> It's wrong to judge things out of context,
> but if I do maybe someone could supply some.
>
> I fail to see any connection between the
> "intellectual roots" of corporations, what
> I believe Adam Smith called joint stock
> companies, and Stalinism or fascism.
> It's hard to find any intellectual roots
> of Stalinism at all.
>
> Legitimacy is a separate matter. Corporations
> are creatures of law, so if law is legitimate
> so are corporations. The fact that corps
> and totalitarianism are both hierarchical
> is pretty thin gruel.
>
> mbs
My understanding was that Chomsky thought that both totalitarian regimes and corporations had their intellectual roots in what he calls "neo-Hegelianism". Briefly, this is supposed to be the idea that organic groups have rights over and beyond individuals. According to N.C. such ideas informed the framing of limited liability and other corporate rights laws during the 19th century, and also, less controversially, the ideas of Marx and the fascists.
I would have thought that if corporations are creatures of the law, so is Fascism. The question should always be who makes the laws.
T.O.
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