James K. Galbraith called globalization, , “the perfect crime.”
Shankar: I think quite deep into the nineteenth century, there were debates about what a corporation is and what its relationship to the community is. Sainath: Corporations today represent the highest concentrations of wealth. And one of the more beautiful quotes from American jurisprudence is from a case that came before Justice Louis Brandeis—“you can have great concentration of wealth or you can have democracy. You cannot have both.” I believe that to be absolutely true. Corporations are the antithesis of a democratic society. They are based on highly centralized, authoritarian structures to the point of fascist power. Peter Drucker, the management expert, once suggested that Sainath, Franklin, and Shankar, Against Stenography for the Powerful 303 we stop calling CEOs “CEOs” and call them “CDOs,” Chief Demolition Officers, because they smash the company and they become richer. And, that is Peter Drucker, a management guy speaking. I think that authoritarian ruthlessness is embedded in the nature of corporate structures. And they become more and more faceless and more and more abstract entities. In fact, James K. Galbraith called globalization, for this reason, “the perfect crime.” Because you can’t pinpoint anyone and say “these guys did it,” and therefore five years after Wall Street tanks, you have not sent one guy to prison. There is also a history of corporate profi t seeking. If you read Edwin Black’s devastating book, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, Black says that while the Holocaust would have happened anyway, the scale and efficiency of the murder of European Jewry, especially German Jewry, would not have been possible without IBM, which made the punching card system and the reference system for Hitler, knowing exactly who they were doing it for and why they were doing it. IBM’s reference and punching card system made it possible to trace so-and-so with this quarter percentage of Jewish blood. OK? That was a corporation. Thomas Frank, the head of IBM at that time, sent a $40,000 gift for Hitler’s birthday, as did so many other leading American corporate figures, like the DuPonts and others, all of which you can find in one of the greatest books ever written, in my opinion, and one of the least reviewed books in the United States, Charles Higham’s Trading with the Enemy, which shows you that the United States president signed—look at the power of corporations!—an act called “The Trading with the Enemy Act.” As Higham asks, how would Americans feel if their kids were being bombed in Normandy by planes that got their ball bearings from Ford in Dearborn, Michigan? How would have the Americans being slaughtered in North Africa, the British and American troops being slaughtered by Rommel felt . . . how would they have felt had they known that the oil of the Panzer tanks came from Standard Oil, under this agreement, the “Trading with the Enemy Act”? Here is something spectacular: when was the act signed? December 13, 1941. One week after Pearl Harbor. It shows corporate power has no sentiment, no morality. And that such a fine person as Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed it shows you the power and importance of corporations.
Shankar: I think quite deep into the nineteenth century, there were debates about what a corporation is and what its relationship to the community is. Sainath: Corporations today represent the highest concentrations of wealth. And one of the more beautiful quotes from American jurisprudence is from a case that came before Justice Louis Brandeis—“you can have great concentration of wealth or you can have democracy. You cannot have both.” I believe that to be absolutely true. Corporations are the antithesis of a democratic society. They are based on highly centralized, authoritarian structures to the point of fascist power. Peter Drucker, the management expert, once suggested that Sainath, Franklin, and Shankar, Against Stenography for the Powerful 303 we stop calling CEOs “CEOs” and call them “CDOs,” Chief Demolition Officers, because they smash the company and they become richer. And, that is Peter Drucker, a management guy speaking. I think that authoritarian ruthlessness is embedded in the nature of corporate structures. And they become more and more faceless and more and more abstract entities. In fact, James K. Galbraith called globalization, for this reason, “the perfect crime.” Because you can’t pinpoint anyone and say “these guys did it,” and therefore five years after Wall Street tanks, you have not sent one guy to prison. There is also a history of corporate profi t seeking. If you read Edwin Black’s devastating book, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, Black says that while the Holocaust would have happened anyway, the scale and efficiency of the murder of European Jewry, especially German Jewry, would not have been possible without IBM, which made the punching card system and the reference system for Hitler, knowing exactly who they were doing it for and why they were doing it. IBM’s reference and punching card system made it possible to trace so-and-so with this quarter percentage of Jewish blood. OK? That was a corporation. Thomas Frank, the head of IBM at that time, sent a $40,000 gift for Hitler’s birthday, as did so many other leading American corporate figures, like the DuPonts and others, all of which you can find in one of the greatest books ever written, in my opinion, and one of the least reviewed books in the United States, Charles Higham’s Trading with the Enemy, which shows you that the United States president signed—look at the power of corporations!—an act called “The Trading with the Enemy Act.” As Higham asks, how would Americans feel if their kids were being bombed in Normandy by planes that got their ball bearings from Ford in Dearborn, Michigan? How would have the Americans being slaughtered in North Africa, the British and American troops being slaughtered by Rommel felt . . . how would they have felt had they known that the oil of the Panzer tanks came from Standard Oil, under this agreement, the “Trading with the Enemy Act”? Here is something spectacular: when was the act signed? December 13, 1941. One week after Pearl Harbor. It shows corporate power has no sentiment, no morality. And that such a fine person as Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed it shows you the power and importance of corporations.
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