http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/chomskysept97.htm
"These radical changes in the conception of human rights and democracy were not introduced primarily by legislation, but by judicial decisions and intellectual commentary. Corporations, which previously had been considered artificial entities with no rights, were accorded all the rights of persons, and far more, since they are "immortal persons," and "persons" of extraordinary wealth and power. Furthermore, they were no longer bound to the specific purposes designated by state charter, but could act as they chose, with few constraints. The intellectual backgrounds for granting such extraordinary rights to "collectivist legal entities" lie in neo-Hegelian doctrines that also underlie Bolshevism and fascism: the idea that organic entities have rights over and above those of persons. Conservative legal scholars bitterly opposed these innovations, recognizing that they undermine the traditional idea that rights inhere in individuals, and undermine market principles as well."
http://www.zmag.org/chomskyalbaq.htm:
"A century ago during the early stages of the corporatization of America, discussion about these matters was quite frank. Conservatives a century ago denounced the procedure, describing corporatization as a "return to feudalism" and "a form of communism," which is not an entirely inappropriate analogy. There were similar intellectual origins in neo-Hegelian ideas about the rights of organic entities, along with the belief in the need to have a centralized administration of chaotic systems--like the markets, which were totally out of control."
For the truly devout, there are more miscellaneous comments at: http:// www.zmag.org/chomsky/other/chomchatarch.htm
T.O.
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