First of all, who hasn't been denounced by alex cockburn?
I agree that legalistic reforms come with a pretty steep set of limitations. Not least of which is that any given corporate giant can outgun any community group, PIRG, or "pro-democracy" think tank lawyer-wise, especially if said activists are not working in concert with a broader campaign. The proposed 3-strikes for corporations law struck me as a PR move more than anything else -- that damned superstructure again! -- and a potentially good one. But since I only heard about it thirdhand, and no one else seems to know about it ...
I suspect the whole corporate charter thing is a way of trying to reinstate a local model by demonstrating that corporations are not behaving themselves as good citizens -- yes Doug, very earnest, with a touching if disingenuous faith in the power of local political control, i.e., property relations. The citizens environmental groups' trend toward using eminent domain against corporate polluters comes to mind. So to your question "it's not clear what they'd replace corporations with," I think the answer would probably be "government by the people, for the people," etc. I think the move toward fighting these battles in the courts is a response to government corruption on the local level (county gov't the most corrupt, state the next, etc.). Said corruption often lends itself to corporations working with, or for, the local authorities. Weren't the original corporations set up to resemble little municipal governments anyway?
I keep thinking of a guy I interviewed for a story on NYC's garbage export plan. In this case, they used lawyers to "stand in for mass political movements" because they were too small and too powerless to have one. He was part of a community group trying to keep Waste Management, Inc. from taking over a county landfill in Bethlehem, PA. I asked him why he pursued a legalistic strategy instead of a political one, given just the limitations you mentioned. He laughed kind of ruefully, and said, "We don't prefer a legalistic strategy. But we were defeated politically."
annia
>
> On Thu, 3 Jun 1999 12:55:01 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> writes:
It all
> >seems
> >very legalistic to me - very Constitutional, in that classically
> >American
> >way, with lawyers standing in for mass political movements - and it's
> >not
> >clear what they'd replace corporations with. But there it is.
> >
> >Doug
>
> Don't such reformers fall into the error of confusing property
> relations with the social relations of production? In Marxian
> terms. the latter are a part of the economic base whereas
> the former are a part of the legal superstructure. As part
> of the superstructure they function to help stabilize the
> base. If corporations as a legal form are abolished or modified,
> this is not likely to have much effect on the social relations of
> production unless such reforms come as Doug suggests as
> part of a mass political movement. Otherwise, corporations
> as legal entities will simply be replaced by some other legal
> entity that will perform the same type of functions in regards
> to the existing mode of production. Alas, as Doug suggests
> such legalistic hocus pocus is too much a part of American
> reformist politics, and is a poor substitute for the real thing.
>
> Jim Farmelant