An original essay by Richard Grossman and Ward Morehouse, which appeared as the Foreword in the book, The Elite Consensus, by George Draffan (2002).
The 1st Amendment “does not intend to guarantee men freedom to say what some private interest pays them to say for its own advantage. It intends only to make men free to say what, as citizens, they think.”
– Alexander Meiklejohn, Philosopher & Educator (1872-1964)
“Over the past 200 years, all over the world but especially in the United States, legal systems have been changed to accomplish two things: limit the legal liabilities of corporations, and give corporations the rights and protections of citizens” by extending “constitutional rights to corporations.” So writes George Draffan in this book about the few who govern the many.
These two accomplishments have enabled corporate officers “to make decisions and control resources . . . to unite to influence political agendas” towards transforming their values and goals (maximizing production, paying as few workers as possible as little as possible, building complex industrial systems, propelling America as Empire, etc.) into law and policy.
What does this mean for all the people hired and fired at will by corporate managers? For people who value cooperation, love, human rights, ecological sanity, democracy and consent of the governed? It means that a unified corporate class uses the law of the land to deny the majority’s fundamental right to govern.
It means that a relatively small number of corporate operatives use “the rule of law” to keep millions and millions of people divided and disempowered.
Routine corporate decisions involving investment, labor and the natural world cause so much harm to life, liberty and property that millions struggle to figure out which corporation is doing what to whom. They scrutinize each new corporate technology, corporate merger, and proposed corporate law; study finance and interlocking corporate structures. Millions have become experts on water, forests, soils, climate; have learned chemistry, physics, hydrology, biology and finance; have learned how to make their way through regulatory and administrative agencies.
Time and again people have come together to oppose corporate plans. They have declared: Not In Our Names. Not Here. Not There. Not Anywhere. This civic work has been vital–to save life and land, to lift the human spirit, to teach children. But while people were resisting corporate assaults and working for sane investments and technologies, corporate operatives were making the rules for governing the nation. MORE…