More from The Corporation

Well, having seen the film, I subsequently came across the book by the same name. The content & flow of the subject matters is much the same as in the film, but you get the added detail that print allows over film. Not only that, but for those interested in some of the background material, there is an extensive appendix of notes & bibliography references. In one area in particular the book clarifies something that didn’t really come across very well in the film – the balance of control & authority the government holds wrt to the corporation vs the citizens of the state. In the film there is a sequence covering law professor, Robert Benson’s attempt to get California’s state attorney to dissolve the Union Oil Company of California, by revoking its corporate charter. The film focused a little on the spectacle of such an attempt – the book shows, however, that Benson never really expected the motion to succeed. Rather he was interested in using the publicity to raise public awareness of the fact that, despite outward appearances, citizens & governments do still have potential for absolute control over corporations should they have the will to use them. It is summed up quite well in the few paragraphs towards the end of the book

The state is the only institution i nthe world that can bring a corporation to life. It alone grants corporations their essential rights, such as legal personhood and limited liability, and it compels them always to put profits first.
…
And only the state, in conjunction with other states, can enter into international trade deals and create global institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, that in turn, limit its ability to regulate the corporations and property rights it has created.

With the state, the corporation is nothing. Litterally nothing.

It is therefore a mistake to believe that because corporations are now strong, the state has become weak. Economic globalization and deregulation have diminished the state’s capacity to protect the public interest (…) and have strengthened its power to promote corporations’ interests and facilitate their profit-seeking missions. Overall, however, the state’s power has not been reduced. It has been redistributed, more tightly connected to the needs & interests of corporations and less so to the public interest.

The question is never whether the state regulates corporations – it always does – but how, and in whose interests, it does so.