The Corporation: The Documentary

The Corporation is a great documentary by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan. Joel Bakan also wrote a book called "The Corporation." The book complements the movie. Achbar was one of the creators of Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. (Manufacturing Consent is a classic film. Everyone should see it.) The Corporation investigates the genesis, nature, problems, and realities of the modern corporation. The movie has good visuals. The creators hardly ever just let scenes go by without doing something clever and creative with the visuals. The content of the film is great, dealing with what I think is one of the most important issues of our time: corporate power. One of the main points that has stuck with me is that, through a series of questionable maneuvers, corporations have acquired the status of legal persons, having more rights than real people. Also enshrined in law (the details of which I am ignorant) is that these immortal legal persons must put the interests of their stockholders above all other concerns. In other words, the corporation must, by law, put the pursuit of profit (for its stockholders) above, say, the common good. So the stockholders can prevent a CEO from putting, say, environmental interests or community interests, over profits. As the economist Milton Friedman says, the corporation has no social responsibility at all. It has a legal responsibility, however, to maximize profits for its owners. Those who run the corporations may be nice people, very moral people, but in their instututional role they are required to act like egoists, doing whatever maximizes the corporation's interests. And that often means that their institutional role requires them to act like monsters. One bad consequence of this egoism is that, if the cost benefit analysis shows that the expected utility of breaking a law pays more than following the law, then the correct business decision is to break the law. It is easy to understand why there is an incredible amount of corporate crime. Another thing to realize, though, is that this corporate structure is not a law of nature. The existing corporate structure exists because we have willingly (more or less) created it. Corporations exist by the consent of the people. If we want to change the structure, then we can do it. If a corporation deserves the death penalty, then we can and should revoke its charter.