III. Corporations—An Example of Extreme but Conditional Power

Corporations come in all sizes. Some consist of a handful of people with little or no capital. Others are huge and powerful. Some are non-profits that have socially valuable objectives. Some, such as private educational and health-care institutions, are woven into the fabric of society. But many exist only to provide profits to the shareholders without regard to their broader social impact. It is incorrect to lump them all into one bucket.

This posting, the third in this series, will briefly describe the power and fate of what was perhaps the most powerful corporation of all, the British East India Company (which had various other official titles, and below will just be called “the Company”). It survived for 274 years from 1600 until 1874—though its power was practically all taken away from it in 1858. (Today, another company by the same name, selling food in London, claims some kind of unclear connection to the defunct one.) Subsequent postings in this series will also discuss other kinds of corporations, from the minute to the powerful, from the charitable to the soulless.

“What was so special about this Company? Well, at the end of its powers it was responsible, directly or indirectly, for nearly one-fifth of the world’s population.” (Gardner, p. 11—see references below.)

What started it? The exotic health foods of the day—spices, notably cloves, nutmeg, mace, pepper and cinnamon, and later tea and coffee, combined with the irresistible lure of profits. The attraction of these spices led to the European “discovery” of America, resulting from an attempt to reach these spices by sailing west instead of east. The Europeans who sailed east found many of these spices in an area appropriately called ‘The Spice Islands,” an area mostly of now Indonesian islands between the Philippines to the north and Australia the south. These spices could be obtained at very low cost from their sources and sold at high prices in Europe and England. (For example, in one instance, in 1608, a cargo of cloves that was purchased for the equivalent of £3000 sold in England for £36,000.) The ships of Europe began to replace the slower transport of these spices through Persian and Arab lands. The Portuguese ships got to this area first, followed more successfully by the Dutch and later the Company which engaged in frequent skirmishes with the Dutch. Due to the success of the Dutch, the Company pulled back from the Spice Islands and retreated northwest towards India and for certain periods, Burma and Thailand.

The Company was established as a corporation by Elizabeth I, Queen of England, in 1600, by her signing a “charter” that gave the Company authority to operate as a corporation. The corporate form enabled the Company to collect large investments simply by selling shares, often to others who had no interest in engaging directly in the Company’s business. Years before, British merchants began to set up various endeavors, complete with ships, to engage in trading with Asian areas, just as Portuguese and Dutch merchants did. The Company evolved out of these earlier endeavors, but to become a corporation, an artificial legal entity, a charter from the Queen was necessary. The Company’s charter was initially valid for only fifteen years, but it was continually renewed (with modifications) until the final charter that expired in 1874. The Company’s first ships sailed in 1601, going south and around the African Cape of Good Hope and then northeastward to reach their destinations many months after leaving England.

With the huge profits from the sales in England of these Asian items, the Company not only funded itself and built more ships, but also paid the shareholders who provided the Company’s funding. Much later, beginning in the late eighteenth century, the Company earned further income by engaging in the Asian tea and opium trades that included trade with China.

The Company’s earliest efforts were focused on trade in the East Indies, not conquest of Asian lands. Nonetheless, the Company’s ships were well armed and, when the opportunity presented itself, would often attack and plunder other European ships, take over their outposts on land or seek to divert trade to itself. Other major battles were fought with pirates—and, less successfully, with cholera and other diseases. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Company was well established along various costal areas of what was later known as India. Occasionally there were battles with local Indian authorities, which the local authorities sometimes won, and some ill-advised plundering of Indian vessels that jeopardized the very trade on which the Company depended. Often, but not always, the Company’s presence was accepted by the local authorities through various arrangements, including bribes and intrigue.

Beginning in the early eighteenth century, the Company’s armies grew, consisting of both British and Indian soldiers (“sepoys”). Without the sepoys, the British would have had no hope of success. Beginning in the middle of that century and well into the next, the Company increasingly engaged in military takeovers of Indian lands with the essential assistance of sepoys. These ventures involved fighting other European powers, most notably Portugal and France, as much as Indian powers. Communications and directives from London, including occasional directives to avoid intervention into Indian affairs and to respect native culture, were often ignored or arrived too late to change what had already happened. Desires to westernize and Christianize India increased, both within the Company and in England. Nonetheless, there were some marriages between Company men and Indian women and some notable Anglo-Indian families resulted. In addition to the marriages, from the beginning of the Company’s numerous landings from India to Japan, sex between the Company’s male personnel and the local women were documented and sometimes seemed to play a role in decisions affecting commerce. Thus, the Company’s complex and varied life might be said to have been governed by commerce, carnality, adventure, alcohol, disease, warfare and intrigue.

As these incursions into India increased, by the end of the eighteenth century the Company controlled, directly or indirectly, much of the Indian sub-continent. It expanded further. However, its attempt to take over Afghanistan resulted, in 1842, in the total slaughter of an entire Company camp, more than 16,000 people, with only one known survivor. (A poignant trilogy of novels set in those times was written by Thalassa Ali, noted below.)

While the Company came increasingly under the control of London beginning towards the end of the eighteenth century, the Company’s final demise was brought about in 1857 by a mutiny of sepoys in a large area that included Delhi. The mutiny developed into war. During these battles, both the British and opposing Indian forces engaged as commanded in some of the most depraved and bloody atrocities of which humans are capable. The Company eventually prevailed at great cost to human life—and the loss of any credibility of whatever dubious claim it might have made to be a force of decency.

The war was not well received in London, and it triggered successful efforts in Parliament to transfer the Company’s possessions to the crown. By act of Parliament in 1858, the Company was reduced to a minimal existence that was later completely eliminated by the expiration of its final charter in 1874. Its huge, stately headquarters in London were demolished in 1861. However, the Company set the stage for England to take direct control over the places that the Company had colonized. By then, the age of imperialism was well underway.

While the Company has been called the world’s most powerful corporation, we must not lose sight of the fact that the Company’s existence depended entirely on charters from the government. When the Company’s final charter expired and was not renewed, the Company ceased to exist. This is important, because a corporation today, as has always been the case, exists only to the extent that a government authorizes its existence.

But we must also not lose sight of the fact that the Company often operated on its own, sometimes in direct defiance of directions from London. The Company became a nation of its own, authorized by another nation that could not control it while it existed. Still, the Company’s foundation was nothing more than a series of legal writings approved by the British government. Thus, in spite of its independent stature, the Company was, as a legal matter, an extension of the British government, but an extension that took on a life of its own and that the government could not fully control without entirely removing the Company’s legal foundation.

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Histories:

Brian Gardner, The East India Company: A History, McCall Publishing Co, New York, 1972.

John Keay, The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company, Macmillan Pub. Co., New York, 1991.

A short overview:

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea, Modern Library, New York, 2005, pp. 21-28.

A trilogy of novels in an historical setting in nineteenth century India: 
Thalassa Ali, A Singular Hostage (London, 2002), A Beggar at the Gate (New York, 2004), Companions of Paradise (New York, 2007).

Links to previous postings in this series:

1. Corporations (Part I of series): Introduction—Why We Need To Know About Them (2/3/12)
2. II. Corporations: Their Early Beginnings (2/18/12)

It’s Past Time to Relegate “Race” to History

A conservative columnist for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby, got it right (for a change), when he said, “Perhaps by then [a generation or two down the road] the very idea of race -- white, black or anything else -- will finally have been discarded, and American children will marvel at the idea that color of skin or shape of eye could ever have mattered so much to their forbears.” (“When ‘white’ is a trick of definition,” Boston Globe, K9.)

Only 45 years ago, when I was twenty-seven years old, lawyers defended a Virginia law that banned “interracial marriage” on the grounds that the law prevented pollution of the “white race.” The U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark decision (Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 [1967]) overturned the Virginia law, and since then no laws banning “interracial” marriage could be enforced in the U.S.

Those laws banning “interracial” marriages, which several states still had in 1967, relied on a concept of “race” that has no scientific basis. Ashley Montagu pointed this out in his book, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, first published in 1942, 25 years before the decision in Loving v. Virginia. As I pointed out in How We Are Our Enemy -- And How to Stop, “ ‘Race’ is a mythical creation of the human imagination, having no basis in biology. There is no ‘race’ gene. It is long past the time when the concept of ‘race’ should be totally extinguished from our way of thinking” (p.136).

Yet, science is continually ignored when we talk about “mixed race” couples, etc. There is no such thing. If you mix nothing with nothing, you get nothing.

It is still necessary, of course, to recognize racism and the reality of different ethnicities and cultural groupings. These are observable phenomena. “Race” is not observable. It is a concept inferred from observation -- and a concept that observation and genetics do not support now and never did.

In my rare support of Mr. Jacoby, I wrote a letter to the editor, which the Boston Globe published today (6/3/2012), with minor modifications, in its “Opinion” section. Here is the letter as published (the misleading title is the Globe's):

Time at last for us to become post-racial

Jeff Jacoby effectively makes a case for getting rid of the very idea of “race” (“When ‘white’ is a trick of definition,” Op-ed, May 27). I fully agree. Not only is “white” a trick of definition. So are all of the other terms used to designate race. But for these tricks, President Obama, given his biological parents, is as much “white” as he is “black.” Yet we try to fit him and everyone else into so-called racial categories that make no sense.

“Race” exists only as a mythical idea created centuries ago by people who wanted to affirm the superiority of those who looked like them. It is past time to get rid of this false idea.

Whenever we use the term “race,” we should put it in quotation marks as a way of recognizing and affirming that it is primarily an idea that exists to support racism.

John L. Hodge

Jamaica Plain

What's God Got To Do With It?

In February of this year I published a book, Dialogues on God: Three Views. So what has God got to do with a blog on democracy, human rights and ethics? Since I am not prepared either to affirm or deny the existence of God, I cannot say. However, beliefs about God and other religious beliefs have a major impact on what people consider to be right or wrong. That, in turn, affects what people do and their political views. You can see this by observing the frequency of the appeals to religious beliefs by those who oppose gay marriage and women’s right to abortions, and the religious sources of those objecting to funding contraceptives. You also see it whenever the President of the United States concludes his speeches with “God bless America.” These are just a few examples.

These dialogues explore beliefs about God from three perspectives, including that of an atheist. It shows how different beliefs about God are linked to different ways of living and apprehending the universe. The three disagreeing dialoguers eventually agree on something quite relevant to democracy. Read the book to find out what it is, and why.

Another way of approaching this subject is an excellent book by Steven R. Prothero, God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World (2010). His book is fairly long, easy to read and very informative; mine is short and, I hope, thought-provoking. I suggest you read both.
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Read a review (not paid for) of Dialogues on God: Three Views by The Midwest Book Review.

The President’s Authority to Kill

It is a rare occurrence when the New York Times and John E. Sununu agree. (Mr. Sununu is a Republican and former U.S. Senator from New Hampshire.) But they did agree on one thing—the lameness of Attorney General Eric Holder’s untenable defense of exclusive executive authority to determine when American citizens can be targeted for killing. (See NYT Editorial, “The Power to Kill,” Mar. 11th,  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/the-power-to-kill.html?scp=1&sq=the%20power%20to%20kill&st=cse  and Sununu’s column, “Death, by order of your president,” Mar. 19th, http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-19/opinion/31205637_1_habeas-corpus-judicial-review-eric-holder .) As Mr. Sununu correctly points out, “The gist of [Holder’s] message was this: If you are a US citizen, the president of the United States can issue an order to have you killed without review or approval from any other branch of government. No president has ever asserted such authority. This administration has already acted upon it.”

Both articles point out that Mr. Holder’s position places the exclusive authority to determine who should be killed in the hands of the executive branch—headed by the President of the United States. Accordingly, the killing by a drone strike on Sept. 30, 2011, of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born member of al Qaeda, and the subsequent and little publicized killing of his 16-year-old son two weeks later, were justifiable, according to Mr. Holder, on the grounds that the President has the authority to decide. The concept of due process, that necessarily would involve some form of judicial proceeding before anyone is executed, has been discarded.

It is one thing to kill on the battlefield, where the conflicting sides are shooting at each other, and no one really knows the personal identities of those shooting from the other side. It is another thing to declare that an organization is the enemy, to identify its members, and to kill them, whether they are armed or not, from a drone flying high in the sky. Ever since the former President, George W. Bush, declared that al Qaeda was the enemy, that they were terrorists, and that we are in a war against terrorism, the distinction between these two scenarios has been blurred. First, President Bush declares that there is such a war on terrorism, and second, both Mr. Bush and President Obama act as though such a war is the same as fighting on the battlefield, so that the President’s authority is the same in both instances. Congress has essentially supported this view. We are now at the point where the President can determine who is a terrorist, whether or not the terrorist should be killed, and order the killing. The only restrictions on this power are restrictions determined by the executive branch—i.e., the President.

The authority that Mr. Holder claims is not in the United States Constitution, and Mr. Holder did not even assert that it is. Article II of the Constitution sets forth the powers of the executive branch, powers that “shall be vested in a President of the United States of America” (Art. II, Section 1, 1). It states, “The President shall be commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States . . . and he shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States. . . (Art. II, Section 2,1).  The Constitution does not provide for executive authority to execute and assassinate whomever the executive branch determines should be killed. (Also see my previous post, “Why Aren’t Drone Killings Human Rights Violations?”)

There is little to distinguish the authority claimed by Mr. Holder from that exercised by the world’s worst dictators. We may be looking, frankly, at the approaching death of democracy and human rights in the United States.  Human rights provide the legal backbone of democracy. Protection of human rights requires an independent judiciary. Mr. Holder’s position dispenses with the judiciary. That this flaunting of democratic principles is coming from a Democratic administration bodes ill for the nation. A Republican administration would make matters worse. (See my post of Jan. 23, 2012, “What is the Opposite Direction From Republicanism?”)

To discourage such national departures from established principles of human rights, there need to be international protectors of human rights that are strong enough to challenge national prerogatives. (A good source for international documents is the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, http://www.mcli.org .) In the meantime, only an active and concerned public can change the unfortunate direction this country is taking in the name of defense.

Although the New York Times and Mr. Sununu agree on this issue, both limit their criticism of Mr. Holder’s views to the killing of U.S. citizens. Neither seek to explain why it matters whether the target is a U.S. citizen or not. Can human rights apply only to U.S. citizens and not to others? The distinction makes no sense. Either we, as human beings, have equal rights or we do not. The very distinction between rights belonging to citizens and rights belonging to others undermines the ethical foundation of democracy—the fundamental equality of all people.

Why Aren’t Drone Killings Human Rights Violations?

A widely published Associated Press article by Sebastian Abbot attempts to make the case that few civilians have been killed by U.S. drones (e.g., “Most killed by US drones are militants, study finds,” Boston Globe, Feb. 26, 2012, p. A3). (Click here to see the article printed elsewhere.) The same article establishes that many civilians have been killed by drones in Pakistan. Since about 70% of those killed were “militants,” according to the article, that means about 30% were civilians. According to the article’s numbers, about 56 civilians or other non-militants have been killed by U.S. drones in Pakistan.

Imagine the international outcry if these killings had occurred in England, or Germany, or the U.S. Pakistan is not a war zone. Are Pakistani civilian lives considered to be of less importance that the lives of Europeans or Americans? Why is there no international outcry, or outcry within the U.S., that 56 innocent Pakistanis have been killed by U.S. drones?

The other 138 people killed were “militants.” And who are the “militants”? What is a “militant”? Is a “militant” the same as a “terrorist.” What is the difference between a “militant” and a “terrorist” or a “dissident”? When terms like “militant” and “terrorist” are vaguely defined, if defined at all, they become subject to creeping expansion to include more and more people. When an attack kills many, it is in the interest of the attacker to define “militant” and “terrorist” as broadly as possible to minimize the number of “civilian” deaths. No one has conclusively determined that all of the “militants” who died were proper targets.

These killings reflect complete disregard of the role of the judiciary. The purpose of judicial procedures is to determine guilt or innocence. It is the judiciary that is charged with enforcing the rights of the accused. Without an independent judiciary, human rights is an empty concept that cannot be implemented. When the policing body and the prosecutor can freely kill those suspected of criminal acts, the judiciary becomes irrelevant. These drone killings did not take place in the heat of battle or on a battlefield. They were premeditated. The non-civilian victims may or may not have been armed, but even if armed, they were defenseless against a drone high in the sky. These killings were not shootouts between the police and suspected criminals. No attempt was made to capture the targets alive and bring them to trial.

In these government-sponsored killings, there was no “due process of law” as envisioned by the Fifth Amendment, or a right to trial as a required by the Sixth Amendment. These provisions in the U.S. Constitution—in the Bill of Rights—state very fundamental principles of human rights. As a technical legal matter, they were not applicable. But from an ethical standpoint, these rights apply to all people everywhere in the world. They are recognized internationally as fundamental human rights.

What kind of example is the U.S. providing to the world? Just as nuclear technology spread beyond the U.S. to other nations, so will drone technology spread to other nations, including tyrannical ones. Under the regimes of these tyrannical nations, there is no difference between a terrorist and a militant, between a militant and a dissident, or between a dissident and the opposition. These regimes will use drone technology to kill the opposition. The model for this approach is being provided now by the U.S. It is the wrong model.

Towards—Or Away From—American Theocracy?

Here’s an article I recommend on the dangers of theocracy—not in Iran—IN AMERICA: Timothy Egan’s blog in the New York Times online edition (not the print edition) titled “Theocracy and Its Discontents” (2/23-24/2012). 

The candidacy of Rick Santorum stands for Theocracy in America. Pro-theocracy is perhaps the biggest danger democracy faces today throughout the world. Pro-theocracy is responsible for the “personhood” legislation being considered by some states. Make the fetus a person, and reduce the pregnant woman to servitude. This is not an exaggeration. I explained this in Chapter 5 of my book, How We Are Our Enemy—And How to Stop. Personhood for the fetus is a fundamentalist proposition. The current debate over the funding of contraception is the result of a related fundamentalist intrusion into the political and social realm. These propositions would reduce all women to servitude under fundamentalist ideology.

Put simply: Democracy and theocracy are incompatible.

As for the religion of the Founders, they had their heads on straight. Not only does the U.S. Constitution contain the First Amendment, it also contains Article 6, clause 3, that states, “[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” 

As I explained in Chapter 4 of How We Are Our Enemy—And How to Stop, separation of religion and government is essential to democracy. The current crew of Republican candidates do not believe in this separation. Accordingly, they are a threat to democracy. A terribly lot is at stake in the coming election.

II. Corporations: Their Early Beginnings

[This is the second of a series. Why this series on corporations?]

Beyond the individual, the family, the church and the state, there have always existed associations of people who act as a group. In early times, such associations may have been hunting parties, harvesting groups, gangs, villages, tribes and the like. Somewhere during the development of civilization, some of these associations evolved into today’s corporations.

When did this evolution begin? (Hint: It was long before the nineteenth century.)

To even attempt to answer that question, we first need to have an idea of what a corporation is so that we know what to look for.

In essence, a corporation is an entity that (1) holds and expends resources of monetary value (capital), (2) has a legal existence independent of any natural person or group of natural people living at any particular time, and (3) has a management that is different from the providers or owners of its capital.

A private business corporation is only one kind of corporation. Corporations may be towns, educational institutions, religious institutions, religious communities, and charitable organizations, as well as profit-making businesses. A key feature of a corporation is its independent existence apart from living people. (One historian traces the origin of the corporation to the family, which has a continued existence beyond the family members living at a particular time—Ancient Law, pp. 178 ff; see “References” below. However, a family is not a corporation; the latter has additional characteristics.)

A consequence of this independence and structure is that people or entities that provide capital to the corporation are protected from any of the corporation’s liabilities that may exceed the capital provided to it. That is, the providers of the capital (investors or owners) have “limited liability.” In practical terms, that means that a corporation may go bankrupt without bankrupting the investors or owners.

Thus, a corporation is not like a family or any ordinary organization of people. If all of the participants of an ordinary organization die, the organization dies. A corporation would continue to have a legal existence (though it may die for other reasons). Historically, before there was a corporate option to form a business, businesses were run by individuals and teams of individuals (partnerships). If all of these individuals died, the business died. In addition, if the business was sued because its products were harmful (assuming such suits were possible in those days), each of these individuals would be liable to pay the damages, even if it took everything these individuals owned. But if these individuals could have instead formed a corporation, the damages owed would not exceed the amount of capital the individuals had contributed to the corporation. The rest of their assets could not be used to pay the damages. (There is an exception if the corporation is too completely tied to one or two people.)

An advantage of the corporate structure, therefore, is that a corporation can obtain and use capital and risk failure without risking the economic survival of those who provided the capital.

When and where in history did such an entity begin to exist?

Unlike specific historical events, it cannot be said that corporations began on a specific date. If there was a “first” corporation, we may never know when it happened or what it was, although there are some informed guesses. Suffice it to say, as two writers noted:

In the early Middle Ages, jurists, elaborating on Roman and canon law, slowly began to recognize the existence of “corporate persons”: loose associations of people who wished to be treated as collective entities. These “corporate persons” included towns, universities, and religious communities, as well as guilds of merchants and tradesman. Such associations honeycombed medieval society. . . .

(Quoted from The Company, p. 12; cited in full in “References” below.)

Prior to the Middle Ages, the concept of corporate entities can be found in Roman law, dating back to the late third century B.C. (The Company, p. 4.)

So the concept of the corporation developed very gradually beginning even prior to the Middle Ages. Corporations set up for private commercial purposes developed later. A commercial corporation, Aberdeen Harbour Board (Scotland), was set up in 1136. (The Company, p. 12.) Some believe the first European private business corporation still in existence was Stora Kopparberg of Sweden, which was issued a royal charter in 1347 and is the predecessor of today’s Finish company, Stora Enso Oyj. (The Company, p. 12; supplemented by information on Wikipedia.) 

The importance of this historical background is to know that corporations and corporate personhood did not just come into existence in modern times. It’s an ancient idea that continued to grow and develop into the modern corporation. The next few posts in this series will briefly outline this development. That will help us understand the corporation today.

And tomorrow? We would be short-sighted to believe that this process of historical change has ended. 

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Go to the first post in this series on corporations.

References:

Joseph Stancliffe Davis, Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations, Vol. 1, (New York, 1965; originally published 1917)

Melvin A. Eisenberg, The Structure of the Corporation (Boston and Toronto, 1976)

Robert W. Hamilton, The Law of Corporations, 4^th ed. (St. Paul, MN, 1996)

Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law, 10^th ed. (Gloucester, MA, 1970; originally published 1861)

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (New York, 2003)

Wikipedia.org (used with caution; it contains errors)

The Republican Policy “Gerrymandering” of the Right to Vote

Republicans today, as they have historically, are advancing policies to limit the number of people who can vote. Similar to geographical gerrymandering, where electoral district lines are drawn to reduce the ability of minority voters to elect officials whom they favor, voting policy “gerrymandering” is not politically neutral but designed to disproportionately reduce the number of voters who vote for Democrats. It is happening now and may change the outcome of the 2012 national elections, not only for President but also for Congress.

Please read this February 12th New York Times article by Alexander Keyssar, “The Strange Career of Voter Suppression.” His article concludes, “Even a cursory survey of world events over the last 20 — or 100 — years makes plain that democracies are fragile, that democratic institutions can be undermined from within. Ours are no exception.”

 As I pointed out in my book, How We Are Our Enemy—And How to Stop:

 “The failure of the electoral process in Florida in 2000 was not a one-time failure but a portent of the future. The flaws were structural. Our failure to correct the flaws is a continuing national failure. This failure due to our inaction is partly how we are the enemy of the values we profess.”—p18.

Corporations (Part I of series): Introduction—Why We Need to Know About Them

Corporations are an integral part of the fabric of modern society. They affect nearly everything we buy as well as our jobs, entertainment, news sources, and politics. Yet, little is known about them. What is a corporation? Can they distort financing of political campaigns? I am writing this series on corporations so that we may learn about them.

The need for this series is indicated by my previous posting, “The Misguided People’s Rights Amendment.” The promoters of this amendment are seeking to amend the U.S. Constitution to make it inapplicable to corporations. Though these promoters are liberal democrats with good intentions, they are going down the wrong path. They think, incorrectly, that the disproportionate influence of wealth in the financing of political candidates can be corrected by eliminating any legal rights corporations may have under the Constitution. They also think, incorrectly, that the amendment will reverse the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case. (See previous post.) These promoters not only misunderstand what Citizens United actually held (which pertains to much more than corporations), they also misunderstand what corporations are. Their promotion of this amendment, thus, arises from and depends on public ignorance.

But don’t feel bad if you are among the ignorant. Corporations are such varied and complex entities that they are not easy to comprehend. Understanding Citizens United requires very careful reading of a very long legal opinion. You can have a Ph.D. and know nothing about corporations. My first introduction to corporations was in law school, and many lawyers never took a course in the subject. I will be learning too as I continue with this series.

Corporations are entities created by law that exist independently of any person or group of people. Corporations cannot exist without some sort of legal authorization from a governmental body. They have historically been regarded as artificial persons. Unlike real people, they are potentially immortal, though like real people, they can be born, die or be killed. Whether a corporation is created and how long it lives, nonetheless, depends on real natural living people.

Most of us think of corporations as huge businesses, like General Motors or Apple or Bank of America. But there are many different kinds of corporations. They include tiny businesses, educational and religious institutions, and non-profit organizations. For example, Wikipedia is operated by Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit charitable corporation. Thus, it is incorrect to equate corporations with large capitalistic profit-making enterprises. Corporations serve many purposes, some good, some not so good, depending on your point of view. If we think of corporations as “bad,” then we do not understand what they are. Nonetheless, there is good reason to be concerned about the influence and power of mammoth multinational corporations. Are they a threat to democracy?

This series of postings on corporations will give us some basic information. The series will span many months. We will use this information later to discuss the role that corporations should have, or not have, in a democratic society. We will learn that corporations, for better or worse, have played a major role in the development of modern civilization. The world economy depends on them. This blog depends on them. So if we determine that there is a problem with them, we need to be careful in addressing the problem.

The Misguided People’s Rights Amendment

The so-called “People’s Rights Amendment” is an attempt to nullify the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The key provision of the proposed amendment states, “People, person, or persons as used in this Constitution does not include corporations.”

An “op-ed” supporting this proposed amendment, written by U.S. Representative Jim McGovern and author Jeff Clements, appeared in the Boston Globe on January 21^st, titled “'We the People' can overturn Citizens United.” In a similar vein, the Huffington Post, on January 9^th, published an online article by Marge Baker titled “Overturning Citizens United: A Movement Moment.” (My January 10^th comment on that article is similar to my letter below.)

These articles illustrate the need for the public to know more about corporations, for the articles are products of widespread public ignorance of the subject. I will seek to remedy this problem by posting a series on corporations. It’s a big subject that will take several months of postings. The first posting will be soon.

Meanwhile, you should know something about why the People’s Rights Amendment is a bad idea. My letter to the editor, published today, introduces the matter. Here is the letter as it appeared in the Boston Sunday Globe in the Ideas section, page K9, January 29, 2012, and also online for subscribers at BostonGlobe.com:

Proposal is misguided attempt to reform election financing

THE PEOPLE’S Rights Amendment, as currently drafted, is a misguided attempt to bring about needed reform of the financing of elections ( “ ‘We the People’ can overturn Citizens United,’’ Op-ed, Jan. 21). Such financing reform is desperately needed, but it cannot be attained merely by attacking the personhood of corporations. Since wealthy individuals can distort the funding of elections just as easily as corporations, the electoral reform that is needed is different from and broader in scope than corporate personhood.

Moreover, the Supreme Court initially declared that corporations were persons, not in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, but in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1886. Even in the colonies prior to the Revolution, corporations (such as they were then) were regarded as artificial persons. Such entities created by law have been instrumental in the development of modern civilization and include not only large business corporations but a multitude of micro and small businesses and charitable nonprofits.

Thus, the People’s Rights Amendment is not only based on a misunderstanding of the history and law of corporations. It also misses the bigger target of wealth’s disproportionate influence over government.

John L. Hodge

Jamaica Plain

The Enduring Emotional Impetus to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Now that the Iraq war has officially ended, it would be wise to reflect on why the invasion occurred in the first place. Will the conditions that led to that invasion again be ripe for another invasion of someplace else? A key ingredient of those conditions, one not publicly questioned, is still quite present today. This ingredient provides the emotional impetus for attacking others.

We must not forget that the invasion occurred with the overwhelming support of the public. Former president George W. Bush successfully portrayed the invasion as a strike, not just against “the terrorists,” but against evil itself. Through a thought process that made emotional connections but ignored evidence and was entirely illogical, he linked into one bundle the “axis of evil” (Iraq, Iran and North Korea), those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, terrorists everywhere, and anyone opposed to “freedom.” If these connections made sense to the public then, what is to prevent similar connections from making sense again to support attacking or invading another target?

These illogical and non-factual connections were emotionally unified by an underlying premise: that we must fight against evil. It is this very fight that we must question. While evil by definition is always bad and should be fought, it is not necessarily true that evil can be identified as contained in identifiable evil people who should be killed. Yet, that identification is the unquestioned emotional premise behind the invasion of Iraq, and, perhaps too, behind the currently escalating drone killings and the military threats to Iran.

The problem with the premise, that you fight evil by killing evil people, is that it contradicts the primary principle underlying democracy, the principle of human equality. This principle was, for example, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, restated by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address, and reaffirmed by President Obama in his inaugural address in 2009. But it was abandoned when Iraq was invaded. We cannot consistently say, “All people are created equal,” and, “But some people are evil and must be killed.” The contradiction was not apparent to the nation when it invaded Iraq. It still isn’t.

It is not a coincidence that former president Bush defined the goal as “freedom,” not as human equality. By giving little or no weight to the idea of equality, it was relatively easy to discuss the invasion with little consideration of its potential cost to the Iraqi people. While the potential for casualties among American soldiers was discussed prior to the invasion, there was little or no public thought given to the potential casualties of the citizens of Iraq. Did we care that tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s would die, either directly, or indirectly from destroyed infrastructure, as a result of this regime change? Is so, did it matter? Even today we usually do not discuss Iraqi deaths in numbers as we do for American troops. In the fight against the rulers who were deemed to be evil, it seemed not to matter how many Iraqis would get killed in the process. They were considered to be just “collateral damage.” As a result of this way of thinking, the Iraqi people themselves were not regarded as equals but as weak, perhaps child-like, people who had to have their government overthrown for them by superior freedom-loving people. This deprived the Iraqi people of the dignity and the pride they would have obtained by overthrowing their own dictator, as is occurring elsewhere in the Middle East.

In Iraq, our nation cannot be proud of what it has accomplished, not only for the hundreds of thousands of lives lost for false reasons, but also by leaving behind a shaky, sectarian quasi-democracy that has only a possibility of maturing into the real thing. Apparently what was left behind does not really matter once the targeted evil has been eliminated. That the government left behind can hardly be called democratic shows that real democracy, one that includes respect for human rights, cannot be imposed by military force.

Thus, the invasion was based on a false idea about the meaning of democracy. The Founders themselves could not see the conflict between the principle of equality and the reality around them, for they made exceptions to human equality: for women, slaves and Native Americans, for example. But the principle of human equality allows for no exceptions. The exceptions are created by an anti-democratic way of thinking that apparently is a persistent carry-over from the pre-democratic past of humankind. Over time, our nation has recognized some of these inconsistent exceptions and addressed many of them. But the inconsistency remains whenever, as a matter of national policy, the nation acts on the anti-democratic premise that it knows who is evil and should be killed. The invasion of Iraq, regardless of the outcome, was a blow not for democracy but against the very principle of equality that underlies democracy. If we do not question the anti-democratic premise of that invasion, it will happen again somewhere else. Who will be the next victims?

Why Internet Access is a Human Right

In the January 4, 2012, print and online editions of The New York Times, Vinton G. Cerf published an op-ed titled “Internet Access is Not a Human Right.” He argued that “technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself.” It was a well-meaning argument designed to limit human rights to the most important things. He says, “The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information—and those are not necessarily bound to any particular technology at any particular time.”

The problem with this argument is that it is like saying, “You may have the water but you may not have any container or pipe to convey it or drink from.” The outcome one is trying to achieve cannot be dissociated from the means of achieving it. Although denying access to any container or pipe would not totally prevent use and consumption of the water, it effectively minimizes its usefulness.

The censors—those who seek to prevent freedom of communication—have two primary means of censorship: stifle the communication source or stifle the communication receivers. Effective censors do both. Denial of access to the Internet would both prevent the sources from posting messages and prevent receivers from receiving them.

When the printing press was invented and put into use, censors sought to shut down the presses and also prevent the publications from being distributed. Not only must the publisher be put out of business, so also must the published product be destroyed. Books were burned. In extreme cases it was a crime to read the censored books if you could get one. Was this censorship not a denial of freedom of speech? All it did was attack the technology used to distribute ideas and information, not the ideas or information itself. You could still whisper to your neighbor.

When radio, and later television, was invented and put into use, the censors sought to shut down the broadcasters and, in extreme cases, make it a crime to listen to or view what was broadcast. That is the case today in North Korea, where it is a crime to modify a government-issued radio so as to receive anything other than government-issued broadcasts. Is this censorship not a denial of freedom of speech? All it does is attack the technology used to distribute ideas and information, not the ideas or information itself. North Koreans can still whisper to their neighbors.

The Internet is the new printing press, the new radio, the new television. It is becoming the main means of communication throughout the world. If access to it is not a human right, then freedom of speech is not a human right, for there is no value to speech that cannot be read or heard by the audience that the speech is intended to reach. The Internet is now one of the essential means by which communication occurs. If there is freedom to communicate, there must be freedom to access the technological means of communication. Whispering to our neighbors is not enough. Since we regard freedom of speech to be a human right, access to the Internet should also be regarded a human right.

What is the Opposite Direction from Republicanism? (First Post)

Imagine the federal government being entirely run by a coalition of the current Republican candidates for president. Romney, who sways with the wind. Gingrich, who would kick people off of food stamps. Santorum, who, if he had his way, would put an armed priest in every bedroom. Paul, who, like the rest of them, would reduce women to being carriers of protected fetuses.

This blog, along with my publications, is about going in the opposite direction from that coalition. But what is that opposite direction? A vision of the opposite direction has been missing for decades. My book, How We Are Our Enemy—And How to Stop: Our Unfinished Task of Fulfilling the Values of Democracy (2011), provides such a vision. This blog will supplement that vision and explore ongoing issues pertaining to our social, political and cultural milieu. That milieu extends from our own homes to the world.

The democratic value to be pursued is that of human equality. You will not hear Republican candidates talk about it. Former president George W. Bush equated democracy with “freedom” and ignored equality. “Freedom” is code for a government that keeps its hands off of big business. “Freedom” is what the U.S. supposedly gave Iraq by removing its oppressive government, without giving much thought to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died in the process. They were not all killed directly, but perhaps as many as a million died from the lack of infrastructure, infrastructure that was destroyed by U.S. bombs and the chaos that followed and continues. (More on this later.)

Yes, we must go in the opposite direction if democracy is to survive. But we must develop, through sharing of ideas, a clear understanding of what the opposite direction is.