A Tale of Two Mainers

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

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