Everytime it comes up, usually in the form of contributions, it is discussed in terms of having registers and all sorts of complex mechanisms which we know will not work. Yet the solution is simple enough - change the public companies act, specify in the director's duties, the duty to ensure that company funds arn't used for political purposes and then simply arrest the offenders (that is shift the focus from the parties and politicians onto the companies themselves).
I mention this not as some magical cure but to draw attention to the weak aspects of corporate governance, and those areas where democracy can make effective rule without begining with a massive disturbance.
A few changes here and there to the duties of company directors would leave them liable for their actions but could be got up with popular support and hardly any room for opposition - the next step would be implementing them and that is where the fun would begin - imagine directors personally liable for environmental and other crimes, a handful of arrests and they would become very well behaved. Small changes backed up by supervision would create a lot of room for directing the economy towards social needs.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia
--- Message Received --- From: Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 16:16:40 +0000 Subject: Re: Democracy and the nation state
Particularly the right of companies to bribe.
Lists such as LBO-talk have reference to campaigns about this, but my impression is that there is less attention over the months and years to such campaigns than to whether the Republicans are qualitatively worse than the Democrats.
My broad democratic preference is to support the most left wing party capable of winning an election, favouring proportional representation and channeling most political activism through single issue campaigns which blend and overlap with one another in the strategic direction Greg outlines.
Among the most signficant campaigns would be to stop the companies bribing the parties.
It is also a point of weakness in virtually every advanced capitalist country, with regular bribery scandals that discredit the representatives. It may take a decade or two but it should be a key objective for every progressive administration to change the law increasingly to restrict this.
Chris Burford
London