#812 -- Try This at Home, Part 1, March 03, 2005
Try This At Home
By Jane Anne Morris*
The Ambassador
It was Colombian Independence Day, so I suppose I should have
expected to bump into the U.S. ambassador in the mummy room of the
National Museum in Bogota. What better way for the ambassador to
demonstrate her deep concern for the people of Colombia and bone up
on Colombian history? Like the fact that the National Museum building
was originally designed to be the perfect prison -- an application of
the principles of Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham's 1787 Panopticon. From
a single vantage point, one unseen overseer could monitor all
activities of all prisoners, 24/7. Significantly, Bentham noted that
the plan would work just as well for factories, schools, poorhouses,
and hospitals.
From 1905 until after World War II, "El Panoptico" was Colombia's
most fearsome prison. The central surveillance point was a round
guard tower (now an airy rotunda sponsored by the Siemens
Corporation) with lines of sight radiating out toward eyelid-shaped
windows on three floors of tiny prison cells. The Panopticon -- like
the junior high school intercom left on when the teacher is out, like
the invisible "cookie" behind your computer screen -- is about
hierarchy and control. The system requires fewer overseers with
whips, because inmates do the heavy mental lifting. Shrouded in a
wrap-around one-way mirror, the prisoner (student, teacher, consumer,
citizen) is shaped more by the possibility of sanction than by its
actual presence. Physical force stands down and waits on-call for
special occasions, while self-censorship takes over daily operations.
Because it derives its power from the inmates' internalization of the
work of the watcher, the Panopticon succeeds whether or not there's
anyone in the guard tower.
In Colombia, almost-daily massacres and assassinations are necessary
to maintain corporate power, but in the United States the Panopticon
is functioning quite well -- it is most often the little man in one's
own head that makes people into enthusiastic foot soldiers in the war
against themselves. We live in a corporate-controlled Democracy Theme
Park. Popular rides include the Regulatory Agency Roller Coaster and
the Voluntary Code of Conduct Mule Train. The Reform Gallery features
Welfare Reform and Campaign Finance Reform. In the Constitutional
Rights Hall of Fame, people can take part in regular reenactments of
famous battles. The democracy theme park even has its own museum,
where other corporate power grabs are reinterpreted as "peoples'
victories."
Ambassador Patterson has a role to play in the U.S. democracy theme
park. So on Independence Day, the ambassador goes not to inspect
helicopters used in the "War on Drugs," but through downtown Bogota
with its "Plan Colombia = guerra" graffiti to the national museum to
check out the props for the "War on Democracy." When not
mummy-gazing, Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador, is the on-site
point person for stage-managing the Colombia campaign, a critical
testing ground for global corporatization. Her job is to transform a
corporate resource- grab of mind-boggling proportions and unsurpassed
brutality into a fairy tale with a "War on Drugs" theme song. There
will be lots of heroic action against giant mutant coca plants and
cartoonlike bad guy "drug lords." Patterson has lots to do. She has
to deny that U.S. aid supports right-wing paramilitary death squads.
She has to deny that U.S.-sponsored "coca fumigations" are killing
subsistence crops, domestic animals, and people. She has to deny a
U.S. role in the provision of a Colombian army escort for a U.S.
corporation's illegal drilling on indigenous lands. She has to deny
U.S. complicity in the methodical assassination of Colombian labor
leaders by U.S. soft drink corporation thugs. She also has to
advertise and promote numerous U.S.-backed social, health, and
educational programs whose primary existence is on billboards. And
she has to read and sometimes respond to letters, faxes, and e-mails
from pesky activists in the United States.
The Activist
Patterson is no busier than Sally, from Anytown, U.S.A. Sally --
she's "one of us" -- who keeps a diary of her activism. Here is the
last week's worth:
On Monday, she stuffs envelopes for Save the Dolphins campaign, and
goes to a neighborhood meeting to discuss organic, sustainable food.
On Tuesday, she does research for her regulatory agency testimony to
fight a local corporation's pollution permit; she leaflets at a
demonstration to support boycotting a brand of gasoline.
By Wednesday it's time to work on Voluntary Code of Conduct
provisions for corporations, then have a meeting to decide which
"socially responsible" investments to recommend. (Here there's a note
that the meeting broke up after an argument between two factions. One
favored the corporation that hires people of color and women to build
nuclear power plants; the other favored the corporation that's famous
for union-busting but builds fuel-efficient cars.)
Come Thursday, she sits down to write letters to state legislators,
urging broader disclosure laws for chemicals. Then there's that fax
to Colombia urging the U.S. ambassador to begin an investigation of
the latest government-assisted civilian massacre. In the evening she
"persons" a literature table at a panel discussion of unions and
globalization.
On Friday there's a strategy meeting on helping the Community Health
Clinic stay open two days per week. After that her group tries to
decide what to do about sweatshops and deregulation.
Saturday is money day. In the morning there's a bake sale to pay
lawyers to pursue regulatory agency and court appeals. In the
afternoon there's a 5K Run fund-raiser to pay fees, fines, and
lawyers to bail out banner-hangers from their last demonstration.
It's Sunday as she looks over her diary, the day that she must set
priorities for the next week. She can't possibly contribute to all
the causes that she cares about. Should she skip the dolphins and add
social security? Should she forget Colombia and switch to Nigeria or
East Timor? Should she work on radioactive waste storage and worker
safety instead of campaign finance reform and groundwater
contamination? Should she skip the demos so she can spend more time
in the library reading about others going to demos? Should she dress
up as a mutant to publicize pesticide use in public schools?
By this time it's late Sunday night. Sally drifts off to sleep, and
has a dream:
At a company picnic, two teams are playing a soccer game. Sally's on
a team made up of people from the neighborhood, activists, and other
concerned citizens; the other team is sponsored by something called
MegaCorporation. Sally's team was getting close to scoring, but then
Mega tilted the field so that the others had to run uphill. Then Mega
disqualified some of Sally's teammates and declared that certain
plays couldn't be used. But Sally and her friends kept playing harder
and almost scored again. This time Mega stopped play and decreed that
Sally's team would have to play blindfolded. Then they bought off the
referees. Sally's team finally scored anyway but the referees said
the goal didn't count.
The next morning over coffee, Sally remembers her dream and proceeds
to interpret it:
The soccer game is how we're always fighting against Mega
Corporation. When they tilt the field, that means that they have a
built-in advantage with more resources to use against us, and
tax-deductible expenses. Disqualifying our players is like when they
sue us for writing letters to the editor, or tell us that we don't
have standing. Banning certain plays is like when they say we aren't
allowed to bring up certain topics or issues at hearings, or when our
testimony is limited to two minutes. By withholding information --
like about what chemicals they're using -- corporations force us to
play blindfolded. Buying off the referees is like when they grant
favors to politicians, make campaign contributions, and use their
political power to influence regulatory agencies and courts. When we
score a goal but it doesn't count, that's like when suddenly a
corporation is granted exemptions and variances from existing law. Or
when a federal court throws out as unconstitutional a local law that
we've worked for years to pass.
The Corporations
There is quite obviously a fundamental asymmetry between activist
strategy and corporate strategy. We activists dress up as corporate
executives to get into meetings and buildings, and as animals to get
media coverage. When was the last time a corporate executive dressed
up as an Earth First! member or a turtle or an U'wa to get attention
for themselves? While we are stuffing envelopes, writing letters to
our "representatives," and talking to twelve people at a time in
living rooms, corporate executives are writing laws and buying
television stations.
While the community response is to play harder -- to try for bigger
demonstrations at the Capitol, more letters to elected officials,
more experts at the hearings -- the corporate response is to simply
change the ground rules. With increasingly unfair ground rules, no
matter how hard we play, we won't ever score, or we won't score
enough to matter. And corporate ground rules are not intended so much
to affect a particular issue -- though they do that -- as to
frustrate and dilute people's efforts over a broad range of issues.
People's efforts usually apply to only one issue at a time. Even if
we share common values and care about many of the same issues, we are
inevitably rivals structurally. Like Sally, we find that if we have
spent our efforts trying to save the dolphins or promote sustainable
agriculture, we have fewer resources and less time left to work on
toxic cleanups or prisoners' rights. This same fragmentation is
evident at conferences, where after an opening keynote speech,
attendees fan off into an almost endless array of particularized
workshops and panel discussions. How to stop one corporation from
using one chemical. How to get communities to recycle one type of
container. How to get one framed political prisoner out of jail. This
isn't what corporate strategy looks like.
Corporate strategy is to change the ground rules for all -- labor
organizers, human rights workers, toxics campaigners, everybody. A
corporation doesn't have a separate team of lawyers, experts,
lobbyists, and public relations persons for each of the thousands of
chemicals dumped into the environment. Or for each separate labor law
violation. Or for each state, or each voluntary code of conduct, or
each chamber of commerce. Most of what corporate strategists do works
across the board: it helps the particular corporation in many areas,
and, it makes corporations in general more powerful. This is what
working on ground rules does for you.
As a result of this difference in strategy, where people's efforts
are subtractive and divisive, corporation efforts are cumulative and
synergistic. A score or victory for one corporation helps all
corporations, but our work on one issue or campaign takes resources
from others. In the soccer game analogy, we're exhausting ourselves
struggling uphill trying to score a goal, and they're tilting the
field. What we have termed ground rules amounts to no less than the
political process, the assumptions and understandings that in a
democracy are supposed to result in self-governance by the people.
The democracy theme park has obscured both the current ground rules
and "who" is using and writing them. This "who" is not "The
Corporation" because the corporation is not a who at all. People say
"Monsanto did this" and "Philip Morris did that" with the casualness
and familiarity you'd expect when describing an errant uncle with a
hip flask. The more accurate term for the abstract legal fiction is
Monsanto Corporation or Philip Morris Corporation. But corporations
don't really do anything. The things that get done in the name of the
corporation are done by people. Corporate executives make corporate
policy, award each other golden parachutes, and hire lawyers to
manage lawsuits and regulatory agency matters. They extract wealth
from the work of others, call this the corporation's wealth, then use
it to externalize costs onto society and the earth while funneling
profits to a tiny group.
Business corporations in their current form -- as vehicles for the
concentration of wealth and power in the hands of an elite -- are
incompatible with democracy.[1] That's why they are so popular with
an elite whose status depends on ensuring that democratic processes
don't happen. A corporation is the most recent and most successful
effort to do all the things that elites hoped the Panopticon would
do: preserve elite power. Corporate executives make decisions and
manage the money, while workers follow orders (on pain of losing
their livelihoods) and add value. The "corporation" is a legal
fiction to hold money and power for a few; it gives them access to
"corporate" resources and shields them from responsibility for their
actions. But, finally, a corporation is not a sentient being, not a
conscious actor, not a target, not a "citizen." It cannot be
"punished" or negotiated with. It can't be "socially responsible," or
have an opinion on global warming. It can't have "rights." If people
believe it can do any of these things, then the corporation succeeds
as a decoy to confuse issues and take the flak for an elite. But the
corporation can still be deconstructed, and not a moment too soon.
[To be concluded next time.]
===================
* Jane Anne Morris is a corporate anthropologist who lives in
Madison, Wisconsin. She is the author of Not in My Backyard: The
Handbook, available at America's biggest unionized book store,
Powell's
(http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-0962494577-3), and she
is a member of POCLAD, the program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
(http://www.poclad.org/). Some of her work has appeared previously in
Rachel's (#488, #489, #502, and #806), available at
http://www.rachel.org. This essay originally appeared in David
Solnit, editor, Globalize Liberation (San Francisco: City Lights
Books, 2004, pgs. 73-86.
[1] In current U.S. law, the term "corporation" encompasses municipal
corporations, for-profit corporations, and many kinds of nonprofit
corporations (including trade industry groups and educational and
religious corporations). A century and a half ago in the United
States, the form that the "business corporation" took would be nearly
unrecognizable today. In some cases, for example, stockholders did
not have "limited liability" as we know it today.
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