And, you know, that's" every sort of power system has basically conveyed the same idea. They always believe that they are there forever and for all time. And it is usually at that moment, when they are the most arrogant about their power that they are the most vulnerable and history shows that time and time again.
And in some ways I feel that corporate capitalism is at that moment. I don't know how or when things will unfold in a way that begins to substantially challenge it, but I do feel that it is on shaky ground even as it declares ultimate triumph.
R.K.: What do you see as answers to the psychopathic corporation and to corporate capitalism in the malignant form that you have described in your movie?
J.B.: Well, I think you know the short answer is democracy. I think the"it'll take a long time and much controversy to unpack exactly what that means, but if we look at how that question was answered going back to Roosevelt and the New Deal in the United States, they were asking the same question. And the answer they gave is we need to create a system and, yes, it had it's flaws and problems and it wasn't perfect, but we need to create a system that enables the public, the people through their democratic institutions to basically hedge in, fence in, constrain, incentivize this institution to do less harm and do more good.
So accepting the premise that the corporation as an institution is particularly good at organizing large projects, whether it's building railways, or steam ships-as it was at the turn of the century when the corporation came into existence- or creating networks of computers, whatever it happens to be, let's just assume for the sake of argument it can do some things fairly well. So then the question is, and this was the question that was answered by Roosevelt: how much are we prepared to allow it to externalize its various costs on to society as it does these things that they supposedly do well?
Are we prepared to allow it to exploit workers to the point where they have no say in their"? No, we're not! So let's pass some laws that legalize collective bargaining and that create a system of collective bargaining and that legitimate unions. And, you know, the same thing we can look at unfolding over the century with environmental protection, consumer protection. So that's how the question was answered before.
And one answer that I offer, which is effectively the answer I offer, in the last chapter of, The Corporation, is: let's return to that project. Let's return to the project of trying to create public constraints on corporations to ensure that they do less harm and that the good they do isn't at the expense of a lot of harm.
Let's see them as a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. And let's treat them in those terms and let's see our sovereign democratic government as being their handlers rather than those who are being handled by them. So it's really a kind of almost a reactionary argument. It's saying: let's go back to the project that we were building beginning in the 1930's and let's continue that project.
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