During The Corporation DVD House Party campaign, we asked people whether we should Reform, Regulate or Rewrite the corporation. The idea was to come up with practical engagement strategies that dealt with the nature of the corporate beast and brought together as many people and ideas as possible. Ultimately, we think all these positions are needed and have since transformed the 3 ‘R’s into the all-encompassing Campaign 4 Corporate Harm Reduction. But we’ve put together a short refresher on some of the ideas we’ve heard so far.
ReFORM Within the business world, a typical response to cure what ails the corporation is to call for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Advocates also see Ethical Investing or Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) as the route to salvation, adopting the credo: “Don’t sell out, buy in!” But along the way, some real problems have cropped up with how companies are measured and assessed. With Nike and BP popping up on top 100 lists of the most ethical and most sustainable businesses, something appears to have gone amiss. Is CSR just talk to ensure the money keeps flowing and business goes on as usual? Advocates are coming to the conclusion that if CSR is to work, it must be built on a standardized, transparent system of methodology and evaluation. Which sounds a lot like our next ‘R’…
ReGULATE In this camp, legal action and enforceable global standards are put forth as remedies. First up: the corporation is not a person! In the US, citizens have successfully lobbied their county and state governments to revoke the constitutional joke of corporate personhood (see "When Is a Corporation Like a Freed Slave?" in the Nov/Dec 2006 issue of MotherJones). Another tool in the Regulators’ kit is the US Alien Tort Claims Act, under which American companies can be tried for human rights abuses committed outside the US. An old law left over from the 1700s to target pirates, it has been dusted off and used to go after oil companies, among others, for violations all over the globe. Needless to say, it has the multinationals crying foul and the US Supreme Court has recently narrowed its interpretation. This is the key problem with regulation: it’s only as good as it’s enforced.
ReWRITE From cooperatives to microfinance initiatives to local exchange & currency networks, the Rewriters are out to do things differently and on their own terms. The reclaimed factory movement by Argentinean workers (illustrated in a documentary you may be familiar with - The Take) is a great example of the opportunities that can multiply with a little creative experimentation. After seeing the film in 2004, New Yorker Brendan Martin started a nonprofit organization that makes democratic loans to the recovered companies in Argentina. By cutting out those meddlesome corporate middlemen, the Working World offers fair trade products at half the price.
Table at the bottom of this page outlines the rights of corporations vs. people, how they got them and when (from Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy by Ted Nace)
One World Café in Salt Lake City: No menus and no prices – customers pay what they feel the meal was worth
Our favourite academic dissident Noam Chomsky is his usual insightful self as he questions whether corporations should even exist in an interview “On Capitalism, Europe and the World Bank” (April 2, 2007)
