As the Molly Maguire cases show, private corporations often like 'state rights' approaches to governance because this power is more easily bent, broken, corrupted to serve the prevailing interests of the corporations that operate or want to operate in a given state or locality. However, if the state or local government fights them and their interests, then the private corporation has use state and then federal courts to prevail.
So a paradox emerges in 'state rights' in that sometimes private corporations support state rights and local autonomy because they think they can control it or defeat it. Or they end up opposing it--or it opposes them--and have to prevail over it--which is why having influence and sympathetic judges in the court system is also necessary. In the second source I cite here--celdf.org (which interestingly enough is HQ'd in my hometown, Chambersburg, PA, a VERY REPUBLICAN area of defense workers, defense worker retirees, and federally-subsidized dairy farmers), they seem to be arguing that the solution is to go BELOW states rights, since the federal-state structure has favored private corporations, and re-establish local autonomy. I'm not sure how workable that is outside of real socialism, but that isn't a term this legal action and advocacy group is going to discuss on its homepage. So I think it's possible to take 'tenther' arguments in the leftward direction if we have socialism, anarcho-syndicalism and non-profit cooperative production in mind. BTW, these local rightists are challenging corporate moves to turn Pennsylvania into the nation's biggest 'fracking' natural gas production site using township government action. Unlike southern states, local 'power' in Pennsylvania can often be found at the township level, especially when it comes to land and water use. The school district is another focus of local power, but they have long been dominated by adherence to state requirements to get federal money and to local/regional university-based 'schools of education' for the indoctrination of teachers. Their real power is in levying property taxes to pay for schools. CJ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Maguires excerpt: Four members of the Molly Maguires, Alexander Campbell, John "Black Jack" Kehoe, Michael Doyle and Edward Kelly, were hanged on June 21, 1877 at a Carbon County prison in Mauch Chunk (renamed Jim Thorpe in 1953), for the murder of mine bosses John P. Jones and Morgan Powell, following a trial that was later described by a Carbon County judge, John P. Lavelle, as follows: The Molly Maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty. A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged defenders, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows. http://www.celdf.org/corporate-rights "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1816 "In 1819 in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, the U.S. Supreme Court introduced a distinction between the rights of a public corporation and a private one. The U.S. Constitution's contract clause did not protect the political powers granted in the charter of a public corporation such as a municipality. State legislatures could, therefore, unilaterally amend or revoke municipal charters and strip a city of authority without the municipality's consent. But the charter of a private corporation, such as a business enterprise or a privately endowed college, was an inviolate grant of property rights guaranteed by the nation's Constitution." -- Jon C. Teaford, Municipal Charters The structure of federal and state law – both statutory and constitutional – empowers corporations to override local democratic decision making. Since the early 1800s, corporations have gained rights and protections under the United States Constitution. While we never find the word “corporation” in the Constitution, corporations are able to invoke constitutional “rights” and protections under the Commerce Clause and Contracts Clause, as well as under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Corporations use these “rights” to challenge state and local laws, and to chill efforts at the local level to fight corporate siting plans. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Dartmouth case in 1819, "private" business corporations first gained constitutional protection from government interference in internal governance, ostensibly under the Contract Clause of the Constitution. Curiously, the court found no reason to similarly protect municipal corporations, such as towns, boroughs, cities and counties from state interference with self-government. As an example: the Waste Management Corporation was able to successfully sue the State of Virginia under the Commerce Clause to overturn a state law which prohibited the importation of out-of-state waste, arguing that the law interfered with the flow of commerce. With the First Amendment, we see corporations participating in the writing of our laws and the election of candidates at all levels of government. Citing the Fifth Amendment “Takings Clause,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon (1922), that coal corporations must be compensated for property value lost due to laws protecting homes from mining subsidence. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, corporations are able to claim equal protection and due process rights. Charters of incorporation seem to grant special privileges for private wealth, including limited liability protections from legal responsibility by individuals benefiting by dint of this corporate shield, along with the "rights" of pershonhood bestowed by the courts. Any yet charters do not actually grant rights, but rather they deny rights held by all by identifying corporations as a specially protected class under the law. While corporate charters once privileged all corporations to the degree that the sovereign specified in each individual charter, another outcome of the Dartmouth case was that the federalist judges, lead by John Marshall, created the unprecedented distinction between "private" business corporations and "public" corporations like municipalities. The rights recognized judicially for publicly chartered business corporations were withheld from municipal corporations. This bias toward the "rights of property" (corporations) and against the right to assert self-governance through incorporated municipalities explains how it is that business corporations today dictate governance in our communities. The people are denied authority to "violate the rights" of corporations, and the right to assert self-governance in the communities where they live, using that government closes to them, is denied and usurped. http://www.celdf.org/downloads/Making%20the%20Case%20for%20the%20Right%20to%20Local%20Self-Government.pdf What is certain is that the American Revolution rested its legitimacy on the proposition that it is beyond the delegated power of any government to deprive the people of their fundamental right to local self-governance. For all of the reasons specified in this discussion, and because it is a self-evident truth that people have a right to self-government in the communities where they live, it is the assertion of the people of Blaine Township that the power of community self-government is their inalienable and fundamental right, and that it constituted the central purpose for which independence was wrested from the world‘s most powerful empire. Community self-government is exempt from, and hence superior to, the general government of the state.16 15 _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
