The Corporation

Media:	DVD
Directed by:	Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott
Starring:
Release date:	05 April, 2005
List price:	~~$29.99~~
Our price:	$21.37 that is 29% off!

The Corporation

Average rating: Stars

Time to increase liability

The book and the film is not about eliminating the profit motive, despite what the authors of The Rebel Sell (Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter) have said. This is about passing laws to ensure that corporations are not only accountable to their shareholders, but to all stakeholders as well - a corporation's employees and all the people its business affects. Limited liability and the fact that corporations are seen as people by the law have made corporations, especially multinationals, far too powerful. The film offers a potent political starting point to ensure greater social justice and environmental protection in a world that is increasingly bought and sold by corporations.

The Corporation -

A dire warning against the "Ownership Society" concept

Imagine a world where it costs money to drink water from a fountain or even a stream, where 13-year-old girls work long hours in sweatshops for pitiful wages, where television networks silence journalists who discover health hazards in the nation's milk supply, and where there are trademarks on the basic building blocks of life itself. Sound completely far-fetched? Welcome to the world of THE CORPORATION.

This movie, based upon Joel Bakan's book, takes a critical look at the history, mindset, and activities of the modern-day corporation, which has become one of the most powerful institutions in human society today. Under US law, a corporation is legally a "person" under the provisions of the 14th Amendment, but the "personality" that a typical corporation exhibits can be demonstrated using DSM-IV criteria to be psychopathic. What this means for the rest of society is the focus of the documentary, which features interviews with corporate executives, labor advocates, whistleblowers, etc.

Some corporations do take a pretty heavy hit in this movie - Monsanto is a favorite target due to two of its more controversial products (Agent Orange and Posilac), and Halliburton subsidiary Bechtel is faulted for privatizing a Bolivian city's water supply to the extent that collecting rain water was regarded as stealing. But representatives from corporations such as Shell, Goodyear, and Interface get their chance to speak as well, expressing their own frustrations with the corporate structure and lessons learned from their own pollution of the environment.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini once stated that his own brand of fascism was, in essence, corporatism. William Gibson's novels and short stories feature monstrous corporations of the future capable of shifting global economies with the stroke of a pen. After seeing THE CORPORATION, you'll gain a better understanding of where both Mussolini and Gibson were coming from, why privatization of all facets of society can actually cause more harm than good - and why, in the "ownership society," it is the people themselves who get owned.

And you may never look at supermarket milk the same way again.

- The Corporation

AN ABSOLUTE MUST

Those of us who know their history (or are old enough to remember) know that it was conservative, Republican icon Dwight D. Eisenhower who first warned us of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" some 45 years ago. In these days of rabid partisanship and political polarization, Uncle Ike would probably be ridiculed as a RINO. But his warning echoes across the decades in works like THE CORPORATION, a funny, wise and terrifying look at unfettered capitalism gone beserk and mutating into the malignant corporatocracy that is currently smothering our culture, our freedoms and our quality of life. THE CORPORATION should be required watching for everyone with an interest in the future of this planet and its inhabitants.