topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au wrote:
>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."
Does this mean that Chomsky is sympathetic to the conservative argument? Wouldn't that be to concede too much to The Individual as the basic atom of society? It's not far from that to "there no such thing as society, only individuals and their families," is it? What's wrong with undermining market principles? Isn't there something positive to the emergence of the corporation as a planning unit? Or is Chomsky taking a libertarian position here, and dismissing the Marxian reading of the corporation as partly progressive?
Doug