-Caveat Lector-
Book review by Alice Molloy [tearsheet --
date and place of publication unknown]
"When Corporations Rule the World,"
by David C. Korten, Kumarian and B-K Press, $29.95
... For some years now I've felt that to have an overview from which we can
change things, we must realize that our central problem is that the planet
has been taken over by a different, larger and more dominant species, called
CORPORATIONS.
Author Korten believes the same thing ... If you want to understand how
things are, and how they should/could be, read this book. By thoroughly
grasping the information in it, we may just be able to understand how to
dismantle the {"alien civilization" of corporations] now establishing its
control over the entire planet.
David C. Korten, the author of "When Corporations Rule the World," was
educated to be a true believer in the corporate Renaissance. An MBA in
international business, a PhD in organizational theory from The Stanford
Business School, five years on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of
Business ... and more, including the Ford Foundation staff and US foreign aid
porograms. His motivation during these two decades was to counter the threat
of revolutions that were being sparked by poverty all over the world "by
bringing the knowledge of modern business management and entrepreneurship to
those who had not yet benefitted from it."
Gradually his eyes opened to how wrong he was. He says in the prologue:
"As an MBA student, I believed that global corporations might offer an answer
to the problems of poverty and human conflict. I have since concluded,
however, that the systemic forces nurturing the growth and dominance of
global corporations are at the heart of the current human dilemma."
"I now believe," he adds, "that to avoid collective catastrophe we must
radically transform the underlying system of business to restore power to the
small and local."
The aliens among us?
If patriarchy is the increasing dominance of left-brain linear logic,
thinking and values, then the CORPORATION AS "PERSON" is its logical
offspring, running things to suit ITSELF, not individual human beings or
indeed any life form. It's not that corporations are malevolent toward human
beings and other life forms, it's just that they deal with them as "objects"
or "data," quantifiable units in an abstract, machine-like system whose sole
purpose is to transform "mass" (including human beings) into "energy" -- with
"energy" mathematically symbolized by money. Under left-brain Newtonian
logic and utilitarian values, divorced from right-brain empathy and those
feelings responsible for social bonding, there exists a drive to manipulate,
replicate and control everything Mother Nature has given us -- to give it
quantifiability and "shelf life," and sell it back to us, making us pay
double for what used to be free.
Right now we are in a phase of {the "alien" invasion} in which human
beings are being increasingly cut out of the loop. Even companies making
huge profits are laying off thousands of the workers who enabled them to make
those profits ... We know that "corporations" are driving everything that is
happening around the planet today, but we usually don't think about how this
situation came about.
Where did "corporations" come from in the first place?
Chapter 4 of "When Corporations Rule the World" contains an overview of
the development of the concept of the "corporation," which began emerging in
the 16th Century. Corporations evolved as a device to reduce INDIVIDUAL
liability in cases where a large, long-term group project was called for.
"In this chapter we examine the long and continuing struggle for
SOVEREIGNTY between individuals and corporate bodies in America in an effort
to provide an historical perspective on what is at stake and why it matters.
"[T]he history of corporate-government relations has been one of
continuing pressure on government from corporate interests determined to
expand corporate RIGHTS while limiting corporate OBLIGATIONS."
Corporations were perceived [by juridicial and political experts] as
POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS even in the early days of the American colonies, when
their powers were [kept] far more limited than they are today.
"The early charters were limited to a fixed number of years and required
that the corporation be dissolved after that period, unless the charter could
be re-authorized. Generally, the corporate charter set limits on the
corporation's right to borrow and to own land and property and sometimes even
set [percentage] limits on its profits."
And there were many other restrictions.
For example, a corporation could conduct "only those business activities
specifically authorized in its charter," and charters could be REVOKED by
state legislators for failing to serve the larger PUBLIC interest.
The legislative "coup" responsible for giving corporations the POWER to
become totally dominant occurred in 1886.
"In 1886, in a stunning victory for the proponents of CORPORATE
SOVEREIGNTY, the Supreme Court ruled in _Santa Clara County v. Southern
Pacific Roalroad_ that a private corporation is a PERSON under the US
Constitution ... and is thereby entitled to the protection of the Bill of
Rights, including the right to free speech and other constitutional
protections extended to INDIVIDUALS."
It is profoundly disturbing to me that governments have acquired the
ability to give birth to "persons" called corporations.
Such formidable "persons" --larger, wealthier and more powerful than any
individual alone or in an non-corporate group-- naturally become, thanks to
the "equal rights" extended to them by law, the dominant species -- a
species whose interests are different from and even antagonistic to human
beings.
"Behind its carefully crafted public relations image and the many fine
and ethical people it may employ, the body of a corporation is its corporate
charter, a legal document, and money is its blood. At its core it is an
alien entity with one goal: to reproduce money to nourish and replicate
itself. INDIVIDUALS are DISPENSABLE.
It owes only one true allegience: to the financial markets, which are more
totally creatures of money than even the corporation itself [and even more
fictitious]."
It has become a rule of thumb that when a "more advanced and dominant"
culture invades a "more primitive native" culture, that culture fragments,
begins to decay and finally becomes extinct. Such symptoms are visible all
around us in:
"... deteriorating educational systems, increasing poverty and rising
infant mortality ... a growing "underclass" of the very old and very young,
the sick, the poor and others 'lacking any quantifiable exchange-value' in
the marketplace ... the deterioration of affective relationships when based
on anything other than self-interest, the breakdown of families and
communities ..."
I ask you, are we in any better position than natives of the Amazon
rainforest once the bulldozers and armed mercenaries started arriving?
In Part VI, "Reclaiming Our Power," [Korten] makes clear what he thinks
we can do to reverse the effects of [the "alien invasion"] ... I am not in a
position to assess his agenda for change; I am a simple person and what I
think is, OVERTURN THE SUPREME COURT RULING OF 1886, in _Santa Clara County
v. Southern Pacific Railroad_. Why not? The Republicans are overturning all
of Roosevelt's New Deal, itself a defense against the looting and pillage
that logically followed from the ruling of 1886.
Surely there are lawyers around smart enough to argue that the State has
no right to create "PERSONS" -- especially "persons" endowed by law with
greater power but less responsibility than more naturally-born citizens!
One really has to read Part IV, "A Rogue Financial System," in order to
grasp how utterly crazy it all is. Crazy from the HUMAN standpoint, that is
-- but then, I'm only looking at it from the point of view of the loser in a
game called "survival of the fittest," just another endangered species
earmarked for extinction ...
That is, UNLESS human beings wake up to see how the game has been FIXED
and stop playing by its crooked rules. The odds are stacked unfairly in
favor of corporations, "persons" who wouldn't even exist now if one judge
hadn't invented them.
___________________________________________________________
In a message dated 97-07-30, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Joshua Two) writes:
> "All experience has shown that large accumulations of property
>in hands likely to keep it intact for a long period are dangerous
>to the public weal. Having perpetual succession, any kind of a
>corporation has peculiar facilities for such accumulation, and
>most governments have found it necessary to exercise great
>caution in their grants of corporate powers... Freed, as such
>bodies are, from the sure bounds to the schemes of individuals --
>the grave -- they are able to add field to field, and power to
>power, until they become entirely too strong for that society
>which is made up of those whose plans are limited by a single
>life." Railroad Co. v. Collins, Supreme Court of Georgia, 40 GA
>582.
Think of corporations as aristocratic families, and mergers as intermarriages
among the nobility, and multinationals as dynastic houses, kings ruling over
populations, economies, and markets --"nations" without borders.
Think of the New World Order as a system of imperial feudal government,
the object of fealty for the kings and nobles who own and control the
natural resources of the whole planet, subdivided into its raw materials
rather than geographical zones..
Think of the legal definition of the "corporation" as defining the basic unit
of participation in this global feudal system -- defining "citizenship" in
it,
without which one has no freedom, no rights, no status whatsoever except
as a serf or slave, a unit of labor in production, even a commodity for sale.
Think of the body of national and international corporate law --that which
in sum defines the "global marketplace" or the "free market"-- as the law
of the land, the constitution and bill of rights of the world economic empire
and its "citizens," the nobility reigning and ruling over its subjects, all
of us.
The old definitions of government, citizenship, law, rights and freedoms are
obsolete, referring to territories which no longer correspond to the real map
of the world, which corporations have redrawn without our being aware of it.
There are no more geographical borders. Multinationals rule across national
boundaries and govern market-segments of populations rather than peoples.
Reading such a non-linear, multi-vector, trans-geographical map, national
sovereignty and differences in ideology/political system are simply unreal,
rooted in beliefs that have no physical existence anymore on that "earth."
There are no more races, religions, cultures, sexes or any other distinctions
people make in their own minds and use as the basis for self-definition and
self-defense in everyday human conflict. There are producers and consumers,
employers and laborers. Only masters and slaves, economically defined.
Welcome to the 21st Century technological equivalent of medieval feudalism.
Nothing has changed except the machinery of power and our ability to SEE it,
limited if we persist in thinking in terms of abstractions that do not exist.
.
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