 The Corporation is the most powerful institution in the world today. The values and viewpoints promoted by corporate advertising influence the inner lives of human beings in ways once considered the province of religion and philosophy. If we believe that we, as socially and spiritually striving individuals, have a role to play in shaping the future of humanity, it is crucial that we gain a deeper understanding of the Corporation, its rise to power, and its future plans for the human family.
CORPORATE PERSONHOOD-
A human perspective
The Corporation is the most powerful institution in the world today. The values and viewpoints promoted by corporate advertising influence the inner lives of human beings in ways once considered the province of religion and philosophy. If we believe that we, as socially and spiritually striving individuals, have a role to play in shaping the future of humanity, it is crucial that we gain a deeper understanding of the Corporation, its rise to power, and its future plans for the human family.
Corporations in the United States increasingly have been granted the rights of human beings. The process began in the early 19th century, but accelerated after the Civil War, when the 14th Amendment, passed to insure the rights of newly liberated slaves, was applied to corporations. These corporations were held to be “legal persons” as opposed to “natural persons,” but to have the same rights.
How can we, as spiritually aware citizens, understand the deeper aspects of what it means to treat an economic entity as a human being?
Let’s start with the question: What makes us human?
For many philosophers, the human is the unique being who can say “I” to him or herself. That is, we recognize our own individuality, as a being standing alone in the world, even as we share our world with other humans, the kingdoms of nature and the spiritual forces of the cosmos. This quality of self-consciousness is the starting point of what makes us human.
If we look at human development throughout history, we see the experience of the ego (another word for the “I”), has not been static through the ages. In ancient civilizations people felt deeply embedded in tribe, family or nation, with what we today would see as an “undeveloped” sense of themselves as individuals. Arranged marriages, to give just one example, were completely accepted at one time, whereas today we are shocked by such practices in the U.S.
This development of the ego has positive and negative aspects for us as individuals. We have the possibility of self development, but also of becoming more selfish and less involved with the fate of our fellow human beings.
It is through freedom and self-development that a new possibility for the human Ego emerges -- the recognition of a higher, more human self that lives within each of us. It then becomes possible, as free, independent human beings, to strive to become one with this higher being within us.
Let us turn, then, to the “person” called the Corporation. What Spiritual Being can we say this person incarnates, or is connected to?
er the past decade there have been a number of cases (such as the Ford Pinto and Firestone Tire) in which corporations have been shown (through internal documents) to be aware of product defects that resulted in injury or death to human beings. In these cases a decision was made that it was less costly to pay claims brought against the company than to correct the defects in the products, and so the companies continued to cover up the fact that their products were killing people. Human life, in other words, became an “item” in a corporate budget, to be weighed against other cost considerations with an impact on the bottom line. What kind of being views human life in these terms?
Pharmaceutical companies routinely rush drugs to market with inadequate testing, and suppress evidence of their harmful side effects. Between 2000 and 2003, these companies paid out $2.2 billion in fines and settlements, and four companies pled guilty to criminal charges (see The Truth about the Drug Companies, by Marica Angell, the former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine). What kind of being sacrifices human health in pursuit of profit?
In the same way, human labor is also reduced to a budget item. Jobs are outsourced and off shored. We recognize a “race to the bottom,” in wages and benefits, that now takes place on a global scale. Community is pitted against community, and even country against country, as the lowest in wages and environmental standards is relentlessly pursued by huge global corporations. Again we must ask ourselves: What kind of being divides human beings one from another in this way?
It is the relationship of the Corporate Being to human freedom that is most important. Here in the United States, we seem to have a great deal of outer freedom. For us, the deeper question is one of “inner freedom.” What does this mean?
The two acknowledged masters of the “dystopian future” were George Orwell and Aldus Huxley. Their seminal works, 1984 and Brave New World, depicted futures without freedom. The first described a world controlled through media and mass propaganda leading to “thought control,” the other depicted similar (though softer) results through the use of drugs. Both men wrote only a half century ago, and both scenarios seem to be converging into a frightening present.
If we examine what is happening to childhood today, the situation is thrown into clear relief. It is not only that children are consuming more media at younger ages. More fundamentally, this media is being used to consciously manipulate their thoughts, feelings and activities. Children are being turned into little consumers and becoming “branded” for life. Books such as Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, Kidnapped: How Irresponsible Marketers are Stealing the Minds of your Children and Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture are just three of many books, articles and studies that document this phenomenon. As Susan Linn, psychologist and author of Consuming Kids, puts it: “Comparing the advertising of two or three decades ago to the commercialism that permeates our children’s world is like comparing a BB gun to a smart bomb. The explosion of marketing aimed at kids today is precisely targeted, refined by scientific method, and honed by child psychologists-in short, it is more pervasive and intrusive than ever before.”
The result is a constant, sophisticated and well financed assault on the inner life of our youngest and most vulnerable human beings. And, from Orwell’s perspective, his world will simply be the same, but upside down: Instead of the media constantly watching the people, the people will be constantly watching the media. The results, in terms of human freedom, will be more or less the same.
It is vital to differentiate between the human beings working within the corporate system and the “Being” that inhabits the Corporation. The humans are attuned to making a profit as the end product of their behavior. Even if they are selling empty calories to children, or affecting the body image of young people in ways that lead to bulimia and anorexia, or using sex and violence to sell toys, they are just doing their jobs and making a living. As people, they may have qualms about their work, but for the most part they see themselves as cogs in the economic system that sustains us all, and powerless to alter the process.
The motive of the Corporate Being is quite different. It is interested in debasing and controlling human beings, blinding us to our potential to fully develop the higher being that lives within each of us. Corporate advertising is aimed at the lowest aspect of the human ego, the part that increases selfishness and separates us from the fate of others.
Under these conditions, how can our children ever meet and recognize the spiritual world and their connection to it? Miraculously, many do. Still, in the modern age, it is up to us to help these miracles occur, not to passively acquiesce in the takeover of our progeny. In the face of this huge, powerful and, finally, anti-human Being, how can we help ourselves, our children and our world?
The effort can begin with conscious recognition that these corporations, whatever their spiritual and material composition, are not people and should not be considered people for any purpose.
When corporations began, they were limited in the scope of their operations (they were chartered for a specific, public purpose such as building a canal, road, etc). They were limited in their duration (when their purpose was accomplished, they were to be dissolved), and they were limited as to the financial liability of individual investors. Today, only this last limitation exists. They have become immortal beings, able to act unchecked in the economic ream and dominate both politics and our cultural life. And the final limitation, that they existed to serve a specific social need, also has been lifted. The responsibility of the corporation today is to make money for its shareholders, and the collateral damage to human beings and our planet is an externalized cost to be borne by the entire society, not the corporation itself.
We need to return the corporation to its original form and social intention. To begin, we should work to redefine corporations as subordinate entities that may enjoy privileges granted by human beings, not rights. Perhaps the most important of these privileges to take back is that of free speech. It is through this right that corporations inundate us with advertising, buy politicians, influence elections, and exert a stranglehold on our media and all our communications. The curtailing of corporate free speech is not an attack on the concept of free speech in our society-it is an essential precursor to the reestablishment of human free speech.
When Oakhurst Dairy, a family-owned Maine business, used labels that stated they did not use artificial growth hormones, Monsanto Corporation sued them. They claimed it was an unfair business practice because it implied the inferiority of products derived from cows fed artificial hormones. Oakhurst backed down and diluted their statement. This is only one example among many of how corporations routinely seek to curtail criticisms of their products and practices by using their vast resources to sue humans who question their work.
In a situation where resources can trump truth, both free speech and equality under the law for humans are clearly in danger. The 14th amendment has become a huge and mighty shield for corporations to hide behind as they work their will upon an increasingly powerless human population.
On a practical level, an effective tool would be a constitutional amendment clarifying the fact that the rights enumerated in the constitution apply strictly to natural persons, not artificial beings created by law.
There are several organizations dedicated to this work. A good place to start looking would be ReclaimDemocracy.org. The website has a wealth of information on this topic, a host of resources, and links to other groups working on this and related topics. Talks and workshops on corporate personhood, including activities and organizing tools, can also be arranged.
Each day, the threads of corporate control weave tighter, and the threat to our planet, our freedom and our future looms larger. If we are to achieve our goal of realizing our spirituality and connecting with others through it, and giving our children a chance to do the same, we must begin today.
Abraham Entin
Los Angeles, CA
January 1, 2006
Abraham Entin has been active in political and social movements since the Civil Rights and Vietnam War
ctions of the 1960's. He has been an active member of the Anthroposophical Society since 1976 and has had three children who graduated from Highland Hall Waldorf School.
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