[lbo-talk] Challenge for leftists of all stripes

joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net
Mon Nov 29 13:38:39 PST 2004


Moreover, in the context of corporate personhood, "right to profit" is the equivalent of "right to life." This has disastrous consequences no only in the case where right to profit trumps the employees right to life -- as with safety issues, but in instilling in the collective unconscious the notion that the demise of or accountability of corporations will doom us all.

There are lots of "intermediate" demands -- like the withdrawal of personhood from corporations -- that may be petty bourgeois or reformist in nature, but that my still serve as a wedge issue or wake up call. Basic democratic/voting rights would be another example. I see no reason to dismiss such...because they are bourgeois. The thing is, at this stage of the game, what they'd like to convince us of is that we have no rights whatsoever. So, anyone willing to fight for any rights is OK by me.

Joanna

Nathan Newman wrote:


>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>
>John Thornton wrote:
>
>
>>All persons are guaranteed "free speech". Corporations can donate
>>money to political parties or individuals as a guaranteed form of
>>free speech.
>>
>>
>-I think this line of complaint is more petit bourgeois than
>-proletarian. It seems founded on an often undisclosed nostalgia for
>-the 19th century world of proprietorships or small partnerships. And
>-what a wonderful time that was!
>
>No, the complaints about legal personhood for corporations have to do with
>the history of courts in the US using that "personhood" to endow them with
>a range of constitutional rights that legislatures could not regulate. For
>decades, those rights included a range of economic contracting rights that
>stunted legislative regulation.
>
>More recently, "free speech" and other "associational" rights have been
>raised to try to block a range of regulations. Let me give one example.
>At one point, California required Pacific Gas & Electric to include a flyer
>by a consumer group, TURN, advertising to ratepayers their ability to join
>TURN and support a consumer advocate against higher electric rates. The
>US Supreme Court struck down this law as violating the free speech rights
>of PG&E against having to be associated with the views of TURN.
>
>Believe me, in the legal work I do on economic regulation, corporate
>opponents cite their constiutional rights against violations of equal
>protection, free speech, due process and a range of other rights to combat
>economic regulation. Corporate personhood is indeed one of the deadlier
>weapons against democracy in the United States. We had a period after the
>New Deal when this was largely abandoned, but it is creeping up on us
>day-to-day and is likely to accellerate in the coming years as more
>reactionary jurists extend their control of the courts.
>
>Nathan Newman
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>.
>
>
>



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