How Corporations Control Politics

I think in terms of campaigning (letter writing) etc. these abuses have clear effects.

I’d argue though that in terms of the overall discourse, “the bosses” have won without even resorting to anything so crude.

At least here in the UK it’s palpable that people soak up attitudes about economics and trade policy from work. And those policy preferences aren’t designed around their prosperity… They aren’t being threatened, it’s simply a matter of culture – of lionising the “private sector” and bashing the “public sector” and those out of work. The identity comes out of water cooler moments and the lunch break. It takes a strong outside-work identity not to want the halo of “private sector wealth creator” and thus disdain a union, or a strike or a dole recipient…

I would hardly be called being forced to hold up a pro-romney sign when the guy comes to visit “political mobilization of workers.”

Suit yourself, but you may want to communicate with the rest of the world some day.

Much conservative rhetoric, especially in the US, is caught up in an anachronistic big-government/small-government debate. But real government is not where the nominal authority lies, but who has the real power!

Like it or not, conservatives are leading a revolution, in which national governments are being usurped by the big government of the international corporate oligopoly. This of course is barely accountable for its actions, nor subject to democratic oversight, and hence can ride roughshod over the broad mass of humanity. Of course, like the Star Wars Trade Federation, the oligopoly also subverts/coerces the loyalties of employees from the wider community to itself.

I suspect that the trend is that national governments will be important only in that they will provide the armies to enforce the will of the corporate elite. Eventually even this may become unimportant as other means are found to suppress us!

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/…/images/6/68/TF-DCS-ST.jpg

cassander @ 3: I would hardly be called being forced to hold up a pro-romney sign when the guy comes to visit “political mobilization of workers.” Does Alex Hertel-Fernandez present any evidence at all that these mobilization efforts impact votes in any way? Or that such mobilization happens that is antithetical to employees’ interests? Seems to me that coal miners and coal mine owners have a lot of interests in common.’

We can save time and effort if we can adopt some short codes for standard responses. This one is the standard ‘3-step’: First, deny that a thing is happening. Then admit that it could be but say that it’s harmless. Then assert that it’s actually beneficial.

The 3-step is most often deployed in discussions on climate change, but as we can see here, it is available as a more general-purpose response.

Call me naive but I’m astounded that half the tactics described aren’t outright illegal.

Not to display a put on world weary cynicism , but I’m surprised people are surprised by this. It isn’t “capitalism” , it’s politics. People have always been pressured into how they vote, whether by domineering individuals in their family, notable families in their community , factions in their village, political machines in their towns and cities , so on and so forth. In workplaces of all sizes, from small shops to local factories, individuals have been coerced, whether implicitly (through peer pressure) or explicitly (threats of dismissal) into supporting political positions a dominant faction wants them to. (Is this not part of what trade unions do, or have done?)
It is a fallacy of WEIRD thinking to imagine away such pressures historically. Obviously this situation in the OP isn’t ideal, but it is politics , as it has existed since time immemorial. (Or at least a date I can’t place)

Well, I associate such behaviour with defect democracy – which is how id think of most historical democracies. So for me it is shocking to see this kind of mechanism in a modern long established rich democracy (ok not that shocking, considering all the other fingerpointers towards that direction with regards to the US).

@13 – I don’t know if I’d see the US as an institutionally mature democracy akin to what exists in Northern Europe, more as a hybrid of areas that are economically and politically developed, and others that are more comparable to weak states or emerging democracies (at best the European ‘periphery’, Spain, Greece, Italy, Ireland- perhaps in the 80s more than now) You can see this in the weak state capacity, corrupt militia like police forces and late agrarian style of politics.
Also, perhaps I’m wrong.

Rich Puchalsky @ 11: I appreciate that when you’re going against an established story, you have to emphasize that what’s really going on is a whole different story. That’s what I’d take “the problem isn’t corruption. It’s capitalism.” to be. But really I’d assume that it’s both.

Yes, I recognize that that is the rhetorical problem. And, I’m not a fan of liberal “purity” as a practical model for remedies — the established story he’s turning away from. And, yes, I think there’s some deep structures driving developments.

I am sure he is an ass but Murray is more or less correct about coal mining jobs and elections. Obama wins = less US coal mining jobs. And on that issue I actually agree with Obama.

The real take away here is how pathetically lazy Capitalists are about politics. The median claimed estimate of the number of employees pressured would very roughly match total government workers, and government workers being forced to contribute to this, and that PAC in order to keep their job is the heroic norm, not the outrageous outlier.

Yawn.

16 tons. Not exactly news. It’s part of what “liberal democracy” has always been made of, together with a “free press”.

Don’t agree with the cynics above – ‘this is how it has always been’. This is outrageous and I agree with some commenters above that it may be, in this extreme form, a U.S. thing. However it is also part of a broader trend.

Here in Australia, big unions sometimes make common cause with big business to attack Labor or the Greens when they propose to reduce forestry or mining. Generally the rhetoric of “jobs” is used to justify giving special consideration to corporations. The proposed TPP investor-state measures continue the trend give corporations more power to oppose workers’ rights, health or environmental provisions (there is a good discussion of this in Naomi Klein’s latest book). Inequality is getting worse again, and the trend for inequality to increase within organisations (lower pay at the bottom, more at the top) seems entrenched.

I would say it’s not just capitalism, it’s also patriarchy (in my definition, historical persistence, predating modern capitalism, of hierarchical male dominated systems of institutionalised inequality and exploitation of subordinate groups, ie corporations today, kingdoms in the past) though relatively few on this site seem to acknowledge that.

However there also seem to be countervailing trends against the influence of corporations/capitalism: the HDP in Turkey, SNP in Scotland, Polemos, Syriza – all have stated left/egalitarian and democratic aims, even though I know some here are cynical about real commitment eg by SNP.

This is a good piece, thanks.

And frankly, all the been-there-done-that in the comments is a bit idiotic. Think about how much (virtual and real) ink is spilled in left/liberal media outlets and publications about the corrupting influence of Citizens United and related SC decisions, and how pretty much all of these pieces focus on the corrupting influence via the channels of donations, super PACs, etc. Now ask yourself whether the sort of thing that CR is talking about gets anywhere near the same amount of space and attention in those same outlets and publications; whether it’s even on the radar for a lot of the outlets decrying super PACs. Exactly.

A @ 25
Change the world with my PhD thesis. Whaddya think? Of course I can do that.

Someday I’ll learn to read my posts carefully before pressing “Submit” (but then, I’m not a boss, so not used to saying “Submit!”).

In mine of 29, “city employee” s/b “city employees”, and “first early 20thC” s/b “early 20thC”.

What’s missing is a powerful norm that as Americans we should recognize and honor the autonomy of one another other. As an employer, it is simply none of my damned business how you vote; and it shouldn’t even occur to me to coerce you.

I’d like a slightly clearer account of what is being described as “coercion.”

Is “if the Democrats win, there will be fewer coal mining jobs and this mine will probably close” coercion (assuming it’s true)?

And it’s critical to note that anyone in the financial industry is required to monitor employee’s online activity, and finance is a field where there are real threats from new regulation.

Is it glib to say that America never really let go of slavery? There seems to be an underlying belief there that employers have a right to dictate the beliefs and preferences of their staff.

I’m reminded of an interview with Douglas Adams where an American interviewer asks how he deals with being punished in his professional life for being atheist, but Adams finds the very idea preposterous. The US seems to accept that sort of interference as normal, if not reasonable. C.f. workplace drug testing.

god dammit, that should read “The other alternative, of course, is employers threatening employees”

But people have always eaten people, what else is there to eat?

Perfect comparison. A CEO pressured by consumers to resign for a donation he made to an organisation he supports is the same as a line worker threatened with the sack for not donating to an organisation he doesn’t support.

@43. Indeed.

Out of curiosity: if, as some argue, this sort of political influence is all due to capitalism and/or patriarchy, what kinds of political influence can we expect to see applied, or misapplied, in a post-capitalist, post-patriarchal society?

I suspect somebody, possibly Plume, might argue that in an ideal p-c p-c society all would be well, and the policies followed would be so self-evidently correct that there would be no need for anyone to argue about them.

I’m concerned that this column is based on research that isn’t actually published yet. I don’t really doubt any of the conclusions that you’re arguing for here, but I feel like I can’t say whether the effect is larger or smaller than I would have expected without any of the details about Hertel-Fernandez’s actual study. I would imagine the actual paper has some methodological details that would make the claims easier to evaluate. But it seems to me that if you’re going to base your argument on empirical research, we have to have access to a complete picture of the research to know if the argument is any good or not. I’m not concerned about peer review, really; it would be fine if it was just posted on a personal website or something. But referring to research that doesn’t publicly exist seems fishy to me. Could this column really not wait until the paper comes out?

Some of the reasearch is available much in the same way that some workers are being coerced as in not really.

Feeling that I should try to make up for my comment @ 9 about reifying “capitalism” as a rhetorical move.

I am reading Clay Shirky’s post and its comment thread and I am thinking, “this is the same damn thing Corey Robin was writing about, but no one is acknowledging the commonality”.

And, maybe that was the point of the, “capitalism is the problem” peroration, though of course I did not react to it that way, and I would hold to my complaint that few would.

The conservative response in the present thread is denial de minutiae. There is no effect, and if there were an effect, it’s not corrupting, because there’s a coincidence of interests between corporations and their numerous lowly dependents. The lords of the manor represent the agrarian interest; of course, the conservative peasants follow — only transliterated to neo feudalism. Despite the swipe taken at the ineffectual purity principles of rote reform, some of the leftish comments reassert purity — people should vote their consciences in the privacy of the voting booth; it’s a sacred kind-of-thing.

Clay Shirky’s excellent post is an extended illustration of the Big Picture, I think. You could label it, “late capitalism” and be technically right (and also stop all thought with a label) I suppose, but its the details that interest me, the cyclic entropy. The example he gives is North Carolina, which is a state where the legislature and state politics isn’t just corrupt in the desultory way of most States, it is a wholly owned creature of business corporations, thanks to the highly effective political organizing of a very small and determined (and well-funded) group.

One other connection to how Corporations Control Politics thread, and it falls into the category of the dog that didn’t bark. That business corporations organize political support, as several world-weary commenters have pointed out is not particularly new news. Being a squishy liberal myself, in less benighted circumstances, I would probably argue that business has legitimate interests that should enter politics, and narrow concrete money-grubbing arguments are just as legitimate as airy, fairy idealisms. What’s new is that they are not opposed. That what they are doing is pushing the envelope on what should be considered legitimate in a democracy, and there’s very little vital push-back. The laws are being changed to give them more freedom to pursue their interests, etc.

And, here’s the silence of the dogs: fewer and fewer resources are available to fund the political organizing and thinking that might represent a general interest.

The ideas that business corporations unopposed push are myopic and selfish and cruel. If they were effectively opposed, what they would argue for would be far more mild. This is the significance of, “Nixon was a liberal”.

It’s a truism that the conservative party tends to be the stupid party. The left has a harder task. It takes more thought, more sophisticated thought to successfully fashion a more far-sighted, better-balanced sense of policy and consequences. Myopic, reactionary selfishness, unopposed, is easy. Stupid, but easy.

A critical part of the Clay Shirky narrative was the Clark Kerr is dead and first tier academia has been on auto-pilot for a long time part. The apologia of those defending are disconnected from the reality of how the system works, and no one has felt responsible for how the system works in a long, long time.

The liberals, so to speak, are more reactionary in the sense of purely reactive than the reforming conservatives they face.

The part of the dsquared thesis, that several commenters pointed out, is that the financial scandals that formed his template, did not prompt much in the way of structural reform, if by structural reform one means restructuring in the public interest predicated on deposing corrupt elites. We’re getting a lot de-legitimating from these scandals, but not much thought about how to make politics work effectively as a means of solving problems and adapting intelligently.

We get just enough squeaks from the leftish, for example, to know that austerity “does not work” in some sense featuring the general public interest, but not enough to make an effective political case, identify policy levers and get on with an agenda of restructuring reform, that pushes corrupt elites aside. No ideas, no revolution I’m thinking. At least, no good revolution.

@Bruce Wilder

>The ideas that business corporations unopposed push are myopic and selfish and cruel.

Selfish, perhaps, but myopic and cruel? Is there some massive pro-puppy drowning lobby that has escaped my notice?

>It takes more thought, more sophisticated thought to successfully fashion a more far-sighted, better-balanced sense of policy and consequences.

Coming from the guys who sold the country on eugenics, prohibition, and public housing, this is almost laughable.

> Myopic, reactionary selfishness, unopposed, is easy.

Not half as easy as ineffectual, feel good “generosity” with other people’s money

cassander @ 54:

I am sure you can keep up your brand of tendentious nonsense all day and all night. I am not interested in playing your stupid game. Bug off.