Corporations and Conservatism

October 11, 2007

I am all about being left alone, and the Republican Party claims that this is what it is all about: getting pesky government out of my way. This is wrong-headed and does not actually contribute much to my being left alone. If I reflect for a moment on the origin of the real intrusions into my personal life, I see that they stem from the private corporate world: the gathering and use of private information, the ability to involve people in complicated contracts which are not fully understood, the ability to downsize or outsource jobs, and finally the ability to degrade the environment through well placed lobbyists and policy makers. If there is anything annoying about life in America right now, it is the general powerlessness of average citizens to challenge the maneuvers of the corporate world.

Viewed from this perspective the Republican emphasis on getting government out of private life (except when it comes to certain moral choices) is not so much a pro-individual freedom agenda as a pro-corporation agenda. The space opened up by rolling back government services or safeguards is not space that will be re-claimed by individuals, but space that will be taken by corporations. Republicans love to attack the Democrats as some kind of government-loving money-spending taxing-freely collective (which is crazy since Democrats have no recent track record of these actions), but government regulation and policy are the only real curbs allowing for control of the expansion of the corporate world. Push-back against the corporate world is the real battleground for personal freedom. I would entrust my freedom any day to an elected official who is responsible every now and then to the citizenry rather than to corporate leaders whose only responsibility is to stock holders who are looking for a profit. Isn't that a no-brainer?

Reading more about Labor leader Walter Reuther and the struggle to unionize some the largest corporate structures of his day.. such as General Motors.. has made me think more about corporations and their control. Today the international scope of corporations puts their effective control outside the reach of unions.. at least those built on an older model. It would be helpful if there were better historical/sociological work done on corporations so that we knew more about how they grew and how their cultures developed. (I mean works that stretch beyond the CEO hagiographies in the business section of the big corporate bookstore near you.) To this end Old Roads will be keeping an eye peeled for information on corporate history and its interaction with traditional structures of labor and communication.

The strike at the Chrysler plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin ended after only a few hours. If it had been more protracted Old Roads might have gotten to the scene and worked on a video essay.