The Corporation
The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
New Edition
What would the world be like if its ruling elite was insane?
The most powerful class of institution on earth, the corporation, is by any reasonable measure hopelessly and unavoidably demented. The corporation lies, steals and kills without remorse and without hesitation when it serves the interests of its shareholders to do so. It obeys the law only when the costs of crime exceed the profits. Corporate social responsibility is impossible except insofar as it is insincere.
At once a diagnosis and a course of treatment, The Corporation is essential reading for those who want to understand the nature of the modern business system. It is a sober and careful attempt to describe the world as it is, rather than as corporate public relations departments would have us believe it to be. It reveals a world more exotic and more terrifying than any of us could have imagined. And although a billion dollar industry is trying to convince you otherwise, the corporations that surround us are not our friends. Charming and plausible though they are, they can only ever see us as resources to be used. This is the real world, not science fiction, and it really is us or them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At first blush, a book characterizing the modern corporation as an"institutional psychopath" might feel like an exercise in hyperbole, but legal scholar Bakan (Just Words: Constitutional Rights and Social Wrongs) makes a persuasive case. No wild-eyed tract from the political left, the book--the basis of an eponymous documentary scheduled to be screened at Sundance in 2004--is a well-reasoned attack on the corrosive impact of mammoth corporations on human rights and democratic forms of government. Legally mandated to pursue its own self-interests,"the corporation can neither recognize nor act upon moral reasons to refrain from harming others," Bakan writes."Nothing in its legal makeup limits what it can do to others in pursuit of its selfish ends, and it is compelled to cause harm when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs." Bakan builds his case against corporations in strong prose uncluttered by jargon and bolstered with judicious facts and statistics (e.g. a Proctor & Gamble science curriculum assures students that clear-cutting"creates new habitats for wild-life"; a commodities broker notes that 9-11 was a"blessing in disguise" because his gold market clients made money; and, of the 1,400 new drugs developed between 1975-1999, only 13 were designed to treat tropical--i.e. unprofitable--diseases). But the book is prescriptive as well as critical. Bakan recommends that corporate power be reined in through better government regulations; publicly financed elections; protected, rather than privatized, stewardship of important groups and interests, such as cultural institutions and health and welfare services; and a shift away from market fundamentalism in international institutions like the WTO and the World Bank. Essentially an optimist, Bakan reminds--and attempts to empower--his readers:"Most important, we must remember...that corporations are our creations. They have no lives, no powers, and no capacities beyond what we, through our governments, give them."
