Action Replay: Size isn’t everything (2025)

The Action Replay column from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern-day capitalism is sometimes called corporatism, because of the large conglomerates that include a number of businesses. Costa Coffee, for instance, was once owned by Whitbread but now comes under the Coca-Cola empire, which has over five hundred brands, including Fanta and Innocent Drinks. You may not have heard of Associated British Foods, but they own Primark, Ovaltine and Twinings, among many others.

Perhaps it will not come as a big surprise that parts of professional sport are evolving in a similar direction, with multi-club ownership becoming fairly common (it’s sometimes just partial ownership). For instance, the Fenway Sports Group is an American company that owns Liverpool FC, the Boston Red Sox (baseball) and the Pittsburgh Penguins (ice hockey). They also own a stock car racing team and a golf league. They claim to have a ‘track record of taking cherished and iconic clubs to new heights.’ John Henry has 40 percent of the company’s total stock, and other large companies and wealthy individuals are partners too.

More commonly, though, it is just football that is involved. Manchester City is the flagship club in the City Football Group, which is mostly owned by Sheikh Mansour and his Abu Dhabi United Group. Among others falling under its umbrella are Girona in Spain, Palermo in Italy, New York City FC and Shenzhen Penguin City in China. Supposedly there is much co-operation among the clubs, in areas such as combined scouting and player sharing.

There are a number of other examples, and it’s not just top clubs that are involved in such ventures. Walsall FC (in League Two) have been acquired by the Trivela Group in the US, which also owns Drogheda United in Ireland and Trivela FC in Togo. They wanted to buy Silkeborg in Denmark, but supporters there objected.

There are various regulations concerning multi-club ownership. In England no-one is allowed to exercise control over more than one league club, and similar restrictions apply at European level, with clubs controlled by the same owners or directors being prohibited from competing in the same European competition. Back in 2017, for instance, UEFA investigated whether two clubs in the Red Bull group (Leipzig and Salzburg) could play in the same competition; it was determined that they could. There have also been more recent examples, such as AC Milan and Toulouse in 2023. Other issues can arise too, such as artificially inflating a player’s transfer value.

No doubt owners and their lawyers will put every effort into keeping within the regulations, just as all capitalist companies do in their quest for profit.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Catholic Social Principles at Work (1942)

Editorial from the September 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Catholic Church claims that it has a special interest in the welfare of the workers and that its social doctrines are superior to those of other bodies, religious and political. It seems reasonable, if this is indeed true and if the doctrines are both practicable and intended to be applied, to expect that the predominantly Catholic countries would be better places for the workers to live in than other countries. The actual condition of affairs in these countries does not support the view that there is any superiority. Portugal may be taken as an illustration The regime there is described by the Statesman’s Year-Book as a “Dictatorship on a corporate basis,” and it is further stated that “the predominant faith is the Roman Catholic”. There is a Legislative Assembly elected by direct vote of the electors, but, on a convenient plan known in a number of totalitarian countries, “in practice the candidates are exclusively those put forward by the Government party” (“Whitaker’s Almanack,” 1942, p. 923). The Government is solely responsible to the President and not to the Assembly. There is also a “Corporate Chamber,” consisting of representatives of local authorities, industrial, commercial bodies and corporations of employers and employed, which is allowed to pass opinion on all bills introduced in the Legislature.

This corporative state is viewed with approval in Catholic circles as the following statement in the “Catholic Herald,” in a comment on the Irish Trades Union Congress, will show : —

“The Trades Union Congress, meeting in Sligo, discussed, but did not adopt, nor yet reject, a resolution submitted by the Belfast representatives, “pledging irreconcilable opposition to Fascism.” A Dublin delegate (not a Catholic) said that there was “a school of moderate Fascism of the Portugal variety which had gained some credence among certain sections”—meaning, perhaps, among nearly all Catholics, since Portugal’s example is admired by clergy and laity alike, though we do not consider it Fascism. (“Catholic Herald,” July 31st, 1942.)

From the ordinary standpoint of capitalist finance the Portuguese State is in a flourishing condition. The Lisbon correspondent of the “Economist” (July 25th, 1942), reporting the very successful loan just raised by the Government, amounting to £3 million, says : —

“Never in the long history of Portugal has the country been so thoroughly solvent. . . . No one can say just how post-war conditions for finance and trade will open when peace does come, but that Portugal will be in an exceptionally favourable situation, created largely by its own financial and commercial integrity, is reasonably certain.”

Now let us see how the workers fare at the hands of Prime Minister Dr. Salazar and at the hands of the capitalists in this corporative State. Recently the workers’ “syndicates” conferred with Dr. Salazar in order to ask for redress of their many grievances. They had drawn attention

“To increasing hardship, the lack of social justice, and the sabotage of the corporative doctrine. They asserted that most employers’ associations had no notion of their duty, but worked for their own selfish interests.” (“Times,” July 25th, 1942.)

The “Times” Lisbon correspondent goes on as follows : —

“Among 4,000,000 workers, it was said, only a few thousands were included in collective contracts or schemes for the relief of the aged and infirm—a state of affairs largely due to the inability of the employers to recognise their responsibilities. Some concerns were making huge profits, which did not help the commonwealth. The cost of living had risen by 44 per cent, without an equivalent rise in salaries.”

It will be noticed that the workers’ complaints are of just the same kind as in other parts of the capitalist world. How then did Dr. Salazar deal with the complaints? The “Times” correspondent tells us: —

“Dr. Salazar, in reply, disclosed that the Portuguese Government intended, first, to attempt to develop the corporative conscience; second, to organise a revision of salaries; third, to permit of increased working hours to compensate for an increase in wages in cases where that could not be done by better industrial organisation; and, fourth, to organise family allowances, although on a small scale to start with. He admitted that most wages were low, but said that to raise them would also increase the cost of production.

He emphasised the benefits of Portuguese economic organisation—internal, social, and economic development and public tranquility. Wages had increased on the whole except during the last few years, when the economic policy had been to oppose further rises pending the new organisation at present under discussion. The weaknesses of present position, he pointed out, were largely due to selfishness which was common to the employer and employee, and it was here that the State must exercise control. People must bear the burden and effect of the war, and the only solution at present was to work more to gain more.”

It is not necessary to comment at length on this cynical reception of their demands. The workers are already suffering from a long existing rise in the cost of living are told they must wait, pending the development of the corporative conscience. They are told that they and the employers are alike selfish; but it will not be overlooked that the concerns “making huge Profits.” whether “selfish” or not, did not have to wait, even when the workers get their promised rise, some at least of them will have to work longer hours for it.

It will also be noticed that the capitalist is never at a loss for an excuse for refusing workers’ demands. If Portugal were at war the excuse would be the war and the need to make sacrifices for it. As Portugal is not at war then the excuse is still the same, and when world peace arrives the excuse will doubtless be the need to make sacrifices for peace, or for armaments for some possible future war, or to capture foreign markets.

Corporative Portugal, admired by Catholic clergy and laity, demonstrates once again that the more capitalism is changed the more it is the same thing, wherever and under whatever religion it operates.

Morrison's Ten New Points For Socialists (1950)

From the July 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a lengthy article in the News Chronicle on June 9th last, Morrison’s ten new points for Socialists were enumerated. The point system for rationing has nearly been abolished, but now Socialism is going on the points, special points of the Morrison variety, the first ten of which have already been issued.

As most readers of this journal will be interested in Socialism, they will doubtless want to know if they can learn anything about it from Morrison.

The article above referred to starts with a definition, which is as well, especially when discussing Socialism. Morrison defines Socialism as “The assertion of social responsibility for matters which are properly of social concern.” This elastic definition permits Tories, Liberals, Labourites, and even Communist Party supporters, to be socialists. In fact everybody in the country could endorse it. The only snag is “what is properly of social concern?” Morrison of course makes no effort to tell us. Perhaps this is one of the things for which he is paid £10,000 a year to know and understand. He was careful enough to inform us that he has coined this definition of socialism “in the light of experience in Labour Government since 1945, and in relation to the facts of mid-twentieth-century life and economic experience” So Morrison might have quite another definition for Socialism five years hence, especially if he is interested in “social responsibility for matters of social concern”

Speaking on Socialism to-day at Perth, the Lord President (to give Erb Morrison his “socialist title ”), said that “Socialist principles must be adapted to changes in conditions, facts and experience, if they were to survive and prosper” This looks as if Socialism is one thing at one time, and another thing at another time, and that anything was or is capable of becoming socialism! It is all things to all men, and not part of the time, but all of the time. Dialectics isn’t in it, it is diabolical.

So much for the definition, which we agree is very important, especially when dealing with one who makes his own definitions, with or without the endorsement of his party. Now let us come to his ten points, here they are. .

1. Public ownership in suitable form.
2. Town and country planning.
3. Municipal housing for rental, aided by the Government—“essentially socialistic” (Morrison’s words).
4. Social services including social insurance and health services.
5. Economic planning and the wise exercise of economic controls for social ends and full employment.
6. Assisting and stimulating private enterprise to be enterprising and expansive.
7. Development councils for appropriate industries in research, expansion, progress and enterprise.
8. The assertion and provision for ventilation of consumers’ rights and the protection of their interests whether as against public or private industry.
9. Co-operation between farmers, farm workers, and the community for healthy and vigorous development of agriculture production with fairness to all.
10. The U.K. playing its full part in economic political and social co-operation between the nations for the purpose of evolving a peaceful and happy world.

The first five points are too well known to merit discussion here, and they have long been the backbone of Labour Party programmes.

Point 6 is a little strange, and should please those who are alarmed that socialism means the end of private enterprise. We suggest that it is given to soften some of their antagonism.

Point 7 is a hang over from Mosley’s “Commodity Boards” in the good old days of the New Party, which incidentally was good enough for Cabinet Minister Strachey.

Mosley got it from Mussolini, and it is the dream of all democratic capitalist organisers to bring workers and management together (with no class struggle and strike nonsense).

Point 8 was also capitalised by Mosley. Who are these consumers anyway? Presumably anybody who consumes anything. In this case everybody is a consumer. Capitalist, worker or unemployed are going to be given an opportunity to ventilate their rights.

Point 9 means the end of the class struggle between farmer and farm worker, and perhaps less dung heaps, or scented ones for all.

Point 10 is probably added to make double figures, or because of a cherished belief which Morrison has for decimalisation. There is still another suggestion, and that is that the opposition might claim that Labour has no foreign policy. However, nobody could object to peace (except those who make profits from war). The one thing which we have noticed in this respect, is that whenever the Labour Party has had to face some international affair, it acts as the Tories and Liberals did previously.

We in the Socialist Party do not have such a loose definition of Socialism, and 10 points which include everything and everybody and mean nothing to anybody. We laid down our definition and principles, based on our understanding of capitalism, which is fundamentally the same to-day as it was in 1904. We don’t want new definitions which will please all comers and principles which won’t offend those who believe in expanding private enterprise. Our case against Morrison is that he does not understand Socialism, or he deliberately falsifies it. Socialism is to him the above ten points, at least that is to-day, for to-morrow he may want to formulate another ten points.

Horace Jarvis

Editorial: Mussolini’s “Corporative State” Jest (1935)

Editorial from the April 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the propaganda stunts of the Fascists all over the world is their promise to replace “political” control by “corporative” control, i.e., that the ultimate control of industry and all economic affairs should be handed over to a body representing employers and workers in industry, transport, etc. Parliament and the present State power in Italy were to be replaced by a Corporative Legislature. Mussolini has been in undisputed power now for 14 years, and he has carried out his pledge to the very last word, or rather, to the last word but one. He has established his Council of Corporations and has created his 22 corporations, representing different industries. He has given them—-on paper—wide powers, but he has discreetly provided that they may do nothing whatever without the consent of Parliament and of himself as head of the State. Read the following account by the Rome correspondent of the Observer (November 18th, 1934): —

   We must remember that the law of 1930, instituting the Council of Corporations, is still in being. It established that the Council, and, therefore, the corporations of to-day cannot pass legislative measures regarding those subjects which have been regulated already by laws passed in Parliament. This prudent reservation avoids confusion, and also shows how successive developments will come about.
  The Council of Corporations, on the other hand, has the right to form any regulations referring to collective and economic relations which have not passed through Parliament, and these are fully valid so long as they bear the signature of Mussolini. This limitation is the only one to be withdrawn so as to arrive at a complete Corporative Parliament.

From this we perceive that the Council can do everything on paper, and nothing important in fact. Not only must they not infringe Parliamentary statutes, but their own acts are invalid without Mussolini’s signature; and he is himself President of every one of the 22 corporations!

The maxims of Enoch Powell (1965)

From the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

"When I see a rich man I give thanks to God".

To Mr. Enoch Powell capitalism is emphatically not a dirty word. To him it describes a social system before whose uncontrollable processes he stands in awe. In competition, the profit motive, “market mechanisms”, he sees capitalism as containing all that is morally right, socially beneficial and historically progressive. What Mr. Powell deplores above all is any attempt on the part of the state machine to interfere with the economic forces of capitalism. Society should never question what capitalism itself represents as economic necessity, for in its infinite wisdom capitalism knows what is best for humanity.

An example of the kind of government action that Mr. Powell deprecates is the attempt to arrest the movement of the labour force from areas of industrial decline to areas of industrial growth by imposing regional development. Also, he sees the intervention of the state in maintaining uneconomic services on, say, the railways as harmful. The law of economic viability ought to be allowed to run its course. The North-East of England and unprofitable railways should be discarded, for what is dead should be buried. Only what is commercially advantageous is socially best.

Another area of industrial life where Mr. Powell feels the state has no good cause to show its face is in wage bargaining between employers and workers. Here again, he says, the "free play of the market” is the best deciding factor; Mr. Powell mocks the attempts of the government to “plan” incomes as much as he attacks their attempts to plan economic growth. He thinks that Government action in these fields is only likely to frustrate the freedom of people to do what is best for themselves.

Mr. Powell has never carried his ideas to the point where he has refused to serve in governments that have attempted intervention in these various fields. He was part of the government that sent Mr. Quintin Hogg (complete with cloth cap) on a tour of the North-East as part of an attempt to formulate a plan for revived industry in that area. It was the same government that set up Nicky, Neddy and at least paid lip-service to the idea of an “incomes policy”. During this time, Mr. Powell held ministerial rank and was part of the Cabinet.

The case of Mr. Powell presents a curious and unashamed throwback to the ideas of early 19th century laissez faire capitalism. In fact, since the 19th century, the state machine has continued to grow and expand its field of influence through all branches of social and economic life including welfare and pensions, defence, nationalised industries, civil service, treasury, the law, housing, education, transport, science and technology, etc.

Mr. Powell has said that the disadvantage of the state is that it is not directly involved in competitive profit-making and is therefore “devoid of the incentives which tend to sharpen people’s minds in a competitive situation about what might be the right and what might be the wrong course’ . . .  It is this very detached position of the government’s which allows it to view and act upon what it calls the collective “national interest”, plus, of course, the interests of itself as a political party in power. Part of the function of the state has been to try to mitigate some of the more savage effects of capitalism’s jungle laws, by the distribution of doles to the unemployed, subsidised housing, for example.

The intervention of the state in economic affairs, such as nationalisation, rent control, agricultural subsidies, etc., do not compromise the nature of capitalism; they are attempts by the government to facilitate its smooth running.

The tendency in capitalist society is quite the reverse of what Mr. Powell would like to sec. Far from diminishing its influence, the state machine expands and becomes more complex. It is doubtful whether Mr. Powell's views can ever have a practical place in the policies of a future Tory government.

One effect that Mr. Powell’s views do have at the present time is to help to preserve within the Tory Party its conservative identity and pander to traditional prejudices such as distrust of bureaucracy and the mythical virtue of conservative freedom. In practice, Tory governments of necessity administrate capitalism in much the same way as Labour governments. The policies they carry out are prescribed for them not by political principle, but in the main by the economic dictates of the situation in which they find themselves.

In spite of the fact that when they are faced with the realities of government the spurious differences between the Labour and Tory Parties tend to evaporate, as separate organisations they require the front of a separate identity. It is men like Mr. Powell who in the Tory Party help to provide the image of traditional conservatism. Whatever the actual policies of Tory governments in power, his views cater to the emotional requirements and sentiments of Tory Party membership.

Similarly in the Labour Party, the function of a politician like Mr. Michael Foot is that in spite of what the Labour government has done since it took office, the views of Michael Foot tend to create the impression of a “radical left-wing” party who are guardians of working-class interests. This is inspiring to Labour Party workers and helps to provide cohesion within the organisation.

Mr. Powell has said, “When I see a rich man I give thanks to God. What do I feel when I see a poor man? It is that he would be poorer still if there were not the opportunity and the national incentive to people to succeed, to become rich, to make profit”. What, in fact, Mr. Powell is advocating is complete subservience to the economic tyrannies of capitalist society, and more than that, all the class privileges and under privileges that it implies.

Mr. Powell accepts the criteria of profit, commercial advantage, and the opportunities for sale provided by “market mechanisms” as the best motivating force behind the provision of community requirements. In fact, nothing could be more remote from the realities of life under capitalism.

In practice, the private ownership of wealth, commerce, and the profit motive prevent society’s free use of its productive techniques and ensure that a vast proportion of social labour is inefficiently applied to functions that have nothing to do with meeting human needs. The profit motive is not something that facilitates the widest possible distribution of wealth, hut is in itself an economic barrier against the application of man’s accumulated knowledge and techniques in production. An example of this can be found in “National defence", which Mr. Powell concedes is the proper concern of the state. The need for “National defence" arises from the situation where the modern nation states, Britain, France, America. Russia, etc., are competitors over markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials, spheres of national influence, etc. In order to maintain security in a competitive world, governments must maintain standing armies, navies and air forces; they must divert research and technology into the improvement of means of destruction such as nuclear weapons. The government must maintain an armaments industry and ensure housing, food, clothing, transport, etc., for all the personnel involved.

Measured against these facts of everyday life. Mr. Powell’s maxim that competition stimulates production is true only within extremely narrow limits. In practice, economic rivalry carries with it the burden of a vast appendage of wasteful functions which from the point of view of real material needs are utterly useless. Competition and economic rivalry both within nations and between nations generate fear, insecurity and enduring frustration, and result in hatred and violence. The fact of workers being in competition within a nation over jobs, housing, etc., can provide the seedbed of enmity and race prejudice. Between nations, it is not merely that economic rivalry results in all the material wastefulness that is involved in war, but it also causes the destruction of human life itself. The Americans and Vietnamese who are killing each other now are doing so against a background of all that Mr. Powell eulogises as competition and economic rivalry. The effort that capitalist society puts into war and the preparations for war is only one aspect of the material waste and human misery that results directly from production for profit.

The profit motive is not a liberating factor in production but one that stultifies production. The profit motive sets the limitations on what is possible in production and distribution. Against this end, the real material needs of the community take second place. Man under capitalism provides food, housing, clothing, health services, education, etc., within a tight economic framework conditioned by the prior requirements of profit. It is against this background that the enduring problems of society such as housing shortages, ugly urban environments and the fact that two-thirds of the world’s population do not get enough to eat must be understood.

Mr. Powell has talked a good deal about freedom, but the kind of freedom he seeks to maintain is the freedom of entrepreneurs to wield an arbitrary power in pursuit of their narrow private property interests in the most fundamental of human activities—the production and distribution of wealth. Socialists also want freedom, but freedom of the whole community to deploy its productive resources and all the talents and skills of the working class—be they scientists, professional workers, craftsmen, technologists of whatever— in the long overdue work of solving our problems. But Socialism involves more than the possibility of material comfort. Above all, Socialist freedom is the freedom of the individual emancipated from his working-class status and all the indignities of economic servitude and exploitation that Mr. Powell finds so worthy of approval.

Pieter Lawrence

A Quotable Quote (2001)

From the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

"There are no nations! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There is no Third World! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems—one vast and immanent, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichsmarks, roubles, rin [???], pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet! That is the natural [sic] order of things today! That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things . . .
"You . . . howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT, and AT&T and Du Pont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world now. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state—Karl Marx? They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories and minimax solutions like the good little systems analysts they are, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do.
"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies . . . The world is a collage of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable laws of business. The world is a business . . . !!"

(Part of a speech by the American tycoon Jensen, in the novelisation of the film Network, Sphere Books Ltd, 1977, pp.130-1.)

Bloggers Note: Jensen's - played by Ned Beatty - actual speech can be viewed at the following YouTube Link.

Capitalism Incorporated (2004)

Film Review from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Corporation, a recently released film directed by Mark Achban, Jennifer Abbot and Joel Bakan, begins with a little US political history, observing how, in the 19th century, a “corporation” was a “benevolent” association of people with a government charter to serve “the public good”. When, in the late 1860s, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution recognised the slave as having human rights, the nascent corporate elite of the time had their lawyers stake a claim to the same rights with the Supreme Court. They fought and won, and the state henceforth recognised the corporation as a human being, a person in law, with the same right to life, liberty and property.

   

This leads to one of the big questions of the film: if corporations are legally defined as people, then what kind of people are they? One way the film addresses this question is to call in the FBI’s Consultant on Psychopaths, Dr Robert Hare. Hare proceeds to run through a check-list of the traits of your run-of-the-mill psychopath before concluding that the modern corporation, bearing no moral responsibility for its actions, is very much the prototypical psychopath.

   

Much of the remainder of the film is given over to proving this claim beyond all reasonable doubt and many authoritative witnesses are wheeled in to testify. And what a selection of witnesses there are! Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, Anita Roddick, Vandana Shiva, Michael Moore; experts from every field and all manner of labour rights organisations and grass roots activists, economists such as Milton Friedman and many CEOs. Their statements amount to a damning examination of the nature and personality of the modern corporation, charting its growth, its extending influence and downright indifference to democracy and how, as one commentator observes, it has turned into a “monster, trying to devour as much profit as possible at anyone’s expense.”

No such thing as enough

What we are presented with is an image of all-powerful organisations running wild, rabid with greed, superpowers, for whom there is “no such thing as enough” (Moore), for whom “everything is legitimate in the pursuit of profit” (Roddick). Modern corporations are presented as the “new high priests”, more powerful than governments and accountable only to their shareholders, their brand labels protected by more legislation than covers the rights of the children who sew them onto their overpriced merchandise.

   

The film pits competing ideas on the modern corporation against one another. We are at one stage shown the offices of the National Labour Committee and hear Executive Director Charles  Kernaghan revealing the level of exploitation of workers in the Dominican Republic (who for instance earn 75 cents for each Nike jacket that sells for $178 and 3 cents for a tee shirt that retails at $14.) We are shown the living conditions of those same desperate workers and hear their own testimony as to the level of their destitution and then listen to Michael Walker of the corporate think-tank, the Fraser Institute, expounding his views on the role competitive markets play in providing for the economic and social well-being and how he believes firms such as Nike are an “enormous godsend” to people in the Dominican Republic

   

The film contains much that is totally fascinating. One section looks at big business and its penchant for the dictatorial regime. We are shown how a punch card system devised and regularly maintained by IBM (operating out of New York) processed millions of concentration camp victims, and how Coca Cola, faced with the possibility of having its operation curtailed in Nazi Germany, simply changed its name to Fanta. Much evidence is presented as to how corporate allegiance to profit transcends its loyalty to national flags and we are presented with one startling fact: that in one week 57 US companies were fined for trading with enemies of the US. Contemplating big business’s links to tyrannical regimes, one commentator asks “is it narcissism that compels them to seek their reflection in the regimented structure of fascist regimes?”

   

One of several cases studies the film presents is that relating to Monsanto (famous for Agent Orange and  50,000 birth defects in Vietnam) and its manufacture of  Posilac. This was a drug which, when injected into cows, increased their milk yield. That the world was awash with milk did not concern Monsanto; they were far more interested in profits and eventually were supplying a quarter of US dairy herds with the product. But because cows were not meant to produce so much milk, their udders went into overdrive and became infected with mastitis, the pus from which infected the milk. Not only were humans suffering the effects of the chemicals injected into the milk, their milk was now infected with mastitis pus. Monsanto’s reaction was to deny all allegations and to lie like condemned murderers.

Reckless pollution

The modern corporation is perhaps most vilified for its total lack of respect for the environment and biosphere on which all life on Earth depends. Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface Inc, who has won much acclaim promoting the idea that environmental responsibility makes good business sense, is seen addressing an audience of business leaders in North Carolina. Greeting them as “fellow plunderers”, he goes on to tell them that there is “not an industrial company in the world that is sustainable.”

   

Robert Weismann of Multinational Monitor reminds us that the cost of getting caught for their corporate transgressions – i.e. environmental pollution – is, more often than not, less than the cost of complying with existing environmental legislation. Dr Vandara Shiva, physicist and ecologist, despairingly contemplates the suicide gene built into new strains of cash crop seeds, the new terminator technology that makes the third world farmer dependent ever on the seed supplier (instead of traditionally putting aside a portion of the harvest as seeds for the following year), and calls them inventions of a ear), and calls them inventions of a “brutal mind”.

   

For the corporation, nothing is sacred. Even the US Patent Office has conceded defeat in its attempts to stop them patenting life forms, bearing out Roddick’s sentiment that every means is legitimate if the end be profit. Climbing down from one seven-year battle with big business, the Office had this to say: “You can patent anything in the world which is alive except a full birth human being.”

   

The film nears an end with a case study of the privatisation of the water supply of Cochabamba, Bolivia, at the behest of the World Bank, focusing  particularly on the town’s residents and their run in with the forces of the state acting on behalf of Bechtel, a San Francisco based company who bought the water company. So keen were the powers that be to force the people to bow to the power of Bechtel that they demolished their homes for non-payment of their exorbitant water rates and made the collecting of rain water illegal. The frustration spilled onto the streets with huge demonstrations and riots and violent clashes with the police. Eventually, though, Bechtel were forced to pull out of their Bolivian venture, but not before they had put in a claim for $25 million in compensation.

Weakness

It is from this case study and other cited instances of green activism that we are meant to draw inspiration; the message being that the corporation should not underestimate the power of the people, that “the workers, united, can never be defeated”.  Of course, corporations are advised to tidy up their act too. Michael Moore tells us that there should be more governmental controls and the film ends with Moore hoping the film will prompt people “to do something, anything, to get the world back in our hands”. This suggests that Moore, and others who promote similar ideas in the film, are missing the point. Granted, it is commendable, heroic even, that workers are prepared to often risk life and limb to defend themselves and to confront the most harrowing acts perpetrated by corporations. But it is a dangerous to believe that such grassroots action amounts to wresting control of the world away from its current owners.

   

If anyone considers this film a trumpet call for social change, a reveille for revolution, they are mistaken. The capitalist system is left unscathed. Nowhere is the market-driven profit system as such challenged. Nowhere are all of the case studies and criticism of corporate power and abuse rooted in a wider context. Nowhere does a commentator lambast the global “can’t pay, can’t have” society that consigns the greater portion of the population of the planet to lives of abject misery. And no interviewee comes near to demanding the abolition of the capitalist system and its replacement with a system of society based on free access.  Capitalism is taken for granted as being immutable and all that is being asked at the end is that corporations wear a smiley face and stop behaving so horridly.

   

Moore may well contemplate why such films are broadcast by TV corporations, in spite of the fact that they attack corporate power; for the record, he suggests it is because there is profit to be made by them and he may be partly right. But he fails to grasp that this, and similar films like Fahrenheit 911, nowhere query the basis of class society – the set-up that allows the ownership of property by one privileged class, and the consequent enslavement of one class by another, is in no way threatened and the TV company broadcasting programmes that reveal corporate crimes is aware of this.

   

I don’t really want to rubbish the whole film but, in truth, The Corporation simply echoes the sentiments of the anti-globalisation movement – the demand for greater corporate responsibility, reform of international institutions, expansion of democracy and fairer trading conditions, for instance – while allowing capitalism to carry on perpetrating every social ill that plagues us.

The Corporation is undoubtedly a remarkable exposé of the modern corporation at its ugliest, of the lengths corporations will go to and the depths they will stoop to in the search for profit. The film stands as a brilliant critique of corporate power and everything we associate with it and is a much needed resource in revealing the insanity of the present system. And as far as enthusing green activists and lending weight to the anti-globalisation cause is concerned, the film is a powerful tool. But that’s not the way out.

John Bissett

Allotments are not enough (2011)

Book Review from the January 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life Inc. By Douglas Rushkoff. Vintage Books 2010

One Christmas Eve, the media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff was mugged outside his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, but when he warned his neighbours about the crime via a community website, he received not thanks nor sympathy but a tirade of abuse. His neighbours were angry that reports of crime in the neighbourhood would drive down property prices. How did it come to this? How did our neighbours come to be more concerned with the market price of their house than with the wellbeing of the community they live in? How did people come to act more like corporations – concerned only with the value of their assets – than like human beings? Those are the questions Rushkoff sets out to answer.

The problem, according to Rushkoff, is ‘corporatism’. By this he means the rise then global dominance of big corporations, and the suppression of every aspect of life that comes into conflict with the need of those corporations to make profits. This dominance then became so total that we internalised corporate values and came to treat life itself as if it were a corporation, with no right to exist or say anything unless whatever it was doing or saying brought home the dollars. Rushkoff’s argument is wide-ranging and detailed, sweeping from the origin of the corporation in the 16th century to modern-day consumerism, the globalisation of finance, individualism, New Age spirituality and the cult of home ownership. The book is full of arguments socialists will perhaps already be aware of, but with plenty of new and interesting details, including some entertaining journalistic investigations into the attitudes of those who run corporations, and the delusions of those who are their most desperate victims. Rushkoff gives an excellent account of how the world went mad, and is particularly good at showing how an abstract-sounding historical analysis actually plays out at the level of individual human lives.

He even touches upon the concept that would have made his book better still – capital. But because he does not define or develop or investigate this key concept, his book all but ignores the most important part of the story. Like so many utopian thinkers before him, he proposes to lop off the bits of society he doesn’t like, without considering whether these might be socially necessary aspects of the normal functioning of capital – the functioning of which is to be left intact while the reformer goes about his business. In other words, Rushkoff does not consider whether the real cause of our problems might not be the corporation as such, but the circulation and accumulation of capital, of which the corporation is merely a form that has proved to be particularly useful. To use Rushkoff’s own words from a slightly different context, our problems are “everything to do with excess capital’s need for a place to grow”, with “the needs of capital”. The corporation meets those needs perfectly. Just not human needs.

This may seem like nitpicking, but the full political importance of the criticism emerges when Rushkoff comes to his proposed solutions. He says he has no problem at all with ‘commerce’, for example, and if he has a problem with the circulation of money as capital, then he doesn’t mention it. (His analysis of money in the book doesn’t make it entirely clear, but he seems to associate the circulation of capital with ‘saving’, which he sees as necessary and good, but in need of being separated from money’s role as means of circulation.) But these are the key forces that give rise to the corporation and to the problems Rushkoff quite rightly wants us to rebel against. He is therefore urging us to swim against the tide, when it might be more sensible instead to climb out of the water.

There is a strange contradiction in Rushkoff’s argument. He insists that he is not interested in building a ‘utopian’ nor a centralised, political movement for social change. Resistance to the system is, he says, ‘futile’, because the flexibility, ingenuity and sheer power of corporations will always defeat any opposition. This certainly has some truth to it: any oppositional movement must take extremely seriously the power of capital to flee – or better, incorporate and sell – rebellion. But Rushkoff proposes instead a series of measures that are equally doomed. He says we must take the power back by buying from local organic shops, patronising local cafes, growing our own veg, making our own local money, using less petrol in our cars, coaching our own children for the local football team, and so on. Every one of these acts, according to Rushkoff, is “another nail in the coffin” of the system. But he’s already shown us in the rest of the book that the wealth and power in society is concentrated in a very few hands, and defended by the state.

It’s not at all clear why the all-powerful corporations that can brush off mass movements for social change as a minor irritant should tremble and topple if we plough what little spare time we have into an allotment. Nor does he seem to realise that the very enterprises he wants us to support rely on working-class wages – wages that are earned almost entirely from working all day in big corporations or for the state – to survive at all. Never mind the clever green sales pitch: small business enterprises are as dependent on big capitalism and big corporations and state subsidy as the rest of us.

The problems we face as a society are too big and too systemic for these kind of small-scale, easy answers, and any proposed solutions must be as inevitably political as they are social and economic. The fact that even brilliant, big thinkers such as Rushkoff fight shy of these obvious facts, even while they are forced by the reality of their investigations into all but admitting them, reveals a great deal about the ideological victories of the past thirty years – and of where the most important political battles remain to be fought.

Stuart Watkins