Now Playing: ‘Erection’ by Wet From Birth and ‘Satyagraha’ by Philip Glass…
“The rich you will have with you always…” (New Testament Redactor reported words of Jesus of Nazareth)
[The following evolved out of notes taken during a phone conversation with Mr. Jerry Mander in the late 1980's---this blog's author's ideas were preserved in notes, mixed with Mr. Mander's. Though Mr. Mander's ideas run throughout, albeit transformed, perhaps distorted, the writing is my responsibility alone, right or wrong. Recent events on the national and world scene suggested a revisit to what the reader will find here, with additions and revisions added, reflecting how things have gone some 20 years since that one phone call. ---"Have we come so far, then?" ---"Um... No."]
The ‘shadow,’ in the Jungian sense, of governments, of nation-states, on the world scene, is the corporation… Only dimly perceived, except on the occasions that the world of international commerce intervenes to remake nations within their borders (The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein), the shadow is fully and physically active, making changes everywhere, the consequences of which are only much later seen or understood by the governing bodies charged with their regulation—this in even the most repressive dictatorships.
The collective corporate ideology—as opposed, perhaps, to the ideology of the individual human beings at the top of the corporate decision-making pyramid—suggests that power is the means to increasing wealth, and not vice-versa. Does this point to a thin and ghostly silver lining to the cloud of ongoing corporate hegemony?
Consider: Our best neolithic evidence—the news of the human world from our earliest beginnings as human beings recognizably like ourselves, and even before human time, as hinted in studies of warfare among chimpanzees—suggests that even so long ago, coming out of our long dispersal from Southern Africa, warfare between human groups was commonplace and endemic, if certainly not as organized as it came to be with transformations that spurred the Indo-European and other expansions. Where, in our own time, are we to place our skeptical allegiance, after learning this? (To put it another way: How might any relocalization that will come as the world changes, come without endless conflict? But, in this, I digress. That will remain a question for another time.)
We live when and where organized industrial conflict makes the peril of power obvious and terrifying. I, myself, live trapped within the might of a world power that has been at war, in one form or another, my entire life, from the moment I was born. Chronic, low-level warfare periodically breaks out in spasms of acute and total war. (Again: How is this NOT expected to happen in the course of the coming miracle of relocalization? But, again, I digress.) Peasants all, the great bulk of us, fully aware upon whose head the greatest force of coming blows will fall, we despair of any activity beyond achieving immediate personal pleasure.
There are mighty forces at work who are willing to make satisfying these ‘needs’—pleasure, appetite and diversion—their profitable business. These are the ones whose ideology is noted above: Power is the means to wealth. Often the power sought, when it is sought, is technical power, resource extractive power—the power to reform nature into commodity. The grave threat in this is to be ignored at our peril. Nevertheless, for the moment, it may be slightly better, perhaps, than the other way around, wherein wealth is viewed a means to achieving power, for if power is all, intrinsically rather than instrumentally valued, and its pursuit is unlimited, unlimited warfare right quickly follows. In the times before this one, when power was itself the end—power for its own sake–no limits at all seemed possible to the principalities contending for it. Our history is shot through with example after example of acts too vile to comfortably recount. (This is not said to ignore that many wars are fought over resources and the access to resources, but even there, the corporate model for hegemony has its ‘power as means’ prescription: to own the means for allocating resources rather than admitting to the changes and chances of a risky mad scramble.)
Unlimited warfare—with its potential for total, inescapable devastation—becomes then, for those in power to achieve wealth, warfare carried too far, because it becomes bad for business. Is this the faint and ghostly silver lining mentioned above? Perhaps, only perhaps, this represents a slight advance in collective human experience—a lesson learned—for if unlimited warfare is bad for business, warfare must be at first regionally contained, and then perhaps again, for those interested in ever-expanding business activity, controlled and eliminated within regions. (Of course what will have to go, among other changes, is the strong investment by some concerns in the engines of war. It is not at all clear how this would come about.)
This is not to suggest that warfare held within business-friendly limits won’t find its sponsors, nor that somehow where the corporation is found, peace suddenly breaks out. No, I’m simply suggesting that warfare MAY not be allowed to carry as far as history shows it has in the past. Dead wage slaves make poor consumers. Nor does this mean to suggest that much of irreplaceable value, locally, regionally and even globally, won’t be lost, is being lost, or that we couldn’t do much better than we are doing with the technology we now wield, or (further) that tyranny, extinction and exploitation won’t for a long time prove the rule, rather than the exception. I speak of only an incrementally positive change, if I speak of one at all.
Such a blunting of the extremity of war, when it happens, is able to become a temporary respite from a pattern of violence deeply rooted in our species history. This respite may persist only under conditions where extreme or total war proves to be bad for business. We find, for example, places where extractive industries are able to build for themselves well-defended enclaves inside of which their control can be tightly maintained. In these instances, the industries concerned hardly care what happens outside their ‘green zones.’ Further, when corporations are threatened—or perceive a threat—they seem no less ardent (if presently less well-armed, and better lawyered) than governments in defending themselves; willing to stop at nothing.
So, the ‘silver lining’ to the cloud of rising corporate power, noted above, offers only temporary and contingent respite, but perhaps, just perhaps, this represents enough of a pause to allow other important changes to come.
Whatever ways there might be in going toward the goal of ‘ensouling’ the corporation—or better said, reforming the group mind or culture (or ‘spirit’) in which these collective entities are contained, giving them a conscience—will come, as such changes always come, only through the sacrifice of work and blood and suffering by those willing to offer themselves in dissent and opposition; martyrs of daily discipline and active repose. The way forward to such a goal of ‘corporate ensoulment’ seems impossible now, and no obvious path through the thicket is there to see. Look how long it has taken for our kind to change the idea of what government is for.
Not a few of those who think about these matters have pointed out that we vitally need to change the definition of what was once was termed the ‘standard of living,’ presently defined by material economy and the trappings of consumer lifestyle. Some have suggested we exchange a reduction in wealth of property and possessions for an increase in the wealth of opportunity and time (time to create, time to enjoy, time to rest). Such a redefinition of wealth might constitute as succinct and accurate definition of humanity’s saving transformation as any that might be made—if such a transformation is possible and if, indeed, it is on its way. However, without some sort of corporate ‘ensoulment,’ any change like this would strike directly at the root of corporate wealth and power; its entire reason for being.
Unless we are able to change the way we look at riches and their distribution, people simply will not be allowed to refuse buying stuff when they are told. Look at the works and deeds of entities like Monsanto (‘At the Sign of the Black M’), with inventions like the Terminator gene, or Monsanto’s well-cited actions against farmers who resist ‘Roundup Ready’ corn and soy. We see how the thinking might go: “If they won’t choose our custom, we’ll make ‘em buy. They’ll have no choice.” Monsanto, by no means, stands alone in its willingness to create a permanent market of dependent customers—what at one time used to define the distinction between criminal and worthy business enterprise.
We cannot escape this hard truth: As the people who buy so much, now, start refusing the treadmill, or can’t continue to try to keep up with it, then there will be blood. It won’t only be shed in peaceful confrontation of power by non-violent protests, nor could it. People will fight. The only way this destiny might be blunted, if not avoided altogether, comes through the as yet unseen way of giving corporations–now full-fledged persons under the US constitution–a conscience.
One way to do this might be to revise in statute what has grown up though judicial decision—the notion that the only criteria upon which a corporation’s fiduciary responsibility can be defined is in terms of increasing shareholder return. If these corporations are persons, they are now no longer strictly property, nor strictly private. Accordingly, they must be seen as necessarily fulfilling roles beyond those of mere accumulation. That too, must become an understood investor risk, along with all the other risks investors must accept. Shareholders will have to be held (indirectly) responsible, as will corporate managers, directly, for more than simply ‘improving the bottom line.’ Corporations themselves will have to become willing to experience genuine transformation from consumers to citizens.
Coda:
Finally, I would not agree to claims by those giving this somewhat jumbled essay a superficial reading, that I am standing up in praise of corporate hegemony, or corporate personhood. I would, ideally, rather see a world much different than that, but given our history, it is hard to see how such a world would be better, or more ideal. It may be that the present set of changes is a stage through which our species must pass. Those who would pass quickly through, would do well to think hard about what we humans have tended to do to each other even under the best of times. As they work toward relocalization, among other changes, let them pay close attention to what they want to build.
There will be blood. There will be greed. There will be oppression. There will be violence. But, ‘there is also love in the world.’ (Steven R Donaldson)
We recognize the threat in onrushing peril, and life remains very, very good.
