The Real Culprit: Corpocracy

By J.D. Suss

12/16/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The Democratic tide in the recent elections is, potentially at least, a force to be reckoned with. Now, citizens-who-care can watch to see if these new members of Congress will squander their mandate in hopelessly fruitless witch hunts on the so-called “issues,” while the real culprit continues to bedevil them. That real culprit? – corpocracy[i] (rhymes with “hypocrisy”). Corpocracy, also called “corporatocracy,” is de facto rule by mega-corporations in conjunction with international banking, corporate-owned media, and the enabling collusion of government and/or a network of governments. These Big Money[ii] plutocrats are the real enemies of our tattered democracy. Our elected representatives need to begin calling them to account and, quite simply, rein them in.

Railing against the corrosive influence corporations inflict upon democracy is often met with the same kind of mindset that would make Luddites out of those who clamor for sustainable technology. The charge of conspiracy theorist is the label immediately attached to anyone who has the audacity to offer a discourse on corpocracy. And before any intelligent discussion can ensue on the subject, the framing has already done its work; corpocracy is summarily dismissed as “extremist fringe-speak” for ideas too outlandish to merit serious attention. But, thanks to the courage of people like John Perkins,[iii] the word is slowly-but-surely emerging that democracy is being critically threatened, perhaps already “disabled,”[iv] by the interests of Big Money, whose mischief both at home and abroad seemingly knows no bounds. Besides having infiltrated all three branches of government, its corrupting influence extends into almost every think tank and major university in the U.S.[v] Be that as it may, the reader is invited to exercise the right to freely (re)assemble his or her mind and to continue reading.

To fully grasp the idea of corpocracy, one must see it as a crisis of consciousness. Fundamentally, we might ask ourselves: What is driving our everyday thoughts, feelings, and beliefs so as to produce a sense of reality about which we all can agree, more or less, is worth living in and fighting for? The answer? – It is our consciousness, a phenomenon steeped in this agreement or consensual reality that is further flavored by a particular, viz., “American,” culture trance.

From its earliest days, America was a nation built upon the advertising, buying and selling of commodities for the purpose of realizing ever-increasing profits. But with the maximization of profits as the overriding incentive, inevitably people and the world around them, become marginalized. This became especially evident as the corporate entity gained in prominence and the techno-industrial elite was more and more empowered. The greed of wealth accumulation continues to deplete scarce natural resources. The cumulative effect is a ravaging of both the environment and the social fabric of peoples unfortunate enough to be living amid such resources. And yet, to sustain a material comfort that is never quite sated, an ever-growing consumption must be constantly encouraged. Enter Big Money, which gladly encourages never-ending consumption patterns – so much so that corporate capitalism is now synonymous with democracy in the minds of most of the citizenry, including its representatives. The sad fact is that we have been turned into complacent consumeroids. We are now the beneficiaries of a material comfort that has succeeded in making us overwhelmingly passive with regard to what goes on in our government, not to mention what is going on in the rest of the world. As Harvard professor and unrepentant, status quo theorist, Samuel P. Huntington, tells us, “democratic societies ‘cannot work’ unless the citizenry is ‘passive.’ [vi]” Shockingly, in the United States less than 50% of voters vote in elections – elections that fail to meet the standards that Jimmy Carter uses to gauge free and fair elections abroad. Therein lies one telling measurement of our passivity.

Big Money’s overwhelming interest in profits over people is largely responsible for a kind of preservation of its base that is composed of a citizenry invested in the status quo. That broad swath of middle Americans buys into comfortable, complacent lifestyles as a kind of divine right to be enjoyed by the world’s foremost “bringer of democracy.”

Such is the subtle yet insidious effect of a consensual reality and culture trance in which Americans – and worse, their elected representatives – are swimming. Most of us have adapted early to a status quo consciousness that has fed us the noble myths of our nation. Indeed, intrusive commercialization such as TV helps to keep the minds of the masses programmed to stay in thrall to these myths (and whatever else those with money to buy advertising or to finance TV shows wish us to believe). However, the current state of the nation, a nation now often referred to as a national security state, belies those myths. And so, to the extent people still invest the U.S. with these myths of America as the “city upon the hill” – presumed to be benevolent and morally justified in its dealings around the world – there exists a faulty or deficient consciousness. Although steadily deteriorating, this deficient consciousness none-the-less remains potent in its ability to blind us to the real enemy within that silences the true will of the people.

By the mind control device of the “corporate media,” Big Money subtly manipulates language to suit its needs. This helps to preserve status quo notions that are so embedded in our shared, deficient consciousness. Just look around at sporting arenas these days. All you see is corporate placards and logos. Our uniquely American culture trance wallows in phony wrestling, Nascar spectacles, “reality” shows, and law and order, ER and CSI shows designed to implant anything that will preserve the mindset, “My country – right or wrong.” Whatever can be used to keep the citizenry passive and maximize profits is the name of the game.

On the subject of income taxes, why can’t we put the blame where it belongs? Consider this: Outrageous tax breaks and subsidies to big oil, agribusiness, etc., have been bestowed on corporations by those in Congress who are elected to uphold the interests of Big Money plutocrats. This corporate welfare amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars each year. One effective way that real people, viz., human taxpayers, might start enjoying real tax relief is to put an end to such corporate welfare. Recouping and redirecting those billions into the national coffers might have the effect of doing away altogether with income tax on individuals. Tax “radicals” (e.g., Aaron Russo[vii]), long opposing the individual income tax on the basis of its purported unconstitutionality, would indeed be vindicated. According to them, the only entity the Founding Fathers meant to pay such a direct, unapportioned tax is the corporations. More to the point, if taxing the income of individuals is unconstitutional, then the very politicians and lawyers who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution are in fact remiss in their sacred duty whenever they uphold and defend such a tax. To this end, such “extremist” tax radicals would find an ally in true conservatives who certainly embrace a literal reading of the U.S. Constitution. (In his movie, Russo cites U.S. Supreme Court precedent to support the fact that the mechanism that purportedly established the income tax, the Sixteenth Amendment, was never ratified by the required number of states in order to become law.)

Likewise, if you hate paying property taxes, cutting off corporate welfare should help fill state and local coffers as well. Citizens would not only be able to the throw off the yoke of being wage slaves, as property owners they would also be freed from being de facto tenants to the state, subject to ever-escalating property taxes.

How many of us out there know that those artificial entities called corporations now have every constitutional right originally meant to be reserved only for natural persons? For that, citizens can thank decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court over the past hundred years or so.[viii] Putting this into perspective, we now have super-Goliath corporations pitted against puny Davids – viz., individuals, communities, and their local governments – who, by comparison, have only a fraction of the wealth, power, and influence that the corpocracy commands. Is it any wonder Big Money gets its way, both here and abroad? As Perkins makes clear, corpocracy has taken our foreign policy hostage in its exploitation of weaker nation-states while leaving in its wake a trail of poverty, environmental ruination, and intense resentment toward the United States. This is all done legally, mind you, with the help of the IMF, the World Bank, AID and other entities. And whatever cannot be stage-managed by corporations can usually be handled by the U.S. troops as surrogate enforcers for corpocracy. Thus, we now have foreign policy by military misadventure. Enter the terrorists, fighting “democracy’s policeman.”

Abroad, Big Money views foreigners as a disposable source of cheap labor; at home, immigrants are simply units of low wage labor for corporate profit-seeking. What Big Money wants overrides whatever resentment John Q. Public may have toward undocumented immigrants, i.e., illegal aliens now awash throughout the U.S.

We must be vigilant about strengthening and protecting the bonds that connect our common humanity. Preserving cultural ecology, just like caring for the physical ecology of our environment, must be given due consideration as a requisite aim of business activity. Such ecological concerns grow out of societal “goods,” e.g., love, empathy, compassion, and understanding. These, in turn, form the structure upon which, ideally at least, economic and legal mechanisms of due process, equal opportunity, fairness and justice for all are built and maintained. As long as the profit incentive is allowed to reign supreme in a business atmosphere characterized by the kind of unbridled corporate capitalism that prevails in today’s global society, transcending our old, status quo consciousness will be a dubious proposition. The true profit to be gained by transforming our consciousness translates into social and natural capital, i.e., a “societal wealth of nations,” (Lloyd, 2004) represented by a stronger and more harmonized society at home and abroad, and a properly stewarded planet.

The new, Democratically-controlled Congress must make it a priority to challenge the corpocracy, or else face failure. Following in the woefully tragic missteps of corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans means “business as usual,” i.e., the people get what they didn’t vote for, yet again.

NOTES

[i] Lloyd, D., American Corpocracy: Corporate Ownership of America’s Politicians Is Destroying Democracy and the Societal Wealth of Nations (Morris Publishing, Kearney, NE, 2004)

[ii] Sirota, D., Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government - and How We Take It Back (Crown, New York, 2006); Also see the Linzey, T.A. & Grossman, R.L., Model Brief to Eliminate Corporate Rights at http://www.poclad.org/ModelLegalBrief.cfm

[iii] Perkins, J., Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 2004)

[iv] Nace, T., Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francsico, 2003, 2005)

[v] Draffan, G., The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield the Constitution (Apex Press, New York, in cooperation with POCLAD, So. Yarmouth, MA, 1995), Introduction electronically reprinted at http://www.ratical.org/corporations/WCWtC.html; Ritz, D. (Ed.), Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy: A Book of History & Strategy (Apex Press, New York, in cooperation with POCLAD, So. Yarmouth, MA, 2001); For a stunning example of incestuous interrelationships among government, business, think tanks, and universities see, http://www.exxonsecrets.org/em.php

[vi] Huntington, S.P., “The Crisis of Democracy,” Report of the Trilateral Task Force on Governability of Democracies (1975), quoted in Moore, R.K., Beyond Left & Right: Escaping the Matrix (Whole Earth Magazine, 2000, reproduced in New Dawn, (No. 62, Sept.-Oct., 2000) accessed on 12/10/06 at
http://www.newdawnmagazine.info/Article/Escaping_the_Matrix.html

[vii] See, e.g., Russo, A., America: Freedom to Fascism, (2006) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4312730277175242198&q=freedomtofascism

[viii] For an excellent timeline synopsis see, Timeline of Personhood Rights and Powers, prepared by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, n.d., http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/personhood_timeline.pdf

© 2006 by Jonathan D. Suss, J.D., Ph.D.

The author is a metapolitical American citizen, Maryland lawyer and a recent Ph.D. in Humanities, whose doctoral dissertation is entitled The Odyssey of the Western Legal Tradition: Integral Jurisprudence – Toward the Self-Transcendence of Deficient-Mental Legal Culture.