Move To Amend
Much of our local Occupy Missoula efforts are being directed into the nation-wide campaign to amend the Constitution so that corporate "person-hood" is abolished. Progressives believe that, especially since the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, elections, and by extension,politics more generally, are corrupted by the influence of corporate money. Because corporations are "persons" with first amendment rights to free speech and since money has been ruled to be speech yada yada..
What I personally find interesting here is the confused discourse about free agency and individual sovereignty or autonomy on display. If I insist that "citizens" minds are colonized by capitalist ideology so that the only choices they find rational are within that limited ideological range, I am told this is far too simplistic, that people are aware of ideology and besides, no one is in a position to make such judgements about others.(just my ideology speaking "through" me)
Yet it is accepted at face value that a barrage of simplistic corporate election advertising and "messaging" in fact determines peoples attitudes and beliefs and causes them to vote for one or the other candidate (irrationally).
So how aware are we of ideology? How susceptible? If Rick Perry spent 200 billion dollars on 24/7 advertising for five years would you HAVE to vote for him? (in a sort of hypnotic trance?). Obviously such persuasion, or the "manufacture of consent/desire" works or they wouldn't spend those huge sums on it.
Theodor Adorno famously said "All are free to dance and enjoy themselves...but freedom to choose an ideology- since ideology always reflects economic coercion- everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same." Going back to Chomsky, when he claims there is a "democracy deficit"(as evidenced by polling which runs counter to policy) is he not claiming people ARE rational agents, but that their representatives are simply unresponsive? Isn't this directly counter to the notion of "manufacturing consent"?
The fact is, capitalism doesn't need it's own SuperPac. It's ideology is disseminated 24/7 every day FOR FREE through each and every cultural exchange, through the education system, through kinship networks, at work, etc etc... A barrage of advertising might persuade Joe Sixpack to support either Venture or Vulture capitalism (though the difference will never truly be clear to him) but whether corporations are persons or whether they can spend unlimited amounts of money on elections doesn't really matter at all because Joe will always choose the same ideology.
posted by troutsky @ 8:12 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Of course corporations are persons. Who do you think sits on corporate boards? Robots? This is the First Amendment in action. We have a right to peaceable assembly, and that assemblage can happen in the streets, or it can happen in a corporate boardroom. Anywhere were government policy can exercise an effect for good or ill. In what kind of fantasy world is it considered "fair" for groups of scumbag hipsters to demand largesse from the job creators, while said job creators are expected to just hand it over quietly with a smile and further take it up the ass upon demand? What, they don't have a right to express their views and influence public policy. They're the ones that are most impacted by it, and when they are negatively impacted, we all are negatively impacted. And for what? For a nasty bunch of scumbag hipsters who are good for nothing but drawing flies and rats and incubating disease. Fuck that shit!!!
That's why we support Keith Ellison's legislation to narrow this to "natural person". Corporations don't qualify under that definition. One that has been a cornerstone of English common law, perverted by activist right wing judges.
So in other words, according to Fuck A Ducky Screw A Guinea, job creators don't have the same right to assembly and petition for redress of grievances as a bunch of occupy scumbag motherfucking hipsters who contribute not a goddamn thing to society.
Pat- No need to get irate, amigo, this is just a discussion, right?
I may not have been clear in my post but I don't worry about where the Job Creators assemble, I want to eliminate that as a category of human entitlement altogether. Or to use some of your lingo, I think everyone, scumbags, hipsters, Job Creators etc should have the same power within their economic system. Dig?
Ducky: I'm not convinced cash or personhood per se are the reason democracy is a sham, except indirectly, through expenditures in the culture industry. You don't have to bribe people to vote against their own interests, you just confuse them as to what their interests are.
What does that even mean, you want to eliminate that as an entitlement all together? You mean you want to eliminate the right to assembly and petition for redress of grievances? If so, why? You say you want everybody to have the same rights? Well, they do. Everybody has the right to peacefully assembly and petition for the redress of grievances. Every person has the same one vote as everyone else, and if they have a legitimate case, let them make it. Fair warning, one does ones case no good when one spreads disease and chaos. It tends to not get others on your side. And like it or not, you need others on your side as much as possible for maximum impact. You don't get that by practicing the politics of alienation. To be fair, it also helps if you have a legitimate case.
Oh, and just FYI, there are poor people and there are rich people and that's not good is not a legitimate case.
This is a non issue. Trying to deny a corporation the rights given to individuals is like trying to legislate that cars should travel slower than pedestrians. It ain't going to happen. The best one can hope for is to make sure small companies are treated the same as big corporations (which is rarely the case, but at least a achievable goal).
Besides, all this Occupy Somewhere-or-Other is such an insignificant issue. The real ideological fight is between The Totalitarian Copyright Mafia and the Free Internet forces. The real battles are SOPA/PIPA and the Free Magaupload Seven. Those are real, life-or-death issues, not those dated Marxist psychobabble about corporations and capitalists and other 19th-century antiquities.
You've finally found an issue I can support you on, troutman. It's long past time to kill the Sruldbruggs.
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