In a piece titled, The Artificiality of Corporations, the Daily Bell notes that the modern corporation is a relatively new Anglo-American invention. I believe the primacy of this artificial construct -the corporation – to our modern political discourse and economic reality backs our argument that rather than ‘Modern Austrian’ as the author calls them, we should name it – the American School, a new official branch of economic theory.
We no longer live in a time of the long process of the fall of the divine right of Kings (from John Locke to Adam Smith to Frédéric Bastiat); nor do we live in a time (as did Menger, Mises and Hayek) when the great Russian and Austrian-Hungarian empires were collapsing and tens of millions of peasants were suddenly free to empower mad men with mad ideologies who had stepped into the post-emperor power vacuum.
We live in our own time of a different sort of world order and reality to those that came before. And yet we have limited ourselves to an ideological and economic framework for a time of emperors who ruled over a world of less than a billion people. You can posit your own theories below as to why we have not moved on.
But if you want to start examining where we are today, it helps to look to the past to see what we as a nation thought previously about certain matters; so here is what Jefferson said on corporations:
Thomas Jefferson apparently had no higher admiration for corporations than central banks. “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816.
Obviously, Jefferson’s opinion expressed above would not find support from the American School today, which would assert instead that the corporation is merely the “free associations of individuals pooling their capital” and that it is, in fact, the evil of government that would seek to challenge the power of corporations – almost the exact opposite of what Jefferson had opined in 1816.
Thomas Jefferson also wrote in 1825 in a private letter to William Branch Giles; something that sounds like what Occupy Wall Street would have been in a pre-American School time:
[The younger generation] having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76, now look to a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and monied incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.”
Notice that this dynamic is something you continue to see at the competing party conferences – each team has their favored branch of corporation – the Tea Party loves their Military Industrial Complex and want more power and money diverted to these corporations. The Dems want more power and money diverted to the copyright and intellectual property cartels. And the old school Republican want it all diverted to Big Oil and Big Ag. But united they all are in placing the corporation above all else, and presided over by an aristocracy of political families and/or politicians bestowed with an almost divine right, certainly an existence beyond the laws of mere mortals.
No single corporation should be allowed to grow larger than the smallest state; it is not healthy to have private corporations that are more powerfull than the smallest state.
Corporatism has to die.
“How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking “The Dodge Rebellion”? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with “Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules”? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It’s almost a history lesson: I’m starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans’ biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It’d be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting.” –DF Wallace
‘I have no idea what we do. As citizens we cede more and more of our autonomy, but if we the government take away citizens’ freedom to cede their autonomy we’re now taking away their autonomy. It’s a paradox. Citizens are constitutionally empowered to choose to default and leave the decisions to corporations and a government we expect to control them. Corporations are getting better and better at seducing us into thinking the way they think—of profits as the telos and responsibility as something to be enshrined in symbol and evaded in reality. Cleverness as opposed to wisdom. Wanting and having instead of thinking and making. We cannot stop it. I suspect what’ll happen is that there will be some sort of disaster—depression, hyperinflation—and then it’ll be showtime: We’ll either wake up and retake our freedom or we’ll fall apart utterly. Like Rome—conqueror of its own people.’ –DF Wallace
Shall I carry on with the quotations?
German things that need fixing :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayreuth_Festspielhaus#Structural_Problems
In January 2012 it was announced that the building of the Festspielhaus may need expenditure of as much as €25m. for a thorough restoration. Wolfgang Wagner was quoted as saying ‘Unless something happens soon, the building will fall down’
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Addendum :: http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/01/what-it-will-cost-to-save-bayreuth-from-demolition.html
How far does corporatism have to go before Americans GET IT: corporate prisons, corporate hospitals, corporate toll roads, corporate television and radio and newspapers not telling it like it is any more, corporate schools, corporate farms, a corporate Army Navy and Air Force, and corporate (fucking) homeland security!!! It’s that damn BIG GOVERNMENT — that’s the problem. Privatize everything, start goose stepping and let’s get dystopia going, shall we.
Thanks Stacy, for posting such a great piece. I have minor contentions with the Daily Bell article, but overall it’s a humdinger, loved it and I look forward to reading Gangs of America by Tom Nace. I enjoyed even better what you’ve written here. I regret not having more time to comment right now as it is a subject I’ve held dear for many years. I remember slipping somewhat into obsession after reading this Peter Kellman article in March of 2000. He really nailed sourcing the timeline I was looking for…
http://poclad.org/BWA/2000/BWA_2000_MAR.html#2
sorry Ted
that’s Ted Nace [not Tom]
here’s a little RATM to compensate…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-58-36lSqG4
If you want to read the anti-corporation quote in full context, go here (it comes at the end):
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t3pv6bn68;seq=93;skin=mobile#page/68/mode/2up
I’ve always viewed William’s 1060′s conquest of England as a corporate enterprise. Shares were sold, charters were wrought, capital (money, supplies, weapons, horses, draught and feedstock, …) was raised and invested. Bankers and personal fortunes – great and small – scuttling about every nook and cranny. Oh, and lawyers/clerics. The biggest and the best. The continued enterprise into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland then seems to be, possibly, natural extensions of habit. And, necessary to pay off the interest on the original debts. Fast forward into the “wool wars”, he “Florin printing” dispute … ect.
More recently, The East India Company has been portrayed as model and example of a Corporate Entity. What little I’ve seen seems to fit. All the way up to the 20th Century ‘Banana Republics’.
Yes, the Modern Corporation does have deep roots, as you eloquently pointed out. And I can’t help but agree profoundly that :” … this dynamic is something you continue to see at the competing party conferences – each team has their favored branch of corporation – the Tea Party loves their Military Industrial Complex and want more power and money diverted to these corporations. The Dems want more power and money diverted to the copyright and intellectual property cartels. And the old school Republican want it all diverted to Big Oil and Big Ag. But united they all are in placing the corporation above all else, and presided over by an aristocracy of political families and/or politicians bestowed with an almost divine right, certainly an existence beyond the laws of mere mortals. …”
There is a genealogy to the corporation and it is rooted in the political formation of the Papal State and what it means to embody an office. The role of the office (officium) is the role of duty. What does it mean to bear or hold office? What does it mean when a president makes a decision based not on personal volition but based on the authority of “the office”? A prostitute holds a type of office. She/he does actions not because of what she/he thinks what one should or shouldn’t do. The prostitute does everything she/he has to do, on what constitutes being a prostitute. This constitutes a form of life or a life according to a rule. The same can be described about the institutional structures of corporate life. The CEO needs to make a profit based on the institutional framework of the corporation. If one doesn’t make a profit, the person will be replaced and the cycle continues. This is the essence of de-subjectification.
“But the whole dark genius of corporations is that they allow for individual reward without individual obligation. The workers’ obligations are to the executives, and the executives’ obligations are to the CEO, and the CEO’s obligation is to the Board of Directors, and the Board’s obligation is to the stockholders, who are also the same customers the corporation will screw over at the very earliest opportunity in the name of profit, which profits are distributed as dividends to the very stockholder-slash-customers they’ve been fucking over in their own name. It’s like a fugue of evaded responsibility.” –DF Wallace
@Gregers – great quotes…what’s the source???
@Bullionaire
The late great David Foster Wallace, some from his posthumous novel Pale King and some from his other papers. I’d say that last one about encapsulates it all. So much for ‘Western individualism’.
And to those aiding and abetting corporate fascists, are those who allow advertising to be sold on their you tube, ect, accounts. First it was cable, pay and you won’t have to watch endless brain dead commercial brainwashing. Cable sold out for more money, you lose. Now it’s the internet. You can’t access most sites or videos without having to be bombarded with this crap. I’m sick of it!
Today Wayne Madsen had a excellent comment on ending the colonization of the South Pacific Islands:
“Its time to decolonize the South Pacific and we can start with our maps, which should be replaced with the names Aotearoa (New Zealand), Kuki Airani (Cook Islands), Ka Lahui Hawai’i (Hawaii), Guahan (Guam), Hiti Au Revareva (Pitcairn), Aolepan Aorokin Mejal (Marshall Islands), Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Uvea and Futuna (Wallis and Futuna), Te Henua Kenana (Marquesas Islands), Papua (Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya).”:)
Great contribution, Stacy, and also commenters. Thank you!
For some reason, this comes to mind:
Toddler’s Creed
If it’s mine, it’s mine.
If it’s yours, it’s mine.
If I like it, it’s mine.
If I can take it from you, it’s mine.
If I’m playing with something, ALL the pieces are mine.
If I think it’s mine, it’s mine.
If I saw it first, it’s mine.
If I had it and put it down, it’s still mine.
If you had it and put it down, it’s now mine.
If it looks like the one I have at home, it’s mine.
If it’s broken, it’s yours.