>Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 18:03:17 -0400 (EDT)
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>From: Robert Weissman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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>Subject: A Tale of Two Mainers
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>Carolyn Chute and Robert Monks have little in common. Chute was born into
>poverty and dropped out of high school at the age of 16.
>
>Monks was born into privilege and graduated from Harvard University and
>Harvard Law School.
>
>Chute eventually returned to high school and began taking writing courses
>at the University of Maine. She has made a name for herself by writing
>books about the grinding poverty found throughout rural Maine, including
>the 1985 classic The Beans of Egypt, Maine. ("This book was involuntarily
>researched," she told a reporter at the time the book was published. "I
>have lived poverty. I didn't choose it. No one would choose humiliation,
>pain, and rage.")
>
>Monks, who operates an investment fund with more than $250 million under
>management, has written books about wealth and power, including, most
>recently, The Emperor's Nightingale: Restoring the Integrity of the
>Corporation in the Age of Shareholder Activism (Addison Wesley, 1998)
>
>Both Chute and Monks are from Maine and both are concerned about the
>adverse effects of corporate power on society.
>
>For a number of years now, Chute and Monks have been corresponding and
>conversing, relating their conflicting visions about how corporations are
>destroying our society and what can be done about it. Monks says that
>someday he hopes that their letters will be published in book form.
>
>In short, Monks is a corporate reformer, Chute is a corporate
>abolitionist. It is a conflict that is bound to grow as the big foot of
>the corporation makes itself felt worldwide. Monks believes that the
>owners of the corporation can and should determine its destiny. Through
>his investment fund, the Washington, D.C.-based LENS Inc., Monks has
>flexed shareholder muscle and has cleaned house at a number of major
>corporations. Most recently, for example, Monks, in alliance with George
>Soros, campaigned against Waste Management Inc., a company with a long
>history of corporate wrongdoing. Monks identified Waste Management as a
>company with low stock value, sloppy management and misleading accounting.
>
>Monks organized shareholders on the internet, and then forced the
>resignation of two CEOs. Eventually, the Monks group convinced the third
>CEO that the level of rot within the company was so great that the only
>way out was a merger with a cleaner, smaller company. Earlier this year,
>Waste Management merged with the smaller USA Waste.
>
>In his book, Monks describes what he calls the four corporate dangers --
>unlimited life, unlimited size, unlimited power and unlimited license.
>Only shareholder activism, he argues, can bring about four solutions --
>long-term life, appropriate size, balanced power, and accountability to
>long-term owners.
>
>Monks believes that other efforts at controlling corporate power --
>including corporate chartering, investigative reporting, regulation,
>independenet boards -- are bound to fail. Only an activated shareholder
>movement can bring corporations into line. Enter Chute the abolitionist.
>Chute is a member The Second Maine Militia, whose goals include: banning
>paid political ads, limiting campaign contributions to $100 per citizen,
>and limiting the number of newspapers or magazines that can be owned by
>any single person or corporation to one.
>
>Chute is critical of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1886 decision in Santa Clara
>County v. Southern Pacific Railroad which held that a private corporation
>was a natural person under the U.S. Constitution. The result, she says, is
>that corporations "now dominate the public and private life of our
>society, defining the economic, cultural and political agenda for humans
>and all other living things."
>
>Chute wants corporations out of politics and out of the business of
>influencing government.
>
>When asked how close Monks is to Chute, he responds -- "at the core, we
>are almost twins."
>
>"We ultimately come down on the integrity of the individual," Monks said.
>"What I'm saying is that the corporate structure has enabled people to
>increase wealth, increase productivity, increase jobs, increase relief
>from pain, increase life expectancy."
>
>Chute disagrees. "She says to me -- Robert, maybe 100 million Americans
>own stock in corporations," Monks relates. "But that leaves 150 million
>who do not. Her view is that my concern with trying to reform the
>corporation is misplaced and that the corporation should be abolished
>because it is fundamentally an instrument of coercion."
>
>Monks asked Chute to give a quote for his book, which she did. Monks put
>the quote at the front of the book, alongside praisworthy quotes from
>corporate directors and executives. This is what she said:
>
>"Well, I myself prefer to build a new barn and call it democracy. But if
>the not-so-idle-rich corporate elite wants to do a little patching and
>puttying on the old one in order to save it a bit longer, they might as
>well read Robert's book to get some helpful renovating ideas. But if
>faceless financiers and their tool, the corporation, aren't completely out
>of our lobbies, out of all campaigns, and out of our constitution soon,
>looks like We, the People are going to come in the middle of the night
>with a can of gasoline in every hand and one fat match."
>
>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.
>
>(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
>
