REVIEW BY JESS MELVIN
The Corporation
Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott.
Written by Joel Bakan, with narration written by Harold Crooks and Mark Achbar.
Produced by Big Picture Media Corporation
Released by Zeitgeist Films.
145 minutes.
The Corporation offers us an insight into the capitalist system through examining the nature of the corporation, today's dominant form of capitalist business organisation. Based on Joe Bakan's book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry into this institution which in its 150 years of existence has facilitated such a massive increase in the exploitation of the world's people and resources that the destruction of life on Earth is not only threatened by nuclear-weapon-toting warmongers, but by environment-destroying corporate pirates.
The Corporation carries a message of hope and inspiration. It begins by telling us that "history humbles dominant institutions. All have been crushed, belittled or absorbed into some new order. The corporation is unlikely to be the first to defy history..."
The film notes that in 1936 the Us Supreme Court defined a corporation as a legal person under the 1868 14th amendment to the US Constitution, which declares that no state "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws".
With this in mind, the film proceeds, tongue-in-cheek, to analyse the corporation's "personality" by using the diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organisation and the DSM IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. Dr Robert Hare, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the FBI's top consulting psychologists, agrees with film's diagnosis: "The corporation is the prototypical psychopath."
The corporation has a callous disregard for the feelings of "other" persons, an incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, a reckless disregard for the safety of others, is deceitful, repeatedly lies and cons others for profit, has an incapacity for guilt and fails to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviour — all the trademarks of a psychopath.
The Corporation gives us four case studies to back up this claim — from the shocking effects of sweatshop labour in the Third World to the reality that today just about everything and anything can be patented and potentially genetically modified.
One particularly shocking example of the role of the media corporations in covering up the effects of the "psychopathic' corporation is relayed by Jane Akre, who was a Fox News reporter until she was fired for attempting to tell the public about the risks of synthetic hormone rBGH used in milk production (The hormone is owned by Monsanto, the makers of Agent Orange). Akre sued Fox News and won, until an appeals court ruled that it was not illegal for the media to lie.
Michael Moore also makes an excellent appearance, delivering an analysis not quite articulated in his own documentaries. He explains: "The problem is the profit motive: for corporations, there's no such thing as 'enough'." The last capitalist will sell the rope that hangs him, and that he, Moore, is "part of that rope". Moore then encourages to get up from the couch and "go and do something to get this world back in our hands".
The Corporation also includes interviews Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, neoliberal economist Milton Friedman and a host of CEOs, academics and activists.
It may appear ironic that the 14th amendment, which provided the pretext for the US capitalist legal system, to declare the corporation a legal person, was originally enacted as part of a trifecta of amendments that legally abolished slavery in the US. However, there is no contradiction between the historic enslavement of primarily African people and the push to implement free-market principles.
Chattel slavery provided the basis for the southern plantation economy upon which US capitalism developed for several hundred years. The export-oriented cotton plantations of the US south could not have come into being and prospered without capitalist England's mechanised textile industry, based upon wage slavery.
The Corporation does not articulate a way out of the domination of human life by corporate capitalism. Can the corporation be brought back into line, or is revolutionary change necessary? Mark Achbar, co-director of The Corporation, expanded on this question when he launched the film in Sydney at the Valhalla Cinema. "Change is incremental", Achbar told the audience, and pointed to Venezuela as an example of positive social change. "The world doesn't have to be like this... We don't want to destroy the planet for our grandchildren, we want a different model."
The Corporation is a must see for all social justice activists. The release of The Corporation has been delayed in Australia so as to not clash with Fahrenheit 9/11.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 18, 2004.
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