Reply #11: Not Really, Ma'am: That is Something Of a Mis-Understanding

[The Magistrate]

In speaking of a 'corporate state', Mussolini was employing an older definition of corporate, the root meaning of grouped in a single body, a whole, meaning by it the fascist state was a unitary thing, in which no separate elements existed: he was saying fascist Italy was a single body, without classes, interests, or any faction save his Party.

Indeed, the influence and control of large business interests on the right totalitarians on the early mid twentieth century is much over-rated. Businessmen did not create these movements, and certainly did not dictate policy to them. They destroyed enemies of big business in their countries, but did so for their own purposes, and of their own volition. Businessmen profited from their rule, at least in heavy industry, but this was a by-product of the movements' extreme and popular nationalism. It was as dangerous for a tycoon to defy these movements as it was for anyone else, once they had the reins firmly in hand.

The problem with corporate person-hood taken as equal to a citizen in public and political life is, as someone once said, 'they have neither souls to be damned nor bodies to be kicked". The corporation is a legal device for pooling capital and limiting the personal liability of people who devote capital to the corporation for its debts and actions. That is all, and that is hardly a sound footing for participation in political life. Taken as a 'person', a corporation is pretty much a sociopath, since it is chartered to have no responsibility save its own self-aggrandizement, whatever that may cost others. What actually happens when a corporation is treated as a citizen in political life is that it simply amplifies the political views of those persons in a position to control its expenditures, and make them in effect a nobility, worth in political terms thousands, even millions, of citizens, by virtue of the capital they control. This certainly is a breeding ground for oligarchic rule, and antithetical to democracy. Given that the business and managerial class in our society tends to rightist views on economic matters, it is clear that here, the threat posed by this enhancement of their political power through regarding corporations as persons with rights of free speech is one of a rightist stranglehold on political life.

Note that nothing which would flow from removing the rights of a political person would have the slightest impact on the rights of persons who own in some proportion, or are employed at some level in, a corporation. Shareholders and employees could make any donations, or publish and circulate, anything they afford, either individually or in personal association. All they would be restricted from doing would be directly employing fund sof the corporation itself to do this.