Re: Corporations

[k hanly]

Corporations don't speak but that does not mean they don't have the right of free speech. Officials (i.e.) real persons sign contracts on behalf of corporations too . Does that mean corporations cannot sign contracts or have rights and obligations flowing from having signed contracts. Note too that a person cannot speak on behalf of a corporation qua an individual but only qua individual authorised to do so by the corporation. It is not in the persons capacity as a "real" individual that the person can sign a contract for a corporation only as a real individual authorised to do so by the structures of the legal fiction. There is no way that you can reduce this to some sort of shorthand for talking about contracts between individuals. Why anyone would even want to try I find truly baffling. Maybe they have some sort of fear of mulitiplying entities beyond necessity. I dont expect to kick any corporate shins, or use DNA testing to absolve them when accused of horrendous crimes but there is nothing unreal about corporations as entities. To consider corporations as something over and above sets of contracts between individuals is not fetishism. Unless you are committed to some weird form of reductive individualism it would seem to be common sense realism.   CHeers, Ken Hanly ----- Original Message ----- From: David B. Shemano To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 7:58 PM Subject: Re: Corporations Eugene Coyle writes:   <<This interlocking series of contracts has the right of free speech? <<I think the series of responses Shemano gives in this thread is sillier than neo-classical micro.  He describes a total <<phantasy world, just as the micro theorists do.  But the world both try to hide is terribly real.   <<This stuff is much worse than people have been asked to leave the list over.  Disgusting stuff.  I'd say beneath <<contempt, but I don't know what is lower.  I have never seen a corporation speak.  I have seen real people speak on behalf of corporations.  Why do you believe that those people do not have a right to speak?   What is that word Marxists like to use to describe unreal objects that people think are real?  Fetish?  You see a bogeyman called a "corporation."  You are fetishing the corporation.  I see tens, hundreds, thousands of contracts between real people intended to actualize a real end.  The entity is an acknowledged legal fiction that minimizes transaction costs.  That is all.  "Exxon" is simply a shorthand way to describe thousands of real people acting in a united way, and the corporate form provides an expedient way of organizing those real people.   What disgusts you?  What is beneath contempt?  What is the fantasy?   David Shemano