Cato Ad Infinito

[Carrol Cox]

Doug writes: "It is pretty surreal that a corporation should be treated
as a person, but, on the other hand, I'm not sure what the folks who
make a big deal out of this want to see in its place. Any suggestions?"

This surreality of corporations can (ought to) figure prominently in
anti-capitalist agitation, and a more coherent left with the mass basis
might even (if the proper technical hook could be devised) organize
campaigns of mass action around a demand to cut the privileges of
corporations. (Analogue: say the anti-war movement had launched
petitions for a constitutional convention to write an article forbidding
the use of U.S. military outside the 48 (not 50) states.)

Such a constitutional change is no more (and of course no less)
inconceivable than through legal means changing the status of
constitutions. Foreign use of troops and privileges of corporations are
NOT policies that a capitalist regime can choose or reject. They are
part of the very fabric of a capitalist regime, and to eliminate them is
inseparable from the elimination of capitalism.

So it would be silly to seriously want to "replace" corporate "human
rights" with something else; but properly formulated and embodied in a
program of mass struggle, the critique of these rights can help
illuminate the inner destructiveness of capitalism.

Carrol