Notes on Chapter Four of The Corporation by Joel Bakan: Democracy Ltd.
By Richard Eriksson on May 18, 2004 - 11:10pm
Although it reads like a conspiracy theory, the first section of the chapter gives some more detail to the segment in the movie: Bakan writes about the attempt to overthrow the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt after he created the New Deal, a sweeping legislative agenda designed to "save capitalism from itself". Business leaders were not very impressed, and, says Bakan, looked to Fascism in Italy and Germany in the early 1930s (I'm struck by how the term Fascism then did not have the negative rhetorical weight it does now). Boiled down to its essentials, Bakan recounts how some executives decided to organize and fund a militia that would, after their operative had gotten close to the President, take over the White House by force, draping themselves in the American flag and the constitution. The plot quickly unraveled (pp. 92-3):
the plotters made a fatal mistake in their choice of leader, however. "With incredible ineptitude," states Jules Archer in The Plot to Seize the White House, "they had selected the wrong man." The plot, and the men behind it, represented everything Smedly Butler [the man the group chose to seize the White House] now despised. Over the years his youthful passion for battles abroad had given way to an equaly fierce desire to fighty hypocrisy at home. [...] Butler was not about to add the United States to the list of countries where he had used military force to defend U.S. corporate interests from populist threats. On November 20, 1934, he revealed the plot to the House Un-American Activities Committee in a secret executive session in New York City.
While corporate interests were prepared (if not able) to seize government by force in the 1930s, Bakan argues, they were certainly prepared (and very able) to seize government through deregulation. Bakan then lists misdeeds by the Republican Party which he believes undermine democracy and encourage the pursuit of corporate interests. (Little mention is made of how or even if Democrats contributed.) Business now describes the government as a "partner", but Bakan says that "Democracy, on the other hand, is necessarily hierarchical. It requires that the people, through the governments they elect, have sovereignty over corporations." (p. 108) I would argue that democracy is more about people having sovereignty over themselves, and that it is more about equality than hierarchy.
A relatively short chapter that uses the Enron boogeyman yet again. Bakan is better when he connects dots like cutting staffing levels at the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration and miners being trapped and being honoured as heroes when they are rescued, unnecessarily if, Bakan argues, there was better enforcement of existing regulations.
