The Corporation

This article first appeared in The Age on January 15, 2005

Last week in The Corporation (Wednesday, 8.30 pm, SBS) a Wall Street Trader admitted that his first thought when the planes hit the World Trade Center (which he was in), was, 'I wonder how much gold is up'. He went on to say 'in devastation there is opportunity', and it is hard not to hear echoes of his words when reading of the jockeying for position that is now taking place after the Tsunami.

Governments are powerless in relation to corporations compared to 60 years ago, the former CEO of Goodyear tells us, quite cheerfully. At first such honesty seems shocking - but then, the corporation is by definition a psychopath (as was argued in Part 1 if this series) and therefore feels not guilt. There are notable exceptions, such as CEO, Ray Anderson who had an epiphany regarding the environmental damage caused by companies such as his and is now attempting to run an environmental friendly, and profitable, carpet company.

Last week a corporate spy, who admitted to various psychopathic tendencies himself, told us that life is about deception. 'We're predators. It's about shareholder value. Do you think you're shareholders really care if you're Billy buttercup or not?' Only last week an Australian shareholders group echoed this by saying that companies shouldn't be donating to the Tsunami appeals because it was the shareholder's money.

Soon a corporation will own everything. To play the song 'happy birthday' in The Corporation would have cost them $10,000. In India there have been laws (successfully fought) that make it illegal to save seed for basmati rice rather than buying patented, genetically modified, expensive, an ineffective seed's. And if you worried that the DNA of rice is being fought over, consider too that you can patent anything in the world other than a live birth human being. A handful of companies will own the genomes that make up this and other species.

This week's third and final episode, 'Reckoning', looks at the battle for control over water, focusing on the situation in Bolivia, a country that could only get world bank loans when they agreed to privatize all their services - including water. People on a wage of $2 a day had to spend 50 cents a day for fresh water. The ensuing campaign, 'It's our water Damn it!' took years and lives. While it was ultimately successful, the company that had privatized the water, Bechtel, sued the World Bank $25 million for lost earnings.

Corporations find their reflection in the regimented structures of fascist regimes. Coke invented Fanta orange to get coke into Nazi Germany during the war. An IBM system could be found in every concentration camp. The use of sweat shop labor is compared to slavery in that it is clearly cheaper to use underpaid labor to produce things, much as it was cheaper to use unpaid labor. The Gap has finally allowed monitoring of its El Salvador factories which makes it the first transnational corporation to do so. Morals, The Corporation argues, must take precedence over markets and commerce.

We need to create systems that nourish the earth and sustain human beings. One should never underestimate the power of the people and, in the third world especially, people are fighting back. Michael Moore comments on the fact he gets TV spots on stations owned by companies he critiques because of their inherent amorality, because they are convinced people aren't going to watch a documentary like this, get off the couch and go and do something to get the world back in our hands. Prove them wrong.

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