[lbo-talk] the autumn of the communes?

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Sat Oct 29 14:10:14 PDT 2011


On 10/29/2011 2:03 PM, Shane Mage wrote:


> The idea that the issue of "corporate personhood" has anything to do
> with "scale and organization" betrays a lack of having understood what
> the issue is all about. It has *nothing* to do with the status of
> corporations, creatures of the states, as *legal* "persons" able to
> act economically, to sue and be sued over contractual issues, to
> provide limited liability to their owners. It has to do with
> *constitutional* personality--the court-invented gift of
> constitutional rights, rights that the text of the constitution grants
> only to *natural* persons. Constitutional corporate personhood is the
> means for capitalists to use the courts to guarantee their property
> from expropriation, on the grossest scale to evade taxes and legal
> controls, and to make ironclad their financial control over the
> two-party system of "democratic" electoral fraud, and, consequently,
> over the entire judicial system.
>
> The call to abolish corporate personhood consists simply of this
> proposition:
>
> "All rights as specified in the US Constitution or as retained by the
> people under the Ninth Amendment apply to all natural persons and only
> to natural persons."

In other words, you think the government should have the right to shut down the NAACP, ACLU, Amnesty International, etc. According to you, they should have no constitutional rights because they aren't natural persons.

See the 1961 Supreme Court case NAACP vs. Button:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP_v._Button


> On September 29, 1956, the Virginia General Assembly enacted five
> statutes regulating the practices of barratry, champerty, and
> maintenance.....The bills were specifically aimed at curbing the
> National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in
> Virginia, which many racial segregationists believed was responsible
> for "stirring up" integrationist lawsuits against the state.[3] The
> bills also collectively required any group which promotes or opposes
> state legislation aimed at (1) any race, (2) any organization
> attempting to influence public opinion on behalf of any race, or (3)
> any group raising funds to employ legal counsel in connection with
> racial litigation to file a financial report and membership list
> annually with state..[3] The Virginia NAACP filed suit in federal
> court in 1956...
>
> Having asserted the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over the matter,
> Brennan [for the majority] now turned to the constitutional issues
> raised by the appellant. The state of Virginia argued that it was not
> regulating the free speech of individual lawyers and citizens, but
> rather that of a corporation (the National Association for the
> Advancement of Colored People), and that the U.S. Constitution did not
> protect the free speech rights of corporations as strongly as it did
> that of people. Brennan disagreed: Corporations, he said, not only
> have rights equal to that of individuals but a corporation may also
> assert free speech and free assembly rights on behalf of its
> members.[7]... The judgment of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals
> [upholding the laws] was reversed.

SA



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