A Nation of Spectators?
excerpted from the book
Corporate Predators
by Russel Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Common Courage Press, 1999
The most powerful organization in our society is the corporation.
Corporations have become more powerful than governments, or religious
institutions, or labor unions.
So how is it possible for a group of highly educated, well-intentioned
citizens to spend millions of dollars and more than 18 months
studying citizenship and civic action, and yet barely touch on
the issue of corporate power?
This was the question raised last week when William Bennett
and Sam Nunn, co-chairs of the National Commission on Civic Renewal,
appeared together at a press conference at the National Press
Club in Washington, D.C. to release the Commission's final report-"A
Nation of Spectators: How Civic Disengagement Weakens America
and What We Can Do About It."
At the press conference, reporters were given a copy of the
Commission's 67-page report, 18 working papers written by scholars
from around the country, and a book edited by Washington Post
columnist E.J. Dionne, titled Community Works The Revival of Civil
Society in America.
In all of this work, there is little or no mention of corporate
crime and violence and its debilitating effect on civil society,
of the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics or
of how citizens band together in labor unions, environmental groups,
and other citizen activists groups to combat the corrosive influence
of corporate power on America's civic life.
In the Commission's final report, only three paragraphs deal
with the issue of corporate power. Under the title "Markets
and Civil Society," the authors write that while on the one
hand "there can be little doubt that free markets help sustain
a zone of personal liberty that bolsters the capacity of individuals
to associate for civil purposes," on the other hand "there
is no guarantee that the operation of market forces will prove
wholly compatible with the requirements of civic health."
And what would be an example of such incompatibility? The
Commission finds that "market-driven decisions of giant media
corporations have diminished the quality of our public culture
and have greatly complicated the task of raising children."
Of the 18 working papers, only one-written by Rutgers University
Professor Benjamin Barber-deals with issues of corporate power.
And Dionne's book, like his columns in the Washington Post,
keeps hands off the issue of corporate power.
What's going on here? It's not as if powerful institutions
don't tackle issues of corporate power and its abuse. Just read
the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times for your daily
dose of reporting on corporate crime and violence.
But reporting on corporate power and its abuse is one thing.
Doing something about it is quite another.
Imagine the Commission releasing a report documenting how
citizens around the country were organizing, through labor unions,
environmental groups, anti-sprawl citizen groups and the thousands
of other ways citizens organize, to combat the encroachment of
the corporate state into their lives.
That would be a report that could be taken seriously by citizens
around the country, that could be used by citizens to help them
challenge corporate power. And it would be a report that could
never have been written by the Commission as constituted.
Nunn, after all, is a senior partner at the King & Spalding
law firm, one of the nation's premier corporate crime white-collar
defense law firms.
And Bennett, although he has a thing about rude lyrics in
rap and rock songs supplied by Seagrams, is a defender of the
corporate status quo. He is after all the John M. Olin Distinguished
Fellow in Cultural Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation,
the nation's leading corporate think tank.
What about the other Commissioners? Elaine Chao, fellow, Heritage
Foundation; John F. Cooke, executive vice president, corporate
affairs, the Walt Disney Company; Peter Goldmark, chair and chief
executive officer of the International Herald Tribune; Edwin Lupberger,
chair of the board and president of the Entergy Corporation, one
of the nation's largest electricity companies; Michael Novak,
American Enterprise Institute, another corporate think tank.
You get the drift.
These Commissioners would never raise the current United Auto
Workers strike against General Motors in Michigan, or the fight
against nuclear waste disposal in New Mexico, or the nationwide
citizens campaign to defeat casino gambling, as indicators of
increased civic involvement.
That would too offend their keepers at the Heritage Foundation
and King & Spalding.
Better to blame the citizens for inactivity than commend them
for actively opposing corporate power.
Corporate Predators