home to Chisso Corporation, a petrochemical company
and maker of plastics. In the 1950s fish began floating dead in Minamata
Bay, cats began committing suicide, and children began getting rare forms
of brain cancer. Thousands were injured. The company had been dumping
mercury into the bay.
Exxon Corporation and the Valdez oil spill
Ten years ago, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker hit a reef in Prince William
Sound, Alaska, and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil onto 1,500 miles
of Alaskan shoreline, killing birds and fish and destroying the way of life
of thousands of Native Americans.
General Motors and the destruction of inner-city rail
Seventy years ago, clean, quiet, and efficient inner-city rail systems
dotted the U.S. landscape. They were eliminated in the 1930s to make way
for dirty, noisy gasoline-powered automobiles and buses. The inner-city
rail systems were destroyed by those very companies that would most benefit
from the destruction of inner-city rail oil, tire, and automobile
companies, led by General Motors. By 1949, G.M. had helped destroy 100
electric systems in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland,
Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. In 1949 a federal grand jury in
Chicago indicted and a jury convicted G.M., Standard Oil of California, and
Firestone, among others, of criminally conspiring to replace electric
transportation with gas- and diesel-powered buses and to monopolize the
sale of buses and related products to transportation companies around the
country. G.M. and the other convicted companies were fined $5,000 each.
These are not unusual examples. Books have been written documenting the
ongoing destruction. The question remains how do we put a stop to it? And
the answer seems clear to us reassert public control over what was
originally a public institution.
How to reassert such control is the subject of debate and conflict, in
Seattle and around the world. But it seems clear to us that as the 20th
century was the century of the corporation, the 21st promises to be the
century in which flesh-and-blood human beings reassert sovereignty over
their lives, their markets, and their democracy.
Let us not forget that corporate control was never inevitable. They took it
from us, and it is our responsibility to take it back.
__________________________
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are coauthors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt
for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Common Courage Press, 1999).
