Russell Mokhiber wrote these reflective words upon hearing of the death of Richard Grossman in November 2011. Russell is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.

Last month, Richard Grossman sent me an e-mail.

He wanted to let me know of legislation he helped draft that would criminalize the corporate form.

It was classic Richard Grossman.

“If people want to go into business, fine,” Grossman told Corporate Crime Reporter.“ But this law would strip away 500 years of constitutional protections and privileges. No more limited liability for shareholders. No more perpetual life. No more constitutional protections.”

In a footnote to the draft law, Grossman writes that “in a corporate state, law, culture, contrived celebration and tradition illegitimately clothe directors and executive officers of chartered incorporated businesses in governing authority.”

“This is usurpation,” he writes. “A corporate state nurtures, enables and expedites such illegitimate governing authority by violence enforced by courts, jails, police and military force and by historians. Less-overtly ferocious institutions – for profit and non profit – routinely reinforce that reality.”

This was typical Grossman.

When others inspired by him had launched campaigns to ban corporate personhood, he moved on.

Last month, he objected to being called the father of the movement to challenge corporate personhood – what he dismissively calls the “corporate personhood fetish.”

“I never focused on personhood,” Grossman said last month. “I helped to explain Supreme Court cases starting with Dartmouth College in 1819 that turned business corporation directors into usurpers.”

“My focus was on the Constitution as a minority-rule plan of governance, and on usurpations galore.”

“And so this move to amend the Constitution that sprung up after the Citizens United decision – I don’t understand it as strategy, as an educational process, as an organizing process, as a goal.”

“Why validate the idea that amending the Constitution offers a remedy for two hundred years of minority rule? For today’s corporate state? Corporate ‘speech’ is such a minuscule aspect of the nation’s private governance and mass denials that have been in place since the nation was founded.”

He kept moving to root causes.

He challenged the Occupy Wall Street movement to move beyond talk of corruption and greed.

“There’s no shortage of corruption and greed going all around,” Grossman said. “But corruption and greed are not the problem. They are diversions.” MORE…