[corp-focus] Corporateering

[Robert Weissman]

Corporateering
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

corporateering: When corporations exceed their traditional role in a
marketplace to dominate the cultural sphere and compromise individuals=92
rights, freedoms and power, and the democratic systems that protect
them. The act implies corporations vying with a democratic people for
sovereignty over their society and societal rights by redefining the
basic rules of society, law and ethical customs to the detriment of individ=
uals.

Whether our friend Jamie Court, the executive director of the
California-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and author
of the new book, Corporateering: How Corporate Power Steals Your
Personal Freedom ... And What You Can Do About It (New York: Jeremy
Tarcher/Putnam) will succeed in his mission of infusing the term
"corporateering" into U.S. political discourse is unclear.

But what is certain is that Court=92s book is raising a critical set of
issues that are dominant themes in contemporary U.S. life but generally
ignored, including by corporate accountability campaigners.

Court=92s primary concern is the way that corporations regulate society to
exert a controlling influence over popular culture and to deny
individual freedom.

Though Court does devote substantial space to hyper-advertising and the
issue of corporate control of the mass media, his focus is not primarily
on the corporate degradation of popular culture.

Rather, Court=92s concern with culture is the way that corporations have
managed to shape fundamental beliefs about the way society should be
organized, so that "corporate perspectives are becoming prevailing
perspectives." There is now substantial public accord with shibboleths
like: Regulation will increase consumer costs. Or, interfering with the
free market will destroy the business climate. These are the core
defenses of companies facing popular demands for public controls. They
are so successful as defenses now -- as they were not three decades ago
-- because they have become generally accepted nostrums. These are the
kinds of ideas that people tend not to say in everyday conversation, but
to offer up on their own if someone suggests restraining corporate
power. In other words, as Italian political theorist and activist
Antonio Gramsci might say, corporations have achieved hegemonic power.

The mantras of economic freedom and deregulation of the corporate
sector, Court argues, "have credibility because of the power of the
logic that underlies them -- that the good life is an unregulated transacti=
on."

There is strong evidence to disclaim the idea that markets work
efficiently in an unregulated state. And Court documents how
deregulation of the California energy market paved the way for the
multi-billion dollar rip-off of consumers in the state, and how failure
to regulate HMOs has led to the denial of quality healthcare to
millions, among other examples.

But even more penetrating is Court=92s contention that the idea of
unregulated transactions is fundamentally misleading. Failing to
regulate corporations leaves them free to regulate people.

An important contribution of Corporateering is the framing of an array
of corporate abuses -- traceable either to deregulation or government
failure to regulate in the first place -- as the regulation of
individuals, and denial of individual freedom.

For example, failure to regulate corporations frees them to regulate
people=92s time. Corporations bombard people with commercial messages and
intrusive phone calls (and the FTC=92s recently implemented Do Not Call
registry illustrates how regulation of corporate conduct can free
individuals from the shackles of corporate regulation). Regulatory
vacuums free corporations to infringe on personal privacy rights, by
monitoring office e-mail, trading in private financial information and
otherwise. Form contracts from credit card companies, car dealers, HMOs
and others require individuals to sacrifice their Seventh Amendment
right to a jury trial. These contracts regulate people=92s action in case
of a dispute with large companies, forcing them to accept mandatory
arbitration that is biased in favor of large corporations.

Corporateering concludes with a brief listing of reforms to control
corporate power. Though not novel, the list is useful. Proposals range
from taxing corporate advertising to barring mandatory arbitration in
consumer contracts, from time-limiting all deregulatory efforts to
imposing personal liability on corporate managers who knowingly allow
corporate wrongdoing.

The book is also a call to readers to spread the concepts employed in
the book to ever-widening circles. Though it may appear trite, there is
a sense in which this proposal is fundamental. The first step in freeing
ourselves from corporate regulation is freeing ourselves from corporate
regulation of our thinking.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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