The Corporation

We watched a fine, fine documentary the other night called The Corporation. It’s a lesson in what’s wrong with the current corporate power structure. Very interesting thesis. Basically the film makes the point that multinational corporations are more powerful than governments in effecting their will to power, but that the corporation is today devoid of social responsibility and ethics. The film also takes issue with a fundamental definition of a corporation in the law as a “person” that can aquire assets, sell them, have income, has certain inalienable rights, etc. If you like to think, then this movie is for you. It’s a challenging film with a lot to say—from law to the environment to petrochemicals to ethics to modern society.

They talked to the best people with a view on this including a number of CEOs and executives. Very interesting perspectives were discussed. The film also features our favorite intellectual, Noam Chomsky from MIT. The documentary is very well done. A lot of time and research went into the making of this film.

The film was based on the book entitled The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan. Amazon.com has the film, as well as Netflix.