What is a democratic corporatocracy?

[sweetheart]

We inherit today a world run by corporations, that has been that way
for over half a century, and arguably for over a century. There is an
element of the left that wants to roll this back and end corporate
power altogether. However, perhaps it is running against the tide,
and will never ever achieve mainstream acceptance to stand by such a
view.

So it begs that we ask exactly what sort of corporatism we stand for,
and on this, i can't help but feel that the left is entirely divided,
more substantitively than on any other issue. It is not a question of
whether we are behind capitalism, but how we accept governing
corporations, and what rights should these entities have. And how
do those rights contrast to those of individuals which are the core
legal entities of our civilization.

The washington consensus is broken, but what consensus will replace it
when we finally ditch the rabble that has hyjakked the congress. What
happens when the real powerful people of the USA assert their will,
and take back the congress to suit the real people, really once and
for all.

Is it simply a matter of removing corporate personhood, as some seem
to think? Would that be enough? We can't erase wall street from the
equation, whatever alternative that is proposed must work within the
framework existing today, just how does a benign agent reform the
institutions today, to create a new internationalist world where
the global deal on offer is better than the one in their own back yard.

Until then, federalism and the corporate sentiments for global markets
will be at loggerheads with a localist thinking that is on the rise
the world over on seeing the failures of corporate fascism bush-style.

A member of the peoples federal reserve could sit on the board of every
american company and act as a non-shareholder veto vote in every
corporate boardroom of every public company. There are corporate
governance changes that could be made that would indeed radically
shift the intentions of corporate mind. What do you propose as
the corporate platform of the new 2008 democratic lashback that takes
back all 3 branches of the US government when this bush addiction
crashes out.

[Warpy]

1. The corporatocracy was bearable

when both unions and government stood in an adversarial position to them and provided a counterbalance to their incredible power.

Well, the unions have largely been destroyed by the fools on the right who approve of misnamed "right to work" laws and the bigger fools who refuse to enforce labor laws all over the country and the government is tucked into bed with the corporations through both parties and their insatiable desire for campaign funds, so their power is now unchecked.

It's becoming increasingly obvious why we needed unions and the heavy hand of regulatory government. Without them, this is a totalitarian country.

Let's just hope the revolution to overthrow the present tyranny is a peaceful one.

[sweetheart]

3. What if we ran "with" the ball

There is talk of re-forming the unions. Then i hear the right's
complaint's about the unions, and i agree with them. Unions enforce
mediocrity. They reward heard thinking over creative dynamism, by
the nature of organizational power. That is my opinion, and i'm willing
to be convinced i'm wrong about that.

I think we need to conceive of that counterbalance in a way that outwits
the right. What if we took the accounting statutes to heart or
make the federal reserve a public, elected body and usurp entirely
the power of the SEC updating Sarbanes Oxley with a bill with TEETH,
putting a civil servant pubic agent on the board of all public
corporations with the right of Veto, line item and total over corporate
budget allocations. This means a public agent could terminate staff
who abuse the law by executive order from a public agent.

We could assert the power of labour through a new kind of regulator
at the IRS. Corporate america could be monitored from its real-time
financial allocations, and checkpointed from within by labour from
without. I think the democrats need to not only out-frame the republicans
we need to outthink them and make a more creative, lightweight way of
achieving this regulation, so that we can win the next election by
taking all small "c" fiscal conservatives.

Am i making sense, at all in the ball park? I realize that the
idea is amateurish, but is there any way to creatively reassert the
ideals of unioins in our modern age where people work so many jobs
that they're between jobs every few years, and between unions, that
unions are archaic already due to shoort employment. Their political
power may never come back. Wishing for them, is to expect a
marxist revolution in a republican MSM media controlled cable TV
world... not bloody likely.

We need to assert the people's will through pure political power,
and do a better job than unions would ever achieve from within
the white house and the congress. There are ways to rewrite the
corproate charter laws, and the financial system that could make
a "citizens" washington consensus to replace the dead corporate one.

[Deja Q]

2. Sounds more like an oligarchic plutocracy to me...

[izzybeans]

4. I thought it was a rhetorical question...I would have answered, "Oxymoron"

[sweetheart]

6. The status quo is indeed an oxymoron

But could it become NOT one?

[izzybeans]

7. Well Marx said it could, but that's been put in a holding pattern.

I say, let's hope so.

[sweetheart]

11. But we ARE karl marx here in 2005

All the words of 1850's authorities have been written leaving us with
today's revisionism. Marx relied on unions taking it back. What if we
took it back through a different organizational paradigm, is it then
that the rest of marx's work holds still true?

It seems the second law of empire thermodynamics is in conflict with
marxism, that the presumption that things could get better or be different
clashes with today, now, flexible labour force, corporate dominion,
a state that's been at war in one way or another, in various slave
projects for half a century, destroying the bargaining power of labour
with an allmighty military industrial complex that is the basis for
the social darwinist view on what defines a modern civilization.

[izzybeans]

12. I can't disagree with anything you have said thus far. I'm listening. nt

[sweetheart]

5. And if it is that

Does the public need to own it, to make it listen to teh public's will?
That is the shareholder-value maxim that puts corporate will at
loggerheads with individual will. We own it so bugger off. ("we", the
plutocratic oligarchs.) Well, if you want to use a bank account or use
the public finance world, courts and other public infrastructure, the
pubic has a right of choice in your actions...
and regulation to date has been opposition regulation, from without,
the labour union with the cudgeons waiting outside the gate fighting
for rights that are easily taken away, as the bush persons are proving
by the day with their rollback of labour gains made over a century.

So cannot the federal interests of labour not be empowered in statute?
Can it be "in opposition" within corporate mind itself, that we are in
a position to direct where a corporate's feet dance when it is walking
across the public common.

Anything else is to "socialize the wealth" that in the commie-paranoid
right creates a total fear and lack of getting along. So fine, keep
your wealth, but you must take oversight by a proactive regulator in
your corporate governance. How else are we gonna get there. As much
as i hear people repeating last century's mantras about unions, the
"flexible labour" revolution has run too far.

[bridgit]

8. "Giant corporations govern, even though they are mentioned...

"...nowhere in our Constitution or Bill of Rights. So when corporations govern, democracy is nowhere to be found. There is something else: when people live in a culture defined by corporate values, common sense evaporates. We stop trusting our own eyes, ears, and feelings. Our minds become colonized."

http://www.poclad.org

[sweetheart]

9. The cartoons from poclad

They tell a better story than writing:















and the one that is not true:


The view of stripping corporate personhood, NAFTA and the WTO was only
really championed by dennis kucinich in the last poll, a guy for all
his popularity on DU was not mainstream Democratic. Are you saying
there is no political position short of what the DLC would call
radical anticorporatism?

[bridgit]

10. the matter requires vast parse & nuance...

corporate entities are encased within corporate law. therein, they are granted their very own forms of inalienable rights, certain of which very above & beyond, and so, as a practical matter, super-cede personal, civil rights.

designed as are onions yet when after having been peeled; there is no one person there. still, LLC, is not a frivolous concept. merely one easily circumvented; again, by law.

"kill all the lawyers" it has been recommended.

systems predicated upon avarice are, sadly, not illegal at least, unless & until they are caught. the people have remedy...it is just that it is so very expensive to pray for up against a corporate treasury.

there is no substitute for enlightened citizenry. certain of whom may only be able to find their way into corporate settings where they may be able to entertain notions of betterment for humanity, after the current system, with attending stock portfolios predicated upon fossil fuels & the cornering of 'staple' commodities & futures, has been maturated. they will not let go without their return. they will squander the blood & treasure of others to do so. and you can believe that with a quickness. only then will this current batch of corporate avarice release us from their invisible, unenlightened hand. again imo.

personally, i await the next level of physics that will open doors through which current corporate thinking will not be able to convey themselves without a critical re-thinking of what it is to be creatively-whole of corporate mind & body.

[sweetheart]

15. Please explain this:

i await the next level of physics that will open doors through which current corporate thinking will not be able to convey themselves without a critical re-thinking of what it is to be creatively-whole of corporate mind & body.

Enlightened democrat, ya lost me with that one. :-)

What i get from your comment is that corporate inter-communications
between intelligent agents (people), will revolutionize the organizational mind.

But you said "physics" which is ... quantum special relativity, so
perhaps you mean a quantum change in awareness? And are we not doing
this critical re-thinking right here?

If you print the punchline, the joke can be written.

[bridgit]

19. "a quantum change in awareness"...

is required. are you not aware of the re-sale value of hybrid cars :shrug: contained within that fact are the seeds of what you will sooner understand. glimpse the future...it approaches. you need be ready. we all need be ready. advances are being made throughout the spectrum http://www.nrel.gov tit for tat, back & forth at this level is what has made these others about which you are so concerned take the cake & the icing too.

here's your punchline: i've seen the future & it will be.

[sweetheart]

28. You sound like a dominionist

Some Jehovah's Witnesses shared a similar insight to yours the other
day, that god will come down and fix everything, the good will be
elevated over the wicked and god's dominion of perfect government will
come down from the sky and fix everything.

A mysterious saviour-awakening, technology-enlightenment will come and
we'll all be saved.

You speak with the same belief that you are "right" that the
neo-christians speak with, and we are left with politics by faith,
veiled in riddles like pearls before swine.

Smart seers have some work to do painting in the bridge over the
yawning chasm of what amounts to pure faith supported by
idealistic websites. Are we reduced to faith politics, like so
many generations before us?

[bridgit]

29. bwahahahaha....

:rofl:
"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs (it is said) built the Ark; professionals built the Titanic."

http://courtskinner.com/solari/Rise.htm
http://www.parsons.com/about/ann_rpt/index.html

"Let’s make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods…to sit on the front steps – whether it’s a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city – and talk to our neighbors" ~ Harvey Milk

you cannot possibly think your asides speak to the fact that resources will somehow expunge themselves from the earth, coalesce, and rend themselves into product by way of expired, antique, and long since disproved models of corporate endeavor. that will & does require labor, protracted, creative & executable logistics; and this is where forward thinking corporations are able to be seen as valuable. welcome to the world of innovation.

simply casting others with whom you are not in agreement, or whom have not 'stroked your notion' to your satisfaction as: "right" (said with so bush-like a smirking that), "dominionist", and the like, is, rather, imho, the refuge of a neo-scoundrel.

still, good luck to you in your every future endeavor :kick:

"The health of a State depends on a due quantity and regular circulation of cash as much as the health of an animal body depends upon the due quantity and regular circulation of the blood." ~ Alexander Hamilton, 1st Secretary of the Treasury

let dean be dean :thumbsup:

[sweetheart]

30. Not casting glances

I merely point out that your framing is the same technique as those
that the royal "we" deplore, left dominionism, wise pearls of faith.

We don't disagree, except in style, that you're style in our chats has
been that of the superintelligent omniscient seer. It is a style that
i used myself for a few thousand posts until i realized that it is
harder for most folks to read. So i'm asking beyond your pretense
of wise woman, to get a bit more common and expleaaiinn yerself so that
we are not just dominionists of anothter sort.

I've spent over a decade in the heart of wall street and the city of
london, and i am deeply familiar with the real business
practices used by banks and international finance to execute the
exploitation; this corporatism. I've formed and sold companies as well
and am more than familiar with "innovation". MY writing style is
certainly fallible, but i'm quite sincere in the wish that we find a
way to move forward without wishing for long lost models of marxist
localism, global unions and grassroots doorstep democracy that just
ain't happening in our age of cable TV addiction. Howard Dean may
indeed speak that truth, but it is, and will likely never be, spoken
on the doorsteps.

You've approached discussing with moi as somewhat zero sum, as you are
right and wise, and i an unwise foolish ass. I've no problem taking
that as true if you explain yourself. Just the left-dominionism,
however well founded, does not wash with regular common folk thinkin'
and that's all i was saying.

Enlightenment, as much as i've encountered can be intellectual, that
a person can indeed be all knowing and profoundly wise, deeply
awake that their every motion is a tsunami of consciousness. It is
also a sensible awakeness of present reality, that most of america
is deeply uneducated, and suffering terribly for a vision of a future
of goodwill, that is not cynical.

I'm asking you, not the surface, but the deepest intent, bridgit,
for your guidance and advise... and if its just a few literate
phrases, then so be it, but surely the mind that can frame those
fragments can come up with... ; as much as some of mozart's most
loved works were those he dumbed down for general consumption...

Without the california cynicism, and the small-wishful thinking that
is totally a million years out from S&P500, have you some pearls that
don't bounce?

May all your heart wishes and intents become reality in this world.

namaste,
-s

[IChing]

14. Love Wuerker's cartoons thanks

California thinks a little different that the DLC

[annabanana]

18. Great 'toons!

thanks

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. an oxymoron.. how can a big business-run state truly be democratic?

[bridgit]

16. agreed, no-less than part of my point...

under current conditions imo, 'democratic corporatocracy' is a form of anathema, an oxymoron

[sweetheart]

17. By the authority of representative democracy.

Plato was right and direct democracy is a dangerous populist problem,
and what we have in this lage age of humanity is a vastly different
form of representative democracy AFTER an industrial revolution that
changed EVERYTHING in terms of social expectation.

Corporate society CAN be governed. It IS governed, and all that needs
happen, is that the forces that govern it answer to the will of the
people.

[izzybeans]

20. Why was plato right about "direct democracy"?

I'm losing you here. I've felt this was Plato's flaw. His hidden tendency to uphold the status quo and preserve the mythical "rightful place" of leaders who pretend to be beyond the agora (Socrates smashes the sophists in the dialogues with the tools of reason, tools that when applied to himself, he fails to measure up). This place is something you and I would be locked out of under Plato's reasoning, because we are the dangerous populist problem personified. Unless of course you happen to be a philosopher king hiding behind your user name.

This is the same fascist tendency that Leo Strauss has made famous with his quasi-mentorship connection to a few of the PNACers. In short the philosopher king fails through a tragically comedic flaw (usually an ego-blindness-The Prince can not see his own reflection in the mirror, but feels he knows how to manipulate everyone else). (S)he does not realize (s)he is just a shadowmaker that makes the bonds of the poeple of the agora harder to break.


In the inverse:

"If there is hope it lies with the proles"-this socialist (Orewellian) slogan, now a cliche, champions the dangerous populace (the proletariat) as the one corporeal entity that can govern the corporation.

What shall keep the proles from becoming drunk with power and reproducing the same system?

Here we have two polar opposite philosophies. Hope perhaps lies somewhere in between, where the alienated and exploiter meet as equals.

How shall we govern the corporation that does not diminish that hope, and who shall do the governering? Of course, by what means can we adequately perform such a task? Beyond that, how to sustain it and make it durable?

I'm still listening.

[sweetheart]

25. blind capitain

Plato's flaw, IMO, is a misunderstanding of what Socrates taught
regarding enlightenment, and it is perpetuated through the socratic
dilemma. That aside, you know the parable of the "limited" sea
capitain from "the republic" Some sailors think that they know all about steering a ship. Even though
they have never been taught, they maintain that it is the sort of thing every
man has a talent for, and that it cannot be taught. Each man considers himself
fully capable (of making political decisions). Those sailors get the captain
drunk and they take over the ship. Whoever goes along with their mutiny (the
democratic politician, responsible to the "people"), is rewarded with the
honorific title of "sailor, "pilot" or "able seaman" (as we might call a man
who does this in public life, catering to our whims, a "great statesman"). A
good pilot, however, must know all sorts of things about meteorology (so he
can predict what the winds will be) and astronomy (so he can navigate by the
stars). How would such a true pilot be treated by the mutineers? Wouldn't
they call him a star-gazer and a good-for-nothing?

http://www.msu.org/ethics/content_ethics/texts/plato/plato_republic.html

In so many words, he shows what was the fatal flaw of athenian
democracy (and yes of course there was the "little" fact that it
was not the least bit a true democracy given its non-enfranchisement
of women and slaves!! - that truth aside), is this tendency to follow
the mass of public inertia over sound navigation.

This is, IMO what we're seeing today with the media-takeover of
the american political stage.

We empower those who are wiser than ourselves to be charged with
leadership, and even this is flawed, but at least somewhat tempered
beyond the mechanism of mass populism plato was critiquing.

However in a more pragmatic sense, a corporation is ruled by a set
of bylaws through which the shareholders effect their powers to
direct the agency of the management. To date, the mechanisms of
controlling corporate power, have come from outside the circle,
from outside the factory gates, strikes and the corporate wars against
people. I'm saying, that if we presume for a second, what will be
the fact in not long given the republican trajectory towards total
lack of gravitas and histronic irrelevance, that the democrats will
be back in power BIG TIME, and we will be able to re-write the
corporate charter that corporations follow the public interest from
within.

The republican meme has so toxified the public trust of gvernment,
that is the very lifeblood of a social democrat, that we reject the
power of government to make wise decisions on our behalf by the mere
fact of the meme... one that is not "ours".

What diminishes hope is the toxic meme of the repukes that all
government is corrupt, and antagonistic to the will of the people.
It is the very unbridled corporate will that spreads that meme to
discourage focus on the only realistic way of bridling the horse.

[aion]

26. In defense of Plato

Plato and Socrates were influentual after the fact. They were still born into a system not of their own making.

A democracy cannot work well if the population is illogical and uninformed. You could argue, perhaps, that mob rule is somehow good in and of itself, but you probably wouldn't even support that conclusion yourself. Would republicans be more 'truthful' if they had 99% of the populace behind them? They'd be just as much 'in error', would they not?

As I understand Plato's argument in the Republic, Governments do not operate in a moral sphere. Other nations do not act as such with regard to us, and consequently it is foolish to require that our government operate with one (or both) hands tied behind its back.

My own personal observations indicate to me that the republican 'true believers' are guilty of fallacies which stem from their misunderstanding of 'justified true belief.'

(False->True) = False

Some will recognize that as "You cannot proceed from a false premise (even if your conclusion/guess turns out to be true)."

[radio4progressives]

21. Abolish Corporate Personhood !

The Santa Clara Blues:
Corporate Personhood versus Democracy by William Meyers

read article: http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

(emphasis mine)

Corporations are artificial entities owned by stockholders, who may be humans or other corporations. They are required by law to have officers and a board of directors (in small corporations these may all be the same people). In effect the corporation is a collective of individuals with a special legal status and privileges not given to ordinary unincorporated businesses or groups of individuals.

Obviously a corporation is itself no more a person (though it is owned and staffed by persons) than a locomotive or a mob. So why, in the USA, is a corporation considered to be a person under law?

That this idea has the force of law both resulted from the power and wealth of the class of people who owned corporations, and resulted in their even greater power and wealth. Corporate constitutional rights effectively invert the relationship between the government and the corporations. Recognized as persons, corporations lose much of their status as subjects of the government. Although artificial creations of their owners and the governments, as legal persons they have a degree of immunity to government supervision. Endowed with the court-recognized right to influence both elections and the law-making process, corporations now dominate not just the U. S. economy, but the government itself.

The History of Corporate Personhood

Corporations were detested by the colonial rebels in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence severed the States from Great Britain. There had been only a few corporations in colonial America, but they had been very powerful. The Dutch West India Company had founded New York. Corporations had effectively governed Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. The political history of the colonies up until 1776 was largely one of conflict between citizens trying to establish rule by elected government and the corporations or King ruling through appointed governors

---->>>%<Snip!


Until 1886 corporations were not considered persons.
It was clear what they were: artificial creations of their owners and the state legislatures. They were regulated and taxed. They could sue and be sued. They were subject to all of the laws of the land as well as any restrictions placed in their charters. But from 1819 until 1886 the wealthiest business people sought to use the Federal government, particularly the courts, to get their corporations out from under the control of the states and their citizens.

---->>>%<Snip!

In 1886 the supreme court justices were Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, Joseph P. Bradley, John M. Harlan, Stanley Matthews, William B. Woods, Samuel Blatchford, Horace Gray, and chief justice Morrison. R. Waite. Never heard of a one of them? These men subjected African Americans to a century of Jim Crow discrimination; they made corporations into a vehicle for the wealthy elite to control the economy and the government; they vastly increased the power of the Supreme Court itself over elected government officials. How quaint they are forgotten names. In all fairness, Justice Harlan dissented from the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision <163 U.S. 537 (1896)>, which, as he said, effectively denied the protection of the 14th Amendment to the very group of people (former slaves and their descendants) for whom it was designed.

In 1868 the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution had become law. Section 1 of that Amendment states:

SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

"The one pervading purpose . . . was the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppression of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him." That is exactly what Justice Samuel F. Miller said in 1873 in one of the first Supreme Court opinions to rule on the 14th Amendment. <83 U.S. 36, 81 (1873)>

But the wealthy, powerful men who owned corporations wanted more power for their corporations. Their lawyers came up with the idea that corporations, which might be said to be groups of persons (though one person might in turn belong to (own stock in) many corporations), should have the same constitutional rights as persons themselves. If they could get the courts to agree that corporations were persons, they could assert that the States, which had chartered the corporations, would then be constrained by the 14th Amendment from exercising power over the corporations.

--->>>>%<Snip!

The need to be freed from legislative and judicial constraints, combined with the use of the word "person" in the U.S. Constitution and the concept of the "artificial person," led to the argument that these "artificial persons" were "persons" with an inconsequential "artificial" adjective appended. If it could be made so, if the courts would accept that corporations were among the "persons" talked about by the U.S. Constitution, then the corporations would gain considerably more leverage against legal restraint.

These arguments were made by corporate lawyers at the State level, in court after court, and many judges, being former corporate attorneys and usually at least moderately wealthy themselves, were sympathetic to any argument that would strengthen corporations. There was a national campaign to get the legal establishment to accept that corporations were persons. This cumulated in the Santa Clara decision of 1886, which has been used as the precedent for all rulings about corporate personhood since then.


Please read the full story here: http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

==========================================

http://www.jashford.com/Pages/worldcorps.html

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
-President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins), quoted in "The Lincoln Encyclopedia", Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)


This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.
- Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876

Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the Democratic State itself.
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt


We can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.
- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

The paramount...issue of the day is whether the people will submit to be ruled by the ever-grasping and never satisfied corporations.
- The Humboldt County Democratic Party platform of 1882

Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.
-Andrew Young, quoted in Money Talks

Growing up in America, we were taught that we inherited a democracy. No one told us that we ourselves had to create one.
- Frances Moore Lappe

Few would argue that corporations today are not only ubiquitous but have enormous power over our lives. Was it always like this? How did it get to be this way? And what are the implications of this situation for democracy? … Indeed, so much power and wealth has been amassed by corporations that they can be said to govern, presenting a mortal threat to our body politic. To use a medical analogy, when a surgeon cuts out a cancer, it's not to punish the cancer, it's to save the body. If we wish to prevent the total demise of democracy - rule by the people - then we must return corporations to their subservient role.

– Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

[radio4progressives]

22. Abolish Corporate Personhood !

The Santa Clara Blues:
Corporate Personhood versus Democracy by William Meyers

read article: http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

(emphasis mine)

Corporations are artificial entities owned by stockholders, who may be humans or other corporations. They are required by law to have officers and a board of directors (in small corporations these may all be the same people). In effect the corporation is a collective of individuals with a special legal status and privileges not given to ordinary unincorporated businesses or groups of individuals.

Obviously a corporation is itself no more a person (though it is owned and staffed by persons) than a locomotive or a mob. So why, in the USA, is a corporation considered to be a person under law?

That this idea has the force of law both resulted from the power and wealth of the class of people who owned corporations, and resulted in their even greater power and wealth. Corporate constitutional rights effectively invert the relationship between the government and the corporations. Recognized as persons, corporations lose much of their status as subjects of the government. Although artificial creations of their owners and the governments, as legal persons they have a degree of immunity to government supervision. Endowed with the court-recognized right to influence both elections and the law-making process, corporations now dominate not just the U. S. economy, but the government itself.

The History of Corporate Personhood

Corporations were detested by the colonial rebels in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence severed the States from Great Britain. There had been only a few corporations in colonial America, but they had been very powerful. The Dutch West India Company had founded New York. Corporations had effectively governed Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. The political history of the colonies up until 1776 was largely one of conflict between citizens trying to establish rule by elected government and the corporations or King ruling through appointed governors

---->>>%<Snip!


Until 1886 corporations were not considered persons.
It was clear what they were: artificial creations of their owners and the state legislatures. They were regulated and taxed. They could sue and be sued. They were subject to all of the laws of the land as well as any restrictions placed in their charters. But from 1819 until 1886 the wealthiest business people sought to use the Federal government, particularly the courts, to get their corporations out from under the control of the states and their citizens.

---->>>%<Snip!

In 1886 the supreme court justices were Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, Joseph P. Bradley, John M. Harlan, Stanley Matthews, William B. Woods, Samuel Blatchford, Horace Gray, and chief justice Morrison. R. Waite. Never heard of a one of them? These men subjected African Americans to a century of Jim Crow discrimination; they made corporations into a vehicle for the wealthy elite to control the economy and the government; they vastly increased the power of the Supreme Court itself over elected government officials. How quaint they are forgotten names. In all fairness, Justice Harlan dissented from the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision <163 U.S. 537 (1896)>, which, as he said, effectively denied the protection of the 14th Amendment to the very group of people (former slaves and their descendants) for whom it was designed.

In 1868 the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution had become law. Section 1 of that Amendment states:

SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

"The one pervading purpose . . . was the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppression of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him." That is exactly what Justice Samuel F. Miller said in 1873 in one of the first Supreme Court opinions to rule on the 14th Amendment. <83 U.S. 36, 81 (1873)>

But the wealthy, powerful men who owned corporations wanted more power for their corporations. Their lawyers came up with the idea that corporations, which might be said to be groups of persons (though one person might in turn belong to (own stock in) many corporations), should have the same constitutional rights as persons themselves. If they could get the courts to agree that corporations were persons, they could assert that the States, which had chartered the corporations, would then be constrained by the 14th Amendment from exercising power over the corporations.

--->>>>%<Snip!

The need to be freed from legislative and judicial constraints, combined with the use of the word "person" in the U.S. Constitution and the concept of the "artificial person," led to the argument that these "artificial persons" were "persons" with an inconsequential "artificial" adjective appended. If it could be made so, if the courts would accept that corporations were among the "persons" talked about by the U.S. Constitution, then the corporations would gain considerably more leverage against legal restraint.

These arguments were made by corporate lawyers at the State level, in court after court, and many judges, being former corporate attorneys and usually at least moderately wealthy themselves, were sympathetic to any argument that would strengthen corporations. There was a national campaign to get the legal establishment to accept that corporations were persons. This cumulated in the Santa Clara decision of 1886, which has been used as the precedent for all rulings about corporate personhood since then.


Please read the full story here: http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

==========================================

http://www.jashford.com/Pages/worldcorps.html

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
-President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins), quoted in "The Lincoln Encyclopedia", Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)


This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.
- Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876

Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the Democratic State itself.
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt


We can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.
- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

The paramount...issue of the day is whether the people will submit to be ruled by the ever-grasping and never satisfied corporations.
- The Humboldt County Democratic Party platform of 1882

Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.
-Andrew Young, quoted in Money Talks

Growing up in America, we were taught that we inherited a democracy. No one told us that we ourselves had to create one.
- Frances Moore Lappe

Few would argue that corporations today are not only ubiquitous but have enormous power over our lives. Was it always like this? How did it get to be this way? And what are the implications of this situation for democracy? … Indeed, so much power and wealth has been amassed by corporations that they can be said to govern, presenting a mortal threat to our body politic. To use a medical analogy, when a surgeon cuts out a cancer, it's not to punish the cancer, it's to save the body. If we wish to prevent the total demise of democracy - rule by the people - then we must return corporations to their subservient role.

– Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

[radio4progressives]

23. Abolish Corporate Personhood !

The Santa Clara Blues:
Corporate Personhood versus Democracy by William Meyers

read article: http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

(emphasis mine)

Corporations are artificial entities owned by stockholders, who may be humans or other corporations. They are required by law to have officers and a board of directors (in small corporations these may all be the same people). In effect the corporation is a collective of individuals with a special legal status and privileges not given to ordinary unincorporated businesses or groups of individuals.

Obviously a corporation is itself no more a person (though it is owned and staffed by persons) than a locomotive or a mob. So why, in the USA, is a corporation considered to be a person under law?

That this idea has the force of law both resulted from the power and wealth of the class of people who owned corporations, and resulted in their even greater power and wealth. Corporate constitutional rights effectively invert the relationship between the government and the corporations. Recognized as persons, corporations lose much of their status as subjects of the government. Although artificial creations of their owners and the governments, as legal persons they have a degree of immunity to government supervision. Endowed with the court-recognized right to influence both elections and the law-making process, corporations now dominate not just the U. S. economy, but the government itself.

The History of Corporate Personhood

Corporations were detested by the colonial rebels in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence severed the States from Great Britain. There had been only a few corporations in colonial America, but they had been very powerful. The Dutch West India Company had founded New York. Corporations had effectively governed Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. The political history of the colonies up until 1776 was largely one of conflict between citizens trying to establish rule by elected government and the corporations or King ruling through appointed governors

---->>>%<Snip!


Until 1886 corporations were not considered persons.
It was clear what they were: artificial creations of their owners and the state legislatures. They were regulated and taxed. They could sue and be sued. They were subject to all of the laws of the land as well as any restrictions placed in their charters. But from 1819 until 1886 the wealthiest business people sought to use the Federal government, particularly the courts, to get their corporations out from under the control of the states and their citizens.

---->>>%<Snip!

In 1886 the supreme court justices were Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, Joseph P. Bradley, John M. Harlan, Stanley Matthews, William B. Woods, Samuel Blatchford, Horace Gray, and chief justice Morrison. R. Waite. Never heard of a one of them? These men subjected African Americans to a century of Jim Crow discrimination; they made corporations into a vehicle for the wealthy elite to control the economy and the government; they vastly increased the power of the Supreme Court itself over elected government officials. How quaint they are forgotten names. In all fairness, Justice Harlan dissented from the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision <163 U.S. 537 (1896)>, which, as he said, effectively denied the protection of the 14th Amendment to the very group of people (former slaves and their descendants) for whom it was designed.

In 1868 the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution had become law. Section 1 of that Amendment states:

SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

"The one pervading purpose . . . was the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppression of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him." That is exactly what Justice Samuel F. Miller said in 1873 in one of the first Supreme Court opinions to rule on the 14th Amendment. <83 U.S. 36, 81 (1873)>

But the wealthy, powerful men who owned corporations wanted more power for their corporations. Their lawyers came up with the idea that corporations, which might be said to be groups of persons (though one person might in turn belong to (own stock in) many corporations), should have the same constitutional rights as persons themselves. If they could get the courts to agree that corporations were persons, they could assert that the States, which had chartered the corporations, would then be constrained by the 14th Amendment from exercising power over the corporations.

--->>>>%<Snip!

The need to be freed from legislative and judicial constraints, combined with the use of the word "person" in the U.S. Constitution and the concept of the "artificial person," led to the argument that these "artificial persons" were "persons" with an inconsequential "artificial" adjective appended. If it could be made so, if the courts would accept that corporations were among the "persons" talked about by the U.S. Constitution, then the corporations would gain considerably more leverage against legal restraint.

These arguments were made by corporate lawyers at the State level, in court after court, and many judges, being former corporate attorneys and usually at least moderately wealthy themselves, were sympathetic to any argument that would strengthen corporations. There was a national campaign to get the legal establishment to accept that corporations were persons. This cumulated in the Santa Clara decision of 1886, which has been used as the precedent for all rulings about corporate personhood since then.


Please read the full story here: http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

==========================================

http://www.jashford.com/Pages/worldcorps.html

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
-President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins), quoted in "The Lincoln Encyclopedia", Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)


This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.
- Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876

Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the Democratic State itself.
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt


We can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.
- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

The paramount...issue of the day is whether the people will submit to be ruled by the ever-grasping and never satisfied corporations.
- The Humboldt County Democratic Party platform of 1882

Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.
-Andrew Young, quoted in Money Talks

Growing up in America, we were taught that we inherited a democracy. No one told us that we ourselves had to create one.
- Frances Moore Lappe

Few would argue that corporations today are not only ubiquitous but have enormous power over our lives. Was it always like this? How did it get to be this way? And what are the implications of this situation for democracy? … Indeed, so much power and wealth has been amassed by corporations that they can be said to govern, presenting a mortal threat to our body politic. To use a medical analogy, when a surgeon cuts out a cancer, it's not to punish the cancer, it's to save the body. If we wish to prevent the total demise of democracy - rule by the people - then we must return corporations to their subservient role.

– Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

[radio4progressives]

24. Abolish Corporate Personhood !

The Santa Clara Blues:
Corporate Personhood versus Democracy by William Meyers

read article: http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

(emphasis mine)

Corporations are artificial entities owned by stockholders, who may be humans or other corporations. They are required by law to have officers and a board of directors (in small corporations these may all be the same people). In effect the corporation is a collective of individuals with a special legal status and privileges not given to ordinary unincorporated businesses or groups of individuals.

Obviously a corporation is itself no more a person (though it is owned and staffed by persons) than a locomotive or a mob. So why, in the USA, is a corporation considered to be a person under law?

That this idea has the force of law both resulted from the power and wealth of the class of people who owned corporations, and resulted in their even greater power and wealth. Corporate constitutional rights effectively invert the relationship between the government and the corporations. Recognized as persons, corporations lose much of their status as subjects of the government. Although artificial creations of their owners and the governments, as legal persons they have a degree of immunity to government supervision. Endowed with the court-recognized right to influence both elections and the law-making process, corporations now dominate not just the U. S. economy, but the government itself.

The History of Corporate Personhood

Corporations were detested by the colonial rebels in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence severed the States from Great Britain. There had been only a few corporations in colonial America, but they had been very powerful. The Dutch West India Company had founded New York. Corporations had effectively governed Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. The political history of the colonies up until 1776 was largely one of conflict between citizens trying to establish rule by elected government and the corporations or King ruling through appointed governors

---->>>%<Snip!


Until 1886 corporations were not considered persons.
It was clear what they were: artificial creations of their owners and the state legislatures. They were regulated and taxed. They could sue and be sued. They were subject to all of the laws of the land as well as any restrictions placed in their charters. But from 1819 until 1886 the wealthiest business people sought to use the Federal government, particularly the courts, to get their corporations out from under the control of the states and their citizens.

---->>>%<Snip!

In 1886 the supreme court justices were Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, Joseph P. Bradley, John M. Harlan, Stanley Matthews, William B. Woods, Samuel Blatchford, Horace Gray, and chief justice Morrison. R. Waite. Never heard of a one of them? These men subjected African Americans to a century of Jim Crow discrimination; they made corporations into a vehicle for the wealthy elite to control the economy and the government; they vastly increased the power of the Supreme Court itself over elected government officials. How quaint they are forgotten names. In all fairness, Justice Harlan dissented from the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision <163 U.S. 537 (1896)>, which, as he said, effectively denied the protection of the 14th Amendment to the very group of people (former slaves and their descendants) for whom it was designed.

In 1868 the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution had become law. Section 1 of that Amendment states:

SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

"The one pervading purpose . . . was the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppression of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him." That is exactly what Justice Samuel F. Miller said in 1873 in one of the first Supreme Court opinions to rule on the 14th Amendment. <83 U.S. 36, 81 (1873)>

But the wealthy, powerful men who owned corporations wanted more power for their corporations. Their lawyers came up with the idea that corporations, which might be said to be groups of persons (though one person might in turn belong to (own stock in) many corporations), should have the same constitutional rights as persons themselves. If they could get the courts to agree that corporations were persons, they could assert that the States, which had chartered the corporations, would then be constrained by the 14th Amendment from exercising power over the corporations.

--->>>>%<Snip!

The need to be freed from legislative and judicial constraints, combined with the use of the word "person" in the U.S. Constitution and the concept of the "artificial person," led to the argument that these "artificial persons" were "persons" with an inconsequential "artificial" adjective appended. If it could be made so, if the courts would accept that corporations were among the "persons" talked about by the U.S. Constitution, then the corporations would gain considerably more leverage against legal restraint.

These arguments were made by corporate lawyers at the State level, in court after court, and many judges, being former corporate attorneys and usually at least moderately wealthy themselves, were sympathetic to any argument that would strengthen corporations. There was a national campaign to get the legal establishment to accept that corporations were persons. This cumulated in the Santa Clara decision of 1886, which has been used as the precedent for all rulings about corporate personhood since then.


Please read the full story here: http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

==========================================

http://www.jashford.com/Pages/worldcorps.html

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
-President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins), quoted in "The Lincoln Encyclopedia", Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)


This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.
- Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876

Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the Democratic State itself.
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt


We can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.
- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

The paramount...issue of the day is whether the people will submit to be ruled by the ever-grasping and never satisfied corporations.
- The Humboldt County Democratic Party platform of 1882

Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.
-Andrew Young, quoted in Money Talks

Growing up in America, we were taught that we inherited a democracy. No one told us that we ourselves had to create one.
- Frances Moore Lappe

Few would argue that corporations today are not only ubiquitous but have enormous power over our lives. Was it always like this? How did it get to be this way? And what are the implications of this situation for democracy? … Indeed, so much power and wealth has been amassed by corporations that they can be said to govern, presenting a mortal threat to our body politic. To use a medical analogy, when a surgeon cuts out a cancer, it's not to punish the cancer, it's to save the body. If we wish to prevent the total demise of democracy - rule by the people - then we must return corporations to their subservient role.

– Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

[sweetheart]

27. ... and then?

I agree with revoking corporate personhood, but is that enough?
We still have the federal reserve system, NAFTA, the WTO and a whole
century of neo-colonial corporatism that will not roll back voluntarily.

One could as well argue, that the change of corporate personhood is now
fixed and endemic to america, and that from the POV of today, we could
accept the legal personhood of corporations, and insist that they comply
with the best practices of demcratic governance. If they are persons
under the law, good citizens if you will, then personhood cuts both
ways, and they could be brought to task.

It is a broken drum the left fringe beats every time this topic comes
up, and this thread is no exception. But the fact is, that the vast
majority of the democratic party today, is centrist and corporatist if
you will, a party that is not so radical as to revoke the baisis of
that consensus. Have we nothing more "progressive" than quotes from
dead leaders about the dangers of the military industrial complex that
has grown deeper and deeper roots over past decades?

It seems that this topic is not ready to be discussed. Rather persons
are entrenched behind 100 years old positions they repeat whenever
the topic arises. So we end up with a collection of wise left-
dominionists who believe in the revelation of new technology and global
enlightenment to "save us" instead of jesus christ and we sound so
similar to the republicans, it is no coincidence. Its all about
fantasy futures, and saviours, and impossible events; it is
discouraging to say the least.