How did corporations gain more power than the citizens who created them?
This quote written by William Kalle Lasn and excerpted from Culture Jam on
Third World Traveler
explains the history of how we got into this pickle in the first place. If we created this monster, we should be able to regulate it back to its original purpose. Not an easy task, but think of the problems we could solve...corruption, monopolies, buying politicians, all the consequenses of greed that a necessarily amoral corporation whose sole purpose is to provide profits to its shareholders, must employ in an environment where anything goes.
Here is the excerpt: (go to Third World's site for complete history)
"In the early history of America, the corporation played an important but subordinate role. The people -- not the corporations -- were in control..........The turning point was the Civil War. Corporations made huge profits from procurement contracts and took advantage of the disorder and corruption of the times to buy legislatures, judges and even presidents. Corporations became the masters and keepers of business. President Abraham Lincoln foresaw terrible trouble. Shortly before his death, he warned that "corporations have been enthroned . . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the republic is destroyed.".........Then came a legal event that would not be understood for decades (and remains baffling even today), an event that would change the course of American history. In Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute over a railbed route, the US Supreme Court deemed that a private corporation was a "natural person" under the US Constitution and therefore entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights. Suddenly, corporations enjoyed all the rights and sovereignty previously enjoyed only by the people, including the right to free speech......This 1886 decision ostensibly gave corporations the same powers as private citizens. But considering their vast financial resources, corporations thereafter actually had far more power than any private citizen. They could defend and exploit their rights and freedoms more vigorously than any individual and therefore they were more free. In a single legal stroke, the whole intent of the American Constitution -- that all citizens have one vote, and exercise an equal voice in public debates -- had been undermined. Sixty years after it was inked, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas concluded of Santa Clara that it "could not be supported by history, logic or reason." One of the great legal blunders of the nineteenth century changed the whole idea of democratic government."
Third World Traveler
explains the history of how we got into this pickle in the first place. If we created this monster, we should be able to regulate it back to its original purpose. Not an easy task, but think of the problems we could solve...corruption, monopolies, buying politicians, all the consequenses of greed that a necessarily amoral corporation whose sole purpose is to provide profits to its shareholders, must employ in an environment where anything goes.
Here is the excerpt: (go to Third World's site for complete history)
"In the early history of America, the corporation played an important but subordinate role. The people -- not the corporations -- were in control..........The turning point was the Civil War. Corporations made huge profits from procurement contracts and took advantage of the disorder and corruption of the times to buy legislatures, judges and even presidents. Corporations became the masters and keepers of business. President Abraham Lincoln foresaw terrible trouble. Shortly before his death, he warned that "corporations have been enthroned . . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the republic is destroyed.".........Then came a legal event that would not be understood for decades (and remains baffling even today), an event that would change the course of American history. In Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute over a railbed route, the US Supreme Court deemed that a private corporation was a "natural person" under the US Constitution and therefore entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights. Suddenly, corporations enjoyed all the rights and sovereignty previously enjoyed only by the people, including the right to free speech......This 1886 decision ostensibly gave corporations the same powers as private citizens. But considering their vast financial resources, corporations thereafter actually had far more power than any private citizen. They could defend and exploit their rights and freedoms more vigorously than any individual and therefore they were more free. In a single legal stroke, the whole intent of the American Constitution -- that all citizens have one vote, and exercise an equal voice in public debates -- had been undermined. Sixty years after it was inked, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas concluded of Santa Clara that it "could not be supported by history, logic or reason." One of the great legal blunders of the nineteenth century changed the whole idea of democratic government."
posted by Anne Damm at 6:09 PM
1 Comments:
This has never made sense to me, that a corporation has the same rights as a person. Court decisions have been overturned before. Perhaps someday this one will be too. Power to the people!
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