The Corporation

"The Corporation" is a fun look at how corporations are destroying the world. I had avoiding seeing it at first, because I thought it would be kind of depressing... I was right, but it's depressing AND entertaining. Basically it shows how corporations run most of the known world. The movie starts out with the history of corporations, and how their power grows substantially after World War Two. According to the film, most of the world's governments and job markets are run or at least affected by corporate power. Corporations have the power to poison and despoil the environments and the people around them, and the larger these "corporate citizens" are, the more immune they are from prosecution. Basically, if corporate power remains unchecked, we are all screwed, except for the fat cats at the top. A fun, depressing look at our future.

This extraordinary documentary is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004) by law professor Joel Bakan (see my review at Amazon). Bakan's thesis is that the corporation is a psychopathic entity.

In his book he notes that the modern corporation is "singularly self-interested and unable to feel genuine concern for others in any context." (p. 56) He adds that the corporation's sole reason for being is to enhance the profits and power of the corporation. He shows by citing court cases that it is the duty of management to make money and that any compromise with that duty is dereliction of duty.

Directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott bring these points and a slew of others to cinematic life through interviews, archival footage, and a fine narrative written by Achbar and Harold Crooks. The interviews cover a wide spectrum of opinion, from Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky on the left, to Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman on the right. Friedman is heard to agree with Bakan that the corporation's duty is to its stockholders and that anything that deviates from that duty is irresponsible.

What emerges is a view of the corporation as an entity working both for and against human welfare. Designed to turn labor and raw materials efficiently into goods and services and to thereby raise our standard of living, it has been a very effective tool for humans to use. On the other hand, because it is blind to anything but its own welfare, the corporation uses humans and the resources of the planet in ways that can be and often are detrimental to people and the environment. Corporations, to put it bluntly, foul the environment with their wastes and will not clean up unless forced to.

An interesting technique that Achbar and Abbott use is to go down the list of behaviors cited in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that identify the psychopathic personality and show how the corporation has all of those behaviors including a criminal disregard for the welfare and feelings of others and a complete absence of guilt. Indeed corporations feel no compunction when they break the law. Their only concern is whether breaking the law is cost-effective. The result is a nearly constant bending and breaking of the law. They pay the fine and then break the law again. The corporation, after all, has no conscience and feels no remorse.

Bakan notes that "corporations are designed to externalize their costs." The corporation is "deliberately programmed, indeed legally compelled, to externalize costs without regard for the harm it may cause to people, communities, and the natural environment. Every cost it can unload onto someone else is a benefit to itself, a direct route to profit." (pp. 72-73) We are shown how rivers are polluted, environments destroyed and people placed into something close to servitude by the corporation's insatiable lust to profit.

The answer to this, as presented in the film, is to make corporations pay for their pollution. What many people are proposing is the creation of bills or certificates that would allow the barer "the right to pollute." The cost of these bills would reflect the societal and environmental costs of the pollution. This sounds scary, but what it would do is make those who pollute pay for their pollution instead of having the costs be externalized as they are now. Consequently, to protect their bottom line, corporations would pollute less.

Another problem with the corporation as emphasized in the film is that the corporate structure is essentially despotic. It is not a democracy or anything close. The owners hire officers to exercise control over everyone who works for the corporation. This is in direct contrast to democratic governments whose officers are elected and who are subject to the checks and balances of a constitutional government with shared powers. It is true that if you are a shareholder of a corporation you may be able to indirectly vote for the CEO. However, such a "democracy" is a democracy of capital in which the electoral power is inequitably distributed. Some people have hundreds of millions of votes. How many does the average shareholder have? Bakan, Achbar and Abbott play fair, and give both sides of the case--although that is not to say that the weight of evidence or sentiment is equally distributed. After all, who's in favor of pollution or the destruction of the environment? The pathological corporation doesn't care about such things, but its officers should. Some do, but feel constrained by their fiduciary duty to their stockholders. Consequently it is our responsibility as the electorate to get our government to make the corporation socially and morally responsible. The way to do that is make the fines for breaking the law large enough to change corporate behavior. Furthermore--and this is essential--make management responsible--criminally if necessary--for the actions of the corporation.

This is absolutely one of the most interesting, most compelling, and, yes, entertaining documentaries that I have ever seen. But beware of some graphic footage.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

The first time in a long time that I've seen a movie audience launch into applause at the end -- and I was as enthusiastic as everyone else.

While quite long (2 hours, 45 minutes)this film piles detailed examples on top of interviews on top of documentary film clips. Liberally laced with interviews with folks like Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore, it also includes insightful commentary from a (small) handful of liberated corporate executives.

The sum total is a compelling story of the evil that can be and is done by and in the name of corporations. I say this as one who has worked in a corporate environment my entire career, and who for a very long time has had difficulty getting past the 'but these are almost all nice people -- I don't know any ogres out to intentionally rape & pillage' perspective.

What I'm gradually wakening to is the realization that yes, the corporate structure is very efficient at doing what it's designed to do -- which unfortunately does not include taking social responsibility or the greater good into account. Instead it's ruthlessly focused on the bottom line, come hell (literally) or high water -- or polluted water.

I highly recommend this film. I know I'll be going back for a second viewing -- there's that much content, that I know I didn't absorb it all the first time around.

Good documentaries have both a viewpoint and an agenda. They reflect the vision, politics, values and angst of the director(s). "The Corporation" meets those standard criteria and in an overlong movie it's Prosecution Exhibit A for an indictment of a) modern corporations, b) consumerism, c) disdain for the Earth and its bounty, d) globalization, e)sleek marketing and f) dishonest, money-grubbing media, the current Whores of Babylon. There's probably more but I was saturated long before the film ended.

In terms of style, directors Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar have made a visually engrossing film with excellent interweaving of archival film with sound bites by noted academics as well as business executives. We get Noam Chomsky and Milton Friedman and many lesser lights. Michael Moore appears enough to seem more a director than an interviewee but some of his remarks, particularly at the end, are more insightful than much of what he opines on in his own films.

Using story boards to announce different themes, "The Corporation" tells - very quickly and, indeed superficially - the history of the legal entity, what we in the law call the "Juridical Person," the modern huge, business creature. Its early history is quickly sketched, the complexities of the Anglo-American societies that spawned this economic model barely hinted at much less explained.

For better or for worse, documentaries best make their argument through striking anecdotes and this movie is no exception. We see corporations engaged in behavior that wreaks havoc on health, deprives poverty-stricken citizens of poor countries of even minimal control of their lives and, of course directs our spending and leisure habits.

But some scenes show corporate strategies as just plain silly as with a couple ambulating down an urban street, one telling the other how great a CD he's listening to happens to be. The idea is that passersby will become curious enough to buy the disc. I doubt this happens much but the use of shills goes back hundreds of years (ample evidence of their employment can be gleaned from Elizabethan literature) and it pales as a menace when juxtaposed to the true evils depicted in the documentary.

Some very complex issues which few viewers are likely to know anything about are presented as proof that corporations are inherently driven solely by profit motives with no regard for other values. Particularly disturbing is the incarnation of the writings of an independent scholar named Black who claims that IBM was in sympathetic and knowing collusion with Nazi Germany to sell them embryonic computers (not mentioned by name but they were the Hollerith punch card machines) which then made expediting millions to their concentration camp murder feasible. This account has been discredited by most historians but the more serious and unmentioned reality is that the U.S. government knowingly permitted some American corporations to prepare to profit from a postwar world by maintaining ties with subsidiaries in Germany (the Bank for International Settlements is never mentioned: now THAT's a subject for a film).

"The Corporation" returns often to the theme that this business entity is a "person" with constitutional rights ( declared a number of times as a sad fact of American law). In fact that's true but what is never explained is that investing corporations with an identity that is juridically recognized means that the entities - AND their assets - are amenable to every form of lawsuit from civil rights violations to environmental law accountability to - you name it. And corporations can be criminally charged and convicted. Yes, obviously they can't be jailed but the entity can be sentenced to remedial action, something that would be impossible if liability was limited to individuals who lack assets sufficient to cure major violations and, in any event, who surely could do nothing from jail or forced retirement.

Where could Ralph Nader's crusade for safer cars have gone if General Motors and other corporations were not amenable to suit as legal persons? How much benefit derived for anti-smoking advocates from being able to arraign Big Tobacco in court (even if losses exceeded wins)? Why are women and minorities working for Big Business (or just trying to get in the door) less likely to be targeted for discrimination these days? You'd never know from this film.

So we have a very mixed bag here - a well constructed polemic that is too one-sided if educating the audience rather than satisfying the converted was the goal. It was fun to sit in a packed theater in an epicenter of affluence - New York's Pleasantville in Westchester County - and note the righteous reaction of an audience of which I'd bet 95% own stock in major corporations.

8/10

Where once we used to shop at our local shop and have bread and milk delivered by the local milkman from the local farms, now we shop in a supermarket that is multinational, eat at fast food restaurants that are everywhere and wear clothes made in the third world by those living in sweatshops. This documentary looks at the Corporation as if it was a person (something that US law says it basically is), charting its development, its character and the effects the concept of profit driven corporations has had on the world we live in.

First of all let me just say that I am fairly liberal in some regards but not to the degree as many of the audience I saw this with, many of whom could not signposted themselves anti-capitalist students if they'd actually carried signs. I should also own up and say that I currently work for an American corporation; in fact one of those who's logo flashes up in the section on the top 50 criminal companies (although I did work for an environmental charity prior to this so that gives you some idea of my muddled politics!). Having read No Logo, Fast Food Nation, seen Michael Moore films and, hey, actually used my own eyes and brain, it came as no surprise to me that the idea of a business that considers no growth to equal failing and must constantly earn more and more to be a bad thing. Nor was I surprised by the sweatshops or pollution that occurs. Neither would any of this be a surprise to the majority of the already tuned-in audience and wisely the film doesn't just rant at us about how terrible things are; instead it takes a fairly compelling look at the wider problems associated with this model. It is consistently interesting, compelling and, sadly, all a bit depressing.

The film's strength is that it never gets personal or preachy. The film allows the CEOs to get a fair chance to present their opinions and it never demonises any of them, the vast majority of them actually come off as very nice guys who seem to genuinely want to be ethical, environmental etc. Not only does this give the film a balanced feel (a refreshing change from Moore's axe-grinding and sermonising) but it also makes the subject more scary – it would be better if the system could be down to careless, evil men but it isn't; it is the system that is the problem and no one person is to blame. The structure of the film jumps around a lot and I'm not sure it entirely works because it is pretty overwhelming although I suppose it was always going to be hard to frame such a large, complex topic – just look at the anti-capitalist protests to get an idea of the multi-issue argument.

The film is not perfect of course and, looking around the audience after the film, it is evident that this film has mostly played to converted rather than winning new converts in the main. Part of this is how overwhelming it is but also the fact that it does run pretty long as well – not a problem once you're into it but perhaps a bit of a turnoff for those not seeking it out. Secondly the lack of answers is also a bit of a problem. I guess I preferred the ending to the alternative of being told to eat mung beans and make our own clothes but it is easy to feel that we just have to accept what we are being told is bad. For me personally this wasn't a massive problem because I do hold a position where I have to work to improve the sustainability of a small part of a big corporation so I left rather hopeful and looking forward to work the next day – but for many viewers I can understand why it feels like a dead end.

Overall though, this is a very good film that allows everyone a fairly balanced crack at the whip even if its agenda and politics are obvious from the start. It avoids demonising, simplifying and making it personal and it is stronger and more engaging as a result. It provides no easy answers but it does provide challenges and plenty to think about with all the talking heads making valid points for all sides and perhaps showing that the answers do lie in the middle – not the extremes of money chasing shareholders or the noisy and brightly dressed street protesters. Regardless of your politics it is worth seeing this film and it deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as lesser documentaries have been (and yes Michael Moore, I'm talking about you).