NC and neo-Hegelianism

[Shane Mage]

>----- Original Message -----
>From: <topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au>
>
>
>
>>
>>  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.
>[snip
>>  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. > http://www.zmag.org/chomskyalbaq.htm:
>
>[snip]
>
>>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."
>
>========================
>
>If the dispute is whether NC asserted that corps. were a manifestation of
>neo-Hegelian political and legal theories of the firm, there's no problem.
>
>The problem lies with the issue that the heyday of corporate law in 
>the US, from
>the 14th Amendment through to Berle and Means, was also a time when US
>jurisprudence was in a decidedly anti-Hegelian mode, epitomized by Justice
>Holmes. Thus the problem is whether NC is correct in his assertions.
>
>Ian

The "problem" is much bigger than that.  The corporatist jurisprudence
stems from John Marshall's "Dartmouth College Case" decision (1819),
at a time when Hegel was very much alive, and very much unread
by American intellectuals (let alone by that Federalist hack Marshall)!  And
the 14th Amendment was written intentionally in such a way
as to permit the Supreme Court (then as now the most
reactionary branch of the US government) to enfranchise
corporations as super-"persons".  The problem is Chomsky's
pathologically arrogant anti-Marxism.

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all 
things."                                                         

Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64