The corporation, licenced to kill?
A frequent theme in political rants, both on the libertarian/anarchist right and the socialist/anarchist left, is the notion of the limited liability company. Usually, the concept of limited liability is defined however it best suits the argument, and usually to negative effect. For example, the film The Corporation (2003) was recently screened on SABC 1 in South Africa. As with most bulk-buy trash, it was a late-night broadcast, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open after an hour and a half of distortion, sly inference, slander, oversimplification, quasi-legal mumbo-jumbo, out-of-context quotation, innuendo, and general anti-capitalist drivel. I’m strong, but not strong enough for 145 minutes of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein all together.
Still, I got the idea: The Corporation, portrayed with sinister madness through a montage of accidents, disasters, lost legal battles, famous frauds, cuts to Hitler and a clever theme of selected crude advertising footage from the 1950s, is evil and dangerous. Worse, you and I are just wide-eyed ingénues too stupid to defend our virtue. For that, we have heroes like Captain Moore, Gnome Chomsky and the Little Gnome. One of the major themes in the film was this notion of (cue dramatic crescendo)… limited liability. It was vaguely interpreted to imply a corporation and the evil people that comprise it — by which they mean everyone above the LOE (line of evility) that you’ll find on every HR (human resources) org chart at about the level of M/CM (middle and compromised management) — gets to deny liability for their actions. In essence, a limited-liability company charter, granted by the evil corporatist government, is a licence to exploit, harm and kill, and exploiting, harming and killing customers and employees is a great way to make money. Or so the illogic goes.
If this kind of thinking is appealing, because you’re either a right-wing anarchist who thinks governments are evil and therefore legal protections granted in corporate law are probably evil too, or you’re a left-wing socialist who thinks corporations are evil and have corrupted government in order to exploit the poor masses, it may be worth reading an excellent essay by Brad Edmonds, over at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in which he discusses what a limited liability company is and is not, who is and isn’t liable, and on what legal, political and philosophical grounds the concept is based.
[…] Ivo is a little tired of libertarian and socialist paranoia, and spins a nice rant. […]
The film argues the modern, publicly-traded, transnational corporation is amoral, not evil, and dangerous because it is designed by law to put it’s own interests above those of the public. Limited liability was discussed but was not the focus of the film. It is relevant in the discussion of how corporations externalize (famous leftist Milton Friedman provides the definition) their harms onto the public. While half the 40 interview subjects are critics or victims of the corporate order, the other half — that’s 20 interview subjects — are from the world of business, or advocates for it, many of them top managers of the worlds largest corporations. Some of the film’s harshest criticisms of the corporation come from them too.
That was an interesting read, Mr Vegter.
The voices of your masters make vicious banditry and oppression, with very little legal responsibility, sound so very, very reasonable, and so, very, very necessary.
Instinctively, I know there is something wrong with your propounded economic policies, which seems to be “taking from the have-nots to give to the have-mores” while dissolving any responsibility the have-mores might have toward the have-nots, even though they are clearly benefitting from the labours of those people.
If I were religious, I would pray every night that you would wake up black, gay, poor, and in a labour camp at a non-unionized tin mine in Brazil. Perhaps once you’d actually been subjected to the tender mercies of your ‘elegant models’, ‘free’ markets and neoliberal policies, you might re-think your stance on them just a little bit.
Happy holidays
Shaun
well, i’m glad that some people can sleep soundly at night while the poor sell their souls to survive, and the rich sell their souls for a greater profit.
if there is such a thing as reincarnation, i hope you are reincarnated as a young Burmese or Indonesian girl who has to single-handedly support a family of 8 by working in a sweatshop.
i’m surrounded by filthy capitalists, no wonder most people who study go for accounting.
What nice people you lefties are, Shaun and Ryuk, to heap curses on those who disagree with your “instinct”, or never thought to consider Burma as a typical example of free market capitalism.
I wish I were more like you! Here, lemme have a go:
If you were reincarnated, I hope you come back as an educated fellow doing forced labour in stinking rags in a communist utopia on half a rotten potato a day. Where you couldn’t support your family of eight even if you tried, and you can’t negotiate with Big Brother whether you’re unionised or not, and you can’t expect to make your way — or your childrens’ way — out of poverty no matter how hard you work. Where you can console yourself, as you scratch your lice and favour your gangrenous leg, that at least nobody is better off than you are.
How am I doing? Am I evil enough to be an honorary leftie yet?
you think i know nothing about the wonders of communism? the life you just described was lived by a majority of my ancestors. luckily it is not a life i will live, because we left the country.
i am not saying that all corporations are bad, it’s just that people who start getting money and power do not know when to stop. government is full of careless assholes who have the audacity to ask for more money. when my dad was making a decent amount of money, they had no problem taking taxes from him, but when we barely had anything to eat, they wouldn’t give us a cent.
the problem is that like power, money corrupts, that is why the law is on the side of those who can pay them to change legislation. that is why we have minimum wage, which is below living wage and no maximum wage (which was taken too far by communism, but if utilised correctly can work)
You seem to confuse crony capitalism, or corporate statism, with free market capitalism. In a free country, everyone obviously has the right to lobby, but the scope for corruption is massive when governments are in the business of controlling prices or handing out other people’s money.
Companies operating in a free market have been by far the most successful means of social organisation for improving overall prosperity, and the more successful they are, the better. That’s how poverty rates decline, and quality of life, even among the poor, improves.
Wishing away poverty, by contrast, doesn’t work, and neither does putting all your eggs in a single government basket.
the scope for corruption is limitless.
i don’t deny the amount of social and political integration that has taken place. but, when you consider how the lives of the wealthy have improved, the peanuts they have thrown to the poor are obviously insignificant.
in terms of propaganda and state news, democracies are just as bad as communist states, they will say anything to maintain the support of the uneducated masses that keep them in power. when there are so many problems with policy implementation, it’s difficult to see what else one can do other than wish.