On Corporate Power, Rights of Nature, and my Advocacy Work

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey

I had the great fortune of having to read Ted Nace's book Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy for my Political Economy and Sustainability course in graduate school. I really appreciated how Nace laid out the corporate legacy and history in both America and our English roots. So much of the Revolutionary War and the original hope for our new nation was to reject corporate power and restrict rather than enable corporations. That our Constitution doesn't even mention corporations was an alternative to the original discussion around outright banning them. Originally corporations were restricted to very specific charters that could be revoked, couldn't own stock in other corporations, and were more place-based.

Over time in our nation the corporations have found ways to use the Constitution (such as in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in which railroad tied Supreme Court justices granted corporations personhood based on a perversion of the Civil War amendment meant to give freed slaves (well, male anyway) equal protection and due process) to give corporations more rights and power than the people. Nace gives great insight into the how and why of this rise of corporate power.

I also recently attended a Daniel Pennock Democracy School session in my state where I learned more about the history and consequences of the rise of corporate power and how to work against it with rights-based and place-based organizing. I strongly recommend if you can attend a session, or if you need to organize to fight corporate power in your community consider arranging for a Democracy School. The instructors did a great job of presenting more of the how and why, but also the consequences for the people and the rich history of how corporate power and even our Constitution are contrary to the principles upon which our nation was originally founded.

What I have come to recognize is that for all of the social justice and sustainability work that I would like to do or am doing, a couple of the root causes are corporate power (the excesses and reckless abandon of corporations has a devastating impact not only on our communities but our environment, which is an important part of our community) and the lack of defining law to check corporate power and spell out inalienable rights of nature in a way that the community can defend against abuses against nature. I'm hoping to rework my Theory of Change and really return again to focusing on corporate power as a root cause while also trying to deal with specific symptomatic issues, as well as adding rights of nature as a crucial core advocacy responsibility. I need to consider my personal actions, too, that enable corporations to thrive and continue repressing and how I can reduce my contribution to the problem while I find ways to help build defining law that can return our nation to one that sees the inherent harm in corporate power and restricts rather than recklessly permits corporate power to be the rule of law.