Beauvilliers+-+Annotation+-+The+Corporation

The Corporation
An annotation by Evan Beauvilliers 1. The Corporation: Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot, Released 2004

2. The central argument of this film is that corporations are an unsustainable institution that has become too powerful and abused. Corporations have the same rights as people under the law yet they are not liable for their actions. Also, they are obligated by law to maximize profits for their shareholders. This means that even if a CEO wanted to move in a more green direction, he cannot unless he has reason to believe it will increase profit. Essentially, the institution of the corporation at this point is designed to create an unsustainable machine. There are several factors that make corporations (in general) unsustainable. For one thing, they take advantage of the third world and pay workers very little for goods they will sell at high profit. For example, in the case of Nike, workers will often make about 3/10 of 1% of the retail price of the goods they produce. That means that if they make a $100 dollar pair of shoes, they will get 30₵. Another problem is that corporations often profit from conflict. For example, Mon Santo, a chemical company made millions selling agent orange to the U.S. government during Vietnam. The herbicide is still causing severe health problems in Vietnam. IBM tailor made the punch card “software” the Nazi’s used for tracking people in their concentration camps (see ). The major point that these examples draw out is that corporations exist for one reason, to make money, and they will do anything they can to achieve this end, no matter the means.

3. This film discusses sustainability issues that are of political, economic, and legal concern. Politically and legally, the fact that the government has given and continues to give so much freedom and power to corporations is astonishing. Even when corporations break the law, they are penalized only by fines which are most often mitigated by the profits the company has gained from breaking the law in the first place. Breaking the law has become a game or an economic tool for corporations. They weight the benefit and the risk of breaking the law. It is not prohibitive to them like an ordinary citizen, just a minor nuisance. Economically, corporations are keeping workers in the third world from moving up the economic ladder which keeps those communities from developing. If corporations paid workers fairly, then they would have money that could move through the local economies helping them to develop. Instead they leave them in poverty because it is cheaper and so the workers remain reliant on the company and continue providing cheap labor in a perpetual cycle of unfair treatment.

4. The most compelling part of this film was the way in which it presented general arguments and then cited in detail many specific historical examples like those mentioned above. The IBM Nazi connection was particularly chilling. The plethora of examples gave real strength and credibility to the idea that corporations have been outliving their usefulness for years. The fact that the movie mentions the historical origins of corporations and states that they originally served a very useful purpose also lends credibility.

5. The absolutely least compelling aspect of the movie was the way in which it systematically identified corporations as psychotic. Not only is that diagnosis terribly non-specific and generally useless, the whole metaphor was more distracting than anything. In addition, it is an immature method to say that it is bad to consider corporations people by law, and then to say, but since they are, let’s treat them like people too for our purposes. It’s basically saying that even though it is wrong to do so, it is ok if someone else does it first, the kind of argument you expect from a child.

6. All of the historical information was very interesting and created a strong desire for further research. I actually delved deeper into the IBM Nazi story because it is so unbelievable (see above). It creates a real cynicism regarding corporations, which may not be true of all of them, but seems all too accurate for larger ones especially. It will be interesting to try and make connections between future conflicts and which corporations could be benefiting from them. There definitely ought to be a group, governmental or citizen, that watches corporations for such actions, and when found, there needs to be a better reaction than just fining. For example, since corporations are apparently people, they should be able to go to jail. I am not sure what this would entail, but for example, corporations would think twice about breaking the law if, when caught, all of their assets are frozen for the time in which the “person” would be in jail. Until corporations have a real risk, they will continue to act as they please.

7. This film can address both academic and causal audiences. I say this because, like other movies we’ve seen in class, it gives a good combination of arguments and evidence. The historical references could be of interest to anyone and serve as a good educational background for studying the matter further. That said, it is good for academic purposes because if the viewer has a deeper base knowledge before seeing it, they can better connect it to the matrix of other problems, and therefore get more out of the movie.

8. The film leans towards curbing the power of corporations. While they do not make specific suggestions, this could be something of the form of more serious punishments (as mentioned above) or it could be the states taking back control of the charters, California fairly recently ruled that they have the power to revoke charters, though they did not do so in the specific case. If this power were actually exercised when corporations are no longer serving society well, it would much more likely keep them in line than simply slapping them on the wrist with a fine.

9. This films educational value might have been enhanced by describing how the problem of corporations stems from the general economic and political system of the U.S. and the rest of the developed world. If this problem were linked to the rest of the matrix of sustainability problems, it would serve as a much better platform for environmental study and it would cause students to branch into other sustainability topics of interest.