The Socialist, the Communist, the Nihilist

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

There is a new breed of activist roaming the land. These are activists
who believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the large
corporation itself -- that it is not what corporations do wrong that is
the problem, it is corporations themselves that are the problem.
     
These activists believe large corporations as they exist today are
fundamentally undemocratic and cannot be reformed.  These activists
question whether corporations should be considered legal persons with the
same rights of you and I and other living human beings. They question the
very nature of the corporation.
     
Richard Grossman and his colleagues at the Program on Corporations,
Law and Democracy are travelling the country, encouraging activists of all
stripes to begin asking fundamental questions about citizen control of
corporations, to research the history of corporations, and to begin to
question corporate control over the citizenry. 
     
In 1996, Grossman was in Columbus, Ohio, where he met with 25
activists from around the state for two days. One activist who attended
was Greg Coleridge.
     
Coleridge was born and raised and spent most of his life in Akron,
Ohio. For the past 17 years, he has been an activist with the American
Friends Service Committee -- the Quakers. 
     
After hearing Grossman speak, Coleridge and fellow activists in Ohio
began researching the history of corporations in Ohio.
     
They found a speech given by Williams Jennings Bryan to the 1912
Constitutional Convention in Columbus, Ohio. Ask yourself:  Who today
would speak in such a manner? 
     
This is what William Jennings Bryan had to say in 1912: 
     
"The first thing to understand is the difference between the natural
person and the fictitious person, called the corporation.  They differ in
the purpose in which they are created, in the strength which they possess,
and in the restraints under which they act. Man is the handiwork of God
and was placed upon earth to carry out a Divine purpose. The corporation
is the handiwork of man and was created to carry out a money-making
policy. There is comparatively little difference in the strength of men. A
corporation may be one hundred, one thousand, or even one million times
stronger than the average man. Man acts under the restraints of
conscience, and is influenced also by a belief in the future life. A
corporation has no soul and cares nothing about the hereafter." 
     
They found that the Ohio Supreme Court stripped Standard Oil of Ohio
of its charter for monopolizing the oil industry. The Standard Oil Trust
fled to New Jersey, the Delaware of its day.  And Standard Oil wasn't
alone. The Ohio state legislature and courts had stripped dozens and
dozens of corporations of their charters for wrongdoing. Don't do as we
tell you and you're out! 
     
They found that the much ballyhooed Sherman Antitrust Act was a bone
thrown to activists. The act was named after John Sherman, the Senator
from Ohio. This is Senator Sherman urging his fellow members of the Senate
to pass his legislation into law: The people "are feeling the power and
grasp of these combinations, and are demanding of every [state]
legislature and of Congress a remedy for this evil, only grown into huge
proportions in recent times. . .You must heed their appeal, or be ready
for the socialist, the communist, and the nihilist. .  .Society is now
disturbed by forces never felt before. The popular mind is agitated with
problems that may disturb the social order. Among these, none is more
threatening than the inequality of condition, wealth and opportunity" that
has emerged from "the concentration of capital in vast combinations to
control production and trade and to break down competition." 
     
Coleridge and his friends pulled together this information in a nifty
little booklet called: Citizens Over Corporations: A Brief History of
Democracy in Ohio and Challenges to Organizing in the Future. 
     
"Corporations are a different kind of creation," Coleridge told us
recently. "There is no surprise that corporations have ended up working
against the human interest and against the common good." 
     
So Greg, if not corporations, what? 
     
"If we can ever get to the point of asking that question, we will
have moved forward," Coleridge says. "Just as fish think water is
necessary for existence, human beings have come to see corporations as
necessary to economic existence. It is so much accepted as a given that we
don't tend to believe that there is any other way." 
     
Right now, Grossman, Coleridge and like minded activists around have
a lot of questions and few answers. They are busy researching how we got
ourselves into this soup -- from a situation where we controlled
corporations, to where corporations are controlling us. 
     
For his part, Coleridge is not ashamed to admit that he doesn't know
the answer to corporate power. "The corporate culture is a century or more
in the making," he said. "It is going to take a few years for us
collectively and democratically to understand where we are, how we got
here, and how to turn it around." 

[Greg Coleridge can be reached at the American Friends Service Committee,
330-253-7151, Humanity House, 513 West Exchange St., Akron, OH 44302.]

     
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. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy. For more information,
see <http://www.corporatepredators.org>.

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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