Human agency does not function within a corporation.
“Climate Debate” a Corporatist
Fiction
By Anthony Henry Smith
1. In the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, government is mandated to secure the rights of the governed.
2. Corporations are entirely mechanical. They function in obedience to a single prime directive: to make money for the corporation to the total exclusion of every other consideration.
3. Human agency does not function within a corporation. The transformative force of power and money transforms human beings into things; living instruments which mechanically function within the corporate machine to fulfill the corporation’s prime directive: to make money for the corporation to the total exclusion of every other consideration.
4. Weak government allows corporations to function without supervision or regulation. With no strong government to provide restraints, the corporation mindlessly and automatically transforms its biotic and physical surroundings to serve as instruments to make money for the corporation to the total exclusion of every other consideration, including the necessities of humanity and the biosphere itself.
5. Government is dominated by corporate interests. This is accomplished by means of the transformative force of corporate power and money. Since government is, in effect, government of, by, and for the corporations, government is kept as weak as possible and outsourced to corporations whenever possible.
6. Because it is in the best interests of the biosphere to gain control of the corporations which are visibly destroying it, individuals and groups working to stop the destruction would all want to work to strengthen the government to make regulation and supervision of the corporations possible.
7. Soup kitchen environmentalism addresses the symptoms and not the causes of our decades of environmental disaster and reverses. Further, soup kitchen environmentalism confuses the achieving of civic goods with accomplishment in the environmental area. Most of the little that has been accomplished in alleviation of symptoms has only served to strengthen the corporations in their destructive activities by creating the illusion that the supervision and regulation of corporate activity is being done by private, NGOs.
8. The supervision and regulation of corporate activity which results in the violation of the right of the governed to a safe and healthy environment can only be accomplished by strong government made up of human beings who are NOT under the influence of the transformative force of corporate power and money. Only persons protected from the corporation’s transformative force are capable of working in the interests of the governed.
Environmental organizations must now redirect their efforts, even though the goal is still to produce a changed person,
It will always be important to change the ways people think and act in regard to the biosphere, but it is now possible to allow educational institutions and agencies to discharge their responsibility in that regard. There is no reason to believe they would not. Thanks to the early successes of the environmental movement, science is taken much more seriously in the public schools now than it was in the 1960s.
Environmentalism must now focus on changing the ways people think and act in regard to government, and in regard to corporate activity as it affects human and biotic rights.
Government needs to be strengthened to make supervision and regulation of the corporations possible.
At the same time, corporate activity, which private, non-government organizations can monitor, but cannot supervise or regulate, needs to be identified as the central problem in need of address.
The public needs to be informed of the facts and issues concerning corporate activity, even though anyone daring to advance such information will certainly be vilified and attacked. Politicians ought not to do this. It makes no sense for an elected official to say and do the things we all know will anger the corporations who will then use the transformative force of power and money to anger the public. Once the politician is out of office, we lose all the benefit of what might have been accomplished that the public WAS ready to hear.
Becoming the target of vilification is the job of the environmental activist who is not running for anything. But that activist can’t be tied down with the need to support bricks and mortar, or research projects to protect, a family to feed, or a boat to keep on the river. The activist can’t be worried about increasing membership or donations. In activism, everything that needs protecting is a liability.
Sooner or later, the facts of the situation will become familiar to the public, and what was once seen as anti jobs and anti energy will be seen for what it really is, the facts. Then the politician can join in what will have become a conversation rather than a shouting match of name calling.
The corporation is, without question, one of humanity’s greatest inventions and, once repaired, could become the instrument of our salvation. No better machine exists for the purpose of making money and accomplishing transformation. With a new prime directive, those transformations could be in the public interest. The corporation, returned to its original function of serving the public interest, is beyond all doubt the machine capable of doing the work of restoring and protecting the biosphere while securing our human right to a safe and secure environment.
Anthony Henry Smith
© Anthony Henry Smith, 2009
View From Winchell Mountain, Millerton, NY © Anthony Henry Smith, 2009
