In Defence of the Corporation

Recently I saw a documentary called “The Corporation”. It was, as you can imagine, about corporations and their business practices. The Corporation was portrayed negatively. I, however, see this institution in a more positive light.

My interest in the Corporation began when I asked myself the question why do corporations exist? Generally the response to this question is a negative one: to exploit people; for the benefit of a few. However, I unconsciously asked the question rhetorically and thus had something in mind. What I had it in mine was that one of its purposes is to advance Democracy. When I suggested this idea to others they laughed or gave me a dirty look.

The notion that the Corporation promotes Democracy admittedly seems far fetched. Nevertheless, I think it’s true. But before I get into that, let me point out something that I think we all agree on, that the modern world wouldn’t be possible without the Corporation. If this economic engine didn’t exist the material needs of the world couldn't be met. Smaller enterprises like traditional family businesses wouldn’t be able to cultivate or harness the resources needed to support a big modern civilization. Only big business can build and maintain the infrastructure we need to survive and continue, those in communication, transportation, energy, health and in food production and its distribution. Also, smaller enterprises couldn’t raise the vast amounts of capital required to finance essential services like railroads, hydroelectric dams, oil refineries, airports and harbors. Another thing, without this institution we wouldn’t have the managerial skills, which it invented, to run and maintain this complex world we live in.

Only big business or corporations could have developed, produced and distributed the technologies we’ve needed to survive and continue. Oh yes, individuals may be the ones who invented them but it’s the corporations that have the resources to develop and market them so that we can all benefit from them. And in that there is a form of democracy because corporations have made products and technologies available to all, not discriminating. Another often overlooked fact is that many of the technologies corporations have produced have also advanced democracy. Take, for example, television and newspapers, telephones and the internet. Those technologies have developed our communication skills and in turn our democratic skills. Even the car, one of the Corporation’s greatest and most ubiquitous developments, has contributed to democracy. Cars give us mobility. Mobility is a form of freedom and choice, rights that are synonymous with democracy.

Television was made possible by the Corporation. I would say it has been the most influential technology in promoting democracy. A prime example of this influence is the civil rights movement in the United States in the fifties. That movement wouldn’t have had much of a chance if it wasn’t for TV and the mass audience it created. TV provided the platform to make it an issue of consequences. It made and changed public opinion. Without this mass media, the denial of civil rights, in a land that professes to be just and democratic, may still be unresolved. TV has had a similar influence throughout the world in educating and changing public awareness on other critical social issues such as universal suffrage and human rights.

The Corporation is the chief agent of capitalism. As such it has help create and steward an ownership society. Ownership, whether it be in real estate or in stocks and bonds, is an integral part of a well oiled Democracy. Even one’s labor, which corporations can’t function without, is considered private property. As Arthur Schlesinger said (referred to in an earlier essay), private ownership is the backbone of Democracy because “it provides the only secure basis for political opposition and intellectual freedom. Even though it has been inadvertent, The Corporation has helped build and reinforce that base.