Independent Films
'The Corporation' a revelatory historical documentary

By Michal Lemberger
RAW STORY CONTRIBUTOR

In the wake of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed to insure newly freed slaves equal protection under the law. In a phrase now famous, the Constitution was amended to declare: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

It was, by all accounts, a good idea whose time had not yet come, as the civil rights movement would go on to prove. That a group of flesh and blood people continued to be denied rights and privileges didn’t seem to bother people enough to do much about it. Luckily, though, another group did benefit: corporations.

As laid out in the thought-provoking new documentary “The Corporation,” the history of incorporated businesses in the United States is both fascinating and frightening. Originally given limited charters by the government, corporations turned to the Fourteenth Amendment in order to be designated as “persons” and so be given due process just like anyone else.

On the face of it, this makes some sense: a corporation is a mediating entity that represents the interests of its shareholders. That entity should not be denied due process, because anyone who has a stake in it will be denied “life liberty and property” if the government were to infringe upon the rights of the corporation itself.

The problem, as shown in glaring detail by the film, is not really the legal definition as such, but the implications of understanding a corporation as a “person.” What does it mean to be a person? The documentary presents legal, philosophical and political commentators as well as CEOs to help us understand how far the gap between people who breathe and walk and juggle all sorts of conflicting needs and desires and corporations, who do not. Human persons use ethical systems to make the many different decisions that face them.

Corporations, on the other hand, are created solely to make as much money as possible. Morals, human values, simply and logically, do not factor in to the process by which most large companies (because there are some significant exceptions) do business. The result, of course, is that that lack of ethical basis can and often does impinge upon the life, liberty and property the rest of us hold so dear.

Truthfully though, what’s so immoral about making money? In a perfect world, with no corruption or degradation, there would be nothing wrong at all. But we don’t live in a perfect world, as we know all too well.

The film doesn’t really venture into areas we haven’t thought about: the environmental impact of industry, the exploitation of human labor, the infiltrations of “branded” advertising into the very core of our lives. There is an especially horrifying sequence in which the names of corporations fined millions of dollars by the government—in just one year—flash across the screen, only to be followed by the explanation by one businessman that often enough, corporations do the math and realize that they will make more money by breaking a law than they will have to pay in restitution afterwards. The list goes on, and on, and depressingly on.

And that’s the strength of this film: it simply lays out piece after piece of damning evidence, evidence that leads to the conclusion that as persons, corporations are the worst possible citizens this country could have. The film even turns to a CIA psychologist, who uses the standard diagnostic list of symptoms to determine that corporations are, in fact, psychopaths.
This is scary stuff, and the film does nothing—from the slightly disembodied female narrator’s voice to the ultra modern graphics to the stark footage—to mitigate its effect.

What is so chilling is that the problem is systemic; it is not a partisan problem at all. Yes, the movie opens with a shot of President Bush (and a legion of media correspondents) discounting the “few bad apples” who have caused the recent corporate scandals. And, sure, Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” has recently shown just how bound up Bush personally is with the corporate world and all its depravity, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The truth is, those of us on the left, who rightly criticize the current administration’s handling of…well, everything, have no cause to pat ourselves on the back, not when it comes to the larger picture.

The corporate sector has an inordinate amount of power in the American political system, because it can and does hire very good lobbyists to advocate its needs. It has that power because it gives immense sums of money to both Republican and Democratic parties—even if they do get conservative hands a whole lot greasier. Money talks—as the cliché goes—in politics more than anywhere else, and until that is not true, corporations will continue to influence the policies that the guide our lives.

I left the theater after seeing this film feeling both implicated and helpless. Implicated because I, like everyone else, have to get along in the world, and to get along one must, at least to some extent, play by the rules of the day. Helpless, because I don’t see how I can change those rules.

The film seemed to find some hope in the fact that discrete groups of people—in India, Bolivia and Northern California—have found ways to wrest power from the corporations that control items as vital to life as seeds and water. These are uplifting stories, to be sure, but I’m not certain that a “power to the people” movement is all that we need. On the other hand, history itself holds out some promise: corporations only became “persons” in the late 19th century. There is nothing inevitable about their personhood and, we should all hope, nothing permanent about it either.