[wordup] Douglas Rushkoff - "Life Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back"

[Adam Shand]

Ever since I read "Cyberia" as a young 20-something, which looked straight into the rave phenomenon, especially it's overlap with the emerging high tech / .com world, he's been a hero of mine.  I can't recommend his books (or blog) enough, I think he's our generations voice (big call I know but it works for me).

The movie on the page linked to is worth watching (it's < 10 minutes) and I've included the introduction from the book below.  He has a few more chapters online for free if you're interested.

Adam.

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"We've been taught that the renaissance was one of the great golden ages of civilisation.  The renaissance was not a golden age, it was the end of a golden age.  The renaissance was the moment in history when kings decided they were going to monopolise all of the value that people were creating in Western Europe.  So instead of letting people make stuff and trade stuff they created chartered corporations.   Monarchs were loosing power and losing money and they needed a way to control the rising merchant class.  So they picked individual businesses to charter, and in return for exclusive control over an industry or region, that company would then give the king shares of stock."

Source: http://rushkoff.com/books/life-incorporated/

INTRODUCTION
Your Money or Your Life
A Lesson on the Front Stoop

I got mugged on Christmas Eve.

I was in front of my Brooklyn apartment house taking out the trash
when a man pulled a gun and told me to empty my pockets. I gave him
my money, wallet, and cell phone. But then?remembering some-
thing I?d seen in a movie about a hostage negotiator?I begged him to
let me keep my medical- insurance card. If I could humanize myself in
his perception, I ?gured, he?d be less likely to kill me.

He accepted my argument about how hard it would be for me to get
?care? without it, and handed me back the card. Now it was us two
against the establishment, and we made something of a deal: in ex-
change for his mercy, I wasn?t to report him?even though I had
plainly seen his face. I agreed, and he ran off down the street. I fool-
ishly but steadfastly stood by my side of the bargain, however coerced
it may have been, for a few hours. As if I could have actually entered
into a binding contract at gunpoint.

In the meantime, I posted a note about my strange and frightening
experience to the Park Slope Parents list?a rather crunchy Internet
community of moms, food co-op members, and other leftie types ded-
icated to the health and well-being of their families and their decid-
edly progressive, gentrifying neighborhood. It seemed the responsible
thing to do, and I suppose I also expected some expression of sympa-
thy and support.

Amazingly, the very ?rst two emails I received were from people
angrythat I had posted the name of the street on which the crime had
occurred. Didn?t I realize that this publicity could adversely affect all
of our property values? The ?sellers? market? was already dif?cult
enough! With a famous actor reportedly leaving the area for Manhat-
tan, does Brooklyn?s real- estate market need more bad press? And this
was beforethe real- estate crash.

I was stunned. Had it really come to this? Did people care more
about the market value of their neighborhood than what was actually
taking place within it? Besides, it didn?t even make good business
sense to bury the issue. In the long run, an open and honest conversa-
tion about crime and how to prevent it should make the neighborhood
safer. Property values would go up in the end, not down. So these
homeowners were more concerned about the immediate liquidity of
their town houses than their long- term asset value?not to mention
the actual experience of living in them. And these were among the
wealthiest people in New York, who shouldn?t have to be worrying
about such things. What had happened to make them behave this way?
It stopped me cold, and forced me to reassess my own long-held de-
sire to elevate myself from renter to owner. I stopped to think?
which, in the midst of an irrational real-estate craze, may not have
been the safest thing to do. Why, I wondered aloud on my blog, was I
struggling to make $4,500-per-month rent on a two- bedroom, fourth-
?oor walk-up in this supposedly ?hip? section of Brooklyn, when I
could just as easily get mugged somewhere else for a lot less per
month? Was my willingness to participate in this runaway market part
of the problem?

The detectives who took my report drove the point home. One of
them drew a circle on a map of Brooklyn. ?Inside this circle is where
the rich white people from Manhattan are moving. That?s the target
area. Hunting ground. Think about it from your mugger?s point of
view: quiet, tree-lined streets of row houses, each worth a million or
two, and inhabited by the rich people who displaced your family. Now,
you live in or around the projects just outside the circle. Where would
you go to mug someone??

Back on the World Wide Web, a friend of mine?another Park
Slope writer?made an open appeal for my family to stay in Brooklyn.
He saw ?the Slope? as a mixed- use neighborhood now reaching the
?peak of livability? that the legendary urban anthropologist Jane
Jacobs idealized. He explained how all great neighborhoods go
through the same basic process: Some artists move into the only area
they can afford?a poor area with nothing to speak of. Eventually,
there are enough of them to open a gallery. People start coming to the
gallery in the evenings, creating demand for a coffeehouse nearby, and
so on. Slowly but surely, an artsy store or two and a clique of hipsters
?pioneer? the neighborhood until there?s signi?cant sidewalk activity
late into the night, making it safer for successive waves of incoming
businesses and residents.

Of course, after the city?s newspaper ?discovers? the new trendy
neighborhood, the artists are joined and eventually replaced by in-
creasingly wealthy but decidedly less hip young professionals, lawyers,
and businesspeople?but hopefully not so many that the district com-
pletely loses its ??avor.? Investment increases, the district grows big-
ger, and everyone is happier and wealthier.

Still, what happens to the people who lived there from the
beginning?the ones whom the police detective was talking about?
The ?natives?? This process of gentri?cation does not occur ex nihilo.
No, when property values go up, so do the rents, displacing anyone
whose monthly living charges aren?t regulated by the government.
The residents of the neighborhood do not actually participate in the
renaissance, because they are not owners. They move to outlying
areas. Sure, their kids still go to John Jay High School in the middle
of Park Slope. But none of Park Slope?s own wealthy residents send
their kids there.

Our online conversation was picked up by New York magazine in a
column entitled ?Are the Writers Leaving Brooklyn?? The article fo-
cused entirely on the way a crime against an author could threaten the
Brooklyn real- estate bubble. National Public Radio called to interview
me about the story?not the mugging itself, but whether I would leave
Brooklyn over it, and if doing so publicly might not be irresponsibly
hurting other people?s property values. A week or two of blog insanity
later, a second New York piece asked why we should even care about
whether the writers are leaving Brooklyn?seemingly oblivious of the
fact that this was the very same column space that told us to care in the
?rst place.

It was an interesting ?fteen minutes. What was going on had less to
do with crime or authors, though, than it did with a market in its ?nal,
most vaporous phase. I simply couldn?t afford to buy in?and getting
mugged freed me from the hype treadmill for long enough to accept it.
Or, more accurately, it?s not that I couldn?t afford it so much as that I
wouldn?t afford it. There were mortgage brokers willing to lend me the
other 90 percent of the money I?d need to purchase a home on the
block where I was renting. ?We can get you in,? they?d say. And at that
moment in real- estate history, putting even 10 percent down would
have made me a very quali?ed buyer. ?What about when the mortgage
readjusts?? I remember asking. ?Then you re?nance at a better rate,?
they assured me. Of course, that would be happening just about the
same time Park Slope?s arti?cially low property- tax rate (an exemption
secured by real- estate developers) would be raised to the levels of the
poorer areas of the borough. ?Don?t worry. Everyone with your ?nan-
cials is doing it,? one broker explained with a wink. ?And the banks
aren?t going to just let everyone lose their homes, now, are they??
As long as people refused to look at the real social and ?nancial
costs, the market could keep going up?buoyed in part by the bonuses
paid to investment bankers whose job it was to promote all this asset
in?ation in the ?rst place. Heck, we were restoring a historic borough
to its former glory. All we had to do was avoid the uncomfortable truth
that we were busy converting what were being used as multifamily
dwellings by poor black and Hispanic people back into stately town
houses for use by rich white ones. And we had to overlook that this
frenzy of real- estate activity was operating on borrowed time and,
more signi?cantly, borrowed money.

In such a climate, calling attention to any of this was the real crime,
and the reason that the ?rst reaction of those participating in a specu-
lative bubble was to silence the messenger. It?s just business. The real-
ity was that we were pushing an increasingly hostile population from
their homes, colonizing their neighborhoods, and then justifying it all
with metrics such as increased business activity, reduced (reported)
crime rates, and?most important?higher real- estate prices. How
can one argue against making a neighborhood, well, better?
As my writer friend eloquently explained on his blog, the neigh-
borhood was now, by most measures, safer. It was once again possible
to sit on one?s stoop with the kids and eat frozen Italian ices on a
balmy summer night. One could walk through Prospect Park on any
Sunday afternoon and see a black family barbecuing here, a Puerto
Rican group there, and an Irish group over there. Compared with
most parts of the world, that?s pretty civil, no?

Romantic as it sounds, that?s not integration at all, but co-location.
Epcot- style d?tente. The Brooklyn being described here has almost
nothing to do with the one our grandparents might have inhabited. It
is rather an expensive and painstakingly re-created simulation of a
?brownstone Brooklyn? that never actually existed. If people once sat
on their stoops eating ices on summer nights it was because they had
no other choice?there was no air- conditioning and no TV. Everyone
could afford to sit around, so everyone did. And the fact that the
denizens of neighboring communities complete the illusion of multi-
culturalism by using the same park only means that these folks are
willing to barbecue next to each other?not witheach other. They all
still go home to different corners of the borough. My writer friend?s
kids go off the next morning to their private school, those other kids
to public. Not exactly neighbors.

Besides, the rows of brownstones in the Slope aren?t really made of
brown stone. They?ve been covered with a substance more akin to
stucco?a thick paint used to create the illusion of brown stones set
atop one another. A fa?ade?s fa?ade. As any brownstone owner soon
learns, the underlying cinder blocks can be hidden for only so long be-
fore a costly ?renovation? must be undertaken to cover them up again.
Likewise, wealth, media, and metrics can insulate colonizers from the
reality of their situation for only so long. Eventually, parents who push
their toddlers around in thousand- dollar strollers, whose lifestyles
and values have been reinforced by a multibillion- dollar industry ded-
icated to hip child- rearing, get pelted with stones by kids from the
?projects.? (Rest assured?the person who reported this recurring
episode at a gentri?ed Brooklyn playground met with his share of on-
line derision, as well.)

Like Californians surprised when a wild?re or coyote disrupts the
?natural? lifestyle they imagined they?d enjoy out in the country, we
?pioneer,? ?colonize,? and ?gentrify? at our peril, utterly oblivious to
the social costs of our expansion until one comes back to bite us in
the ass?or mug us on the stoop. And while it?s easy to blame the
larger institutions and social trends leading us into these traps, our
own choices and behaviors?however in?uenced?are ultimately re-
sponsible for whatever befalls us.

Park Slope, Brooklyn, is just a microcosm of the slippery slope
upon which so many of us are ?nding ourselves these days. We live
in a landscape tilted toward a set of behaviors and a way of making
choices that go against our own better judgment, as well as our collec-
tive self- interest. Instead of collaborating with each other to ensure
the best prospects for us all, we pursue short- term advantages over
seemingly ?xed resources through which we can compete more ef-
fectively against one another. In short, instead of acting like people,
we act like corporations. When faced with a local mugging, the com-
munity of Park Slope ?rst thought to protect its brand instead of its
people.

The ?nancial meltdown may not be punishment for our sins, but it
is at least in part the result of our widespread obsession with ?nancial
value over values of any other sort. We disconnected ourselves from
what matters to us, and grew dependent on a business scheme that
was never intended to serve us as people. But by adopting the ethos of
this speculative, abstract economic model as our own, we have dis-
abled the mechanisms through which we might address and correct
the collapse of the real economy operating alongside it.

Even now, as we attempt to dig ourselves out of a ?nancial mess
caused in large part by this very mentality and behavior, we turn to the
corporate sphere, its central banks, and shortsighted metrics to gauge
our progress back to health. It?s as if we believe we?ll ?nd the answer
in the stream of trades and futures on one of the cable- TV ?nance
channels instead of out in the physical world. Our real investment in
the fabric of our neighborhoods and our quality of life takes a backseat
to asking prices for houses like our own in the newspaper?s misnamed
?real estate? section. We look to the Dow Jones average as if it were
the one true vital sign of our society?s health, and the exchange rate
of our currency as a measure of our wealth as a nation or worth as a
people.

This, in turn, only distracts us further from the real- world ideas
and activities through which we might actually re-create some value
ourselves. Instead of ?xing the problem, and reclaiming our ability to
generate wealth directly with one another, we seek to prop up institu-
tions whose very purpose remains to usurp this ability from us. We try
to repair our economy by bolstering the same institutions that sapped
it. In the very best years, corporatism worked by extracting value from
the periphery and redirecting it to the center?away from people and
toward corporate monopolies. Now, even though that wellspring of
prosperity has run dry, we continue to dig deeper into the ground for
resources to keep the errant system running.

So as our corporations crumble, taking our jobs with them, we bail
them out to preserve our prospects for employment?knowing full
well that their business models are unsustainable. As banks? credit
schemes fail, we authorize our treasuries to print more money on their
behalf, at our own expense and that of our children. We then get to
borrow this money back from them, at interest. We know of no other
way. Having for too long outsourced our own savings and investing to
Wall Street, we are clueless about how to invest in the real world of
people and things. We identify with the plight of abstract corporations
more than that of ?esh-and-blood human beings. We engage with cor-
porations as role models and saviors, while we engage with our fellow
humans as competitors to be beaten or resources to be exploited.
Indeed, the now- stalled gentri?cation of Brooklyn had a good deal
in common with colonial exploitation. Of course, the whole thing was
done with more circumspection, with more tact. The borough?s gen-
tri?ers steered away from explicitly racist justi?cations for their ac-
tions, but nevertheless demonstrated the colonizer?s underlying
agenda: instead of ?chartered corporations? pioneering and subjugat-
ing an uncharted region of the world, it was hipsters, entrepreneurs,
and real- estate speculators subjugating an undesirable neighborhood.
The local economy?at least as measured in gross product?boomed,
but the indigenous population simply became servants (grocery
cashiers and nannies) to the new residents.

And like the expansion of colonial empires, this pursuit of home
ownership was perpetuated by a pioneer spirit of progress and personal
freedom. The ideal of home ownership was the fruit of a public-
relations strategy crafted after World War II?corporate and govern-
ment leaders alike believed that home owners would have more of a
stake in an expanding economy and greater allegiance to free- market
values than renters. Functionally, though, it led to a self- perpetuating
cycle: The more that wealthier white people retreated to the enclaves
prepared for them, the poorer the areas they were leaving became, and
the more justi?ed they felt in leaving. While the ?rst real wave of ?white
?ight? was from the cities to the suburbs, the more recent, camou?aged
version has been from the suburbs back into the expensive cities.
Of course, these upper- middle- class migrants were themselves
the targets of the mortgage industry, whose clever lending instru-
ments mirror World Bank policies for their exploitative potential. The
World Bank?s loans come with ?open markets? policies attached that
ultimately surrender indebted nations and their resources to the con-
trol of distant corporations. The mortgage banker, likewise, kindly
provides instruments that get a person into a home, then disappears
when the rates rise through the roof, having packaged and sold off the
borrower?s ballooning obligation to the highest bidder.

The bene?ts to society are pure mythology. Whether it?s Brook-
lynites convinced they are promoting multiculturalism or corpora-
tions intent on extending the bene?ts of the free market to all the
world?s souls, neither activity leads to broader participation in the
expansion of wealth?even when they?re working as they?re supposed
to. Contrary to most economists? expectations, both local and global
speculation only exacerbate wealth divisions. Wealthy parents send
their kids to private schools and let the public ones decay, while
wealthy nations export their environmental waste to the Third World
or, better, simply keep their factories there to begin with?and keep
their image at home as green as AstroTurf.

People I respect?my own mentors and teachers?tell me that this
is just the way things are. This is the real world of adults?not so very
far removed, we must remember, from the days when a neighboring
tribe might just wipe you out?killing your men with clubs and taking
your women. Be thankful for the civility we?ve got, keep your head
down, and try not to think too much about it. These cycles are built
into the economy; eventually, the markets will recover and things will
get back to normal?and normal isn?t so bad, really, if you look around
the world at the way other people are living. And you shouldn?t even
feel so guilty about that?after all, Google is doing some good things
and Bill Gates is giving a lot of money to kids in Africa.

Somehow, though, for many of us, that?s not enough. We are fast
approaching a societal norm where we?as nations, organizations, and
individuals?engage in behaviors that are destructive to our own and
everyone else?s welfare. The only corporate violations worth punish-
ing anymore are those against the shareholders. The ?criminal mind?
is now de?ned as anyone who breaks laws for a reason other than
money. The status quo is sel?shness, and the toxically wealthy are our
new heroes because only they seem capable of fully insulating them-
selves from the effects of their own actions.

Every day, we negotiate the slope to the best of our ability. Still, we
fail to measure up to the people we?d like to be, and succumb to the tilt
of the landscape.

Jennifer has lived in the same town in central Minnesota her whole
life. This year, diagnosed with a form of lupus, she began purchasing
medication through Wal-Mart instead of through Marcus, her local
druggist?who also happens to be her neighbor. Prescription drugs
aren?t on her health plan, and this is just an economic necessity.
Why can?t the druggist cut his neighbor a break? He?s trying, but
he?s selling at a mere hair above cost as it is. He just took out a loan
against the business to make expenses and his increased rent. The
downtown area he?s located in has been slated for redevelopment, and
only corporate chain stores appear to have deep enough pockets to pay
for storefront leases. It sounded like a good idea when Marcus sup-
ported it at the public hearing?but the description in the pamphlet
prepared by the real- estate developer (complete with a section on
how to compete more effectively with ?big box? stores like Wal- Mart)
hasn?t conformed to reality.

Marcus?s landlord doesn?t really have any choice in the matter.
He underwent costly renovations to conform to the new downtown
building code, and needs to pass those on to the businesses renting
from him. He took out a mortgage, too, which is slated to reset in just
a couple of months. If he doesn?t collect higher rents, he won?t make
payments.

Jennifer stopped going to PTA meetings because she?s embarrassed
to look Marcus in the face. As their friendship declines, so does her
guilt about helping put him out of business.

Across the country in New Jersey, Carla, a telephone associate for
one of the top three HMO plans in the United States, talks to people
like Jennifer every day. Carla is paid a salary as well as a monthly
bonus based on the number of claims she can ?retire? without pay-
ment. Without resorting to fraud, Carla is supposed to discourage
false claims by making all claims harder to register, in general. That?s
how Carla?s supervisor explained it to her when she asked, point-
blank, if she was supposed to mislead customers. She feels bad about
it, but Carla is now the principal breadwinner in her family, her hus-
band having lost a lot of his contracting work to the stalled market
for new homes. And, in the end, she is preventing fraud. How does
Carla sleep at night, knowing that she has spent her day persuading
people to pay for services for which they are actually covered? After
seeing a commercial on TV, she switched from Ambien to Lunesta.
One of the guys working on that very ad campaign, an old
co-worker of mine, ended up specializing in health- care
advertising because nobody was hiring in the environmental area back
in the ?90s. Besides, he told me, only half kidding, ?at least medical
advertising puts the consumer in charge of her own health care.? He?s
con?icted about pushing drugs on TV because he knows full well that
these ads encourage patients to pressure doctors to write prescriptions
that go against their better judgment. Still, Tom makes up for any
compromise of his values at work with a staunch advocacy of good
values at home. He recycles paper, glass, and metal, brought his kids
to see An Inconvenient Truth, and even uses a compost
heap in the backyard for household waste. Last year, though, he ?nally
broke down and bought an SUV. Why? ?Everybody else on the highway
is driving them,? he explained. ?It?s an automotive arms race.? If he
stayed in his Civic, he?d be putting them all at risk. ?You see the way
those people drive? I?m scared for my family.? As penance, at least until
gas prices went up, he began purchasing a few ?carbon offsets??a way
of donating money to environmental companies in compensation for
one?s own excess carbon emissions.

In a similar balancing act, a self- described ?holistic? parent in Man-
hattan spares her son the risks she associates with vaccinations for
childhood diseases. ?We still don?t know what?s in them,? she says,
?and if everyone else is vaccinated he won?t catch these things, any-
way.? She understands that the vaccines required for incoming school
pupils are really meant to quell epidemics; they are more for the
health of the ?herd? than for any individual child. She also believes
that mandatory vaccinations are more a result of pharmaceutical in-
dustry lobbying than any comprehensive medical studies. In order to
meet the ?philosophical exemption? requirements demanded by the
state, she managed to extract a letter from her rabbi. Meanwhile, in an
unacknowledged quid pro quo, she installed a phone line in the rabbi?s
name in the basement of her town house; he uses the bill to falsify res-
idence records and send his sons to the well- rated public elementary
school in her high- rent district instead of the 90 percent minority
school in his own. At least he can say he?s kept them in ?the public
system.?

Incapable of securing a legal or illegal zoning variance of this sort,
a college friend of mine, now a state school administrator in Brighton,
En gland, just made what he calls ?the hardest decision of my life,? to
send his own kids to a private Catholic day school. He doesn?t even
particularly want his kids to be indoctrinated into Catholicism, but
it?s the only alternative to the eroding government school he can af-
ford. He knows his withdrawal from public education only removes
three more ?good kids? and one potentially active parent from the
system, but doesn?t want his children to be ?sacri?ced on the altar? of
his good intentions.

So it?s not just a case of hip, hypergentri?ed Brooklynites succumb-
ing to market psychology, but people of all social classes making
choices that go against their better judgment because they believe
it?s really the only sensible way to act under the circumstances. It?s as
if the world itself were tilted, pushing us toward self- interested,
short- term decisions, made more in the manner of corporate share-
holders than members of a society. The more decisions we make in
this way, the more we contribute to the very conditions leading to this
awfully sloped landscape. In a dehumanizing and self-denying cycle,
we make too many choices that?all things being equal?we?d prefer
not to make.

But all things are not equal. These choices are not even occur-
ring in the real world. They are the false choices of an arti?cial
landscape?one in which our decision-making is as coerced as that of
a person getting mugged. Only we?ve forgotten that our choices are
being made under painstakingly manufactured duress. We think this
is just the way things are. The price of doing business.
Since when is life determined by that axiom?

Unquestionably but seemingly inexplicably, we have come to oper-
ate in a world where the market and its logic have insinuated them-
selves into every area of our lives. From erection to conception, school
admission to ?nding a spouse, there are products and professionals to
?ll in where family and community have failed us. Commercials en-
treat us to think and care for ourselves, but to do so by choosing a
corporation through which to exercise all this autonomy.

Sometimes it feels as if there?s just not enough air in the room?as
if there were a corporate agenda guiding all human activity. At a
moment?s notice, any dinner party can slide invisibly into a stock pro-
motion, a networking event, or an impromptu consultation?let me
pick your brain. Is this why I was invited in the ?rst place? Through
sponsored word- of-mouth known as ?buzz marketing,? our personal
social interactions become the promotional opportunities through
which brands strive to be cults and religions strive to become brands.
It goes deeper than that second Starbucks opening on the same
town?s Main Street or the radio ads for McDonald?s playing through
what used to be emergency speakers in our public school buses. It?s
not a matter of how early Christmas ads start each year, how many
people get trampled at Black Friday sales, or even the news report
blaming the fate of the entire economy on consumers? slow holiday
spending. It?s more a matter of not being able to tell the difference
between the ads and the content at all. It?s as if both were designed to
be that way. The line between ?ction and reality, friend and marketer,
community and shopping center, has gotten blurred. Was that a news
report, reality TV, or a sponsored segment?

This fundamental blurring of real life with its commercial coun-
terpart is not a mere question of aesthetics, however much we may
dislike mini- malls and superstores. It?s more of a nagging sense that
something has gone awry?something even more fundamentally
wrong than the credit crisis and its aftermath?yet we?re too im-
mersed in its effects to do anything about it, or even to see it. We are
deep in the thrall of a system that no one really likes, no one remem-
bers asking for, yet no one can escape. It just is. And as it begins to col-
lapse around us, we work to prop it up by any means necessary, so
incapable are we of imagining an alternative. The minute it seems as if
we can put our ?nger on what?s happening to us or how it came to be
this way, the insight disappears, drowned out by the more immedi-
ately pressing demands by everyone and everything on our attention.
What did they just say? What does that mean for my retirement ac-
count? Wait?my phone is vibrating.

Can the hermetically sealed food court in which we now subsist
even be beheld from within? Perhaps not in its totality?but its devel-
opment can be chronicled, and its effects can be parsed and under-
stood. Just as we once evolved from subjects into citizens, we have
now devolved from citizens into consumers. Our communities have
been reduced to af?nity groups, and any vestige of civic engagement
or neighborly goodwill has been replaced by self- interested goals
manufactured for us by our corporations and their PR ?rms. We?ve
surrendered true participation for the myth of consumer choice or,
even more pathetically, that of shareholder rights.

That?s why it has become fashionable, cathartic, and to some extent
useful for the defenders of civil society to rail against the corporations
that seem to have conquered our civilization. As searing new books
and documentaries about the crimes of corporations show us, the cor-
poration is itself a sociopathic entity, created for the purpose of gen-
erating wealth and expanding its reach by any means necessary. A
corporation has no use for ethics, except for their potential impact on
public relations and brand image. In fact, as many on the side of the
environment, labor, and the Left like to point out, corporate managers
can be sued for taking any action, however ethical, if it compromises
their ultimate ?duciary responsibility to share price.

As corporations gain ever more control over our economy, govern-
ment, and culture, it is only natural for us to blame them for the help-
lessness we now feel over the direction of our personal and collective
destinies. But it is both too easy and utterly futile to point the ?nger of
blame at corporations or the robber barons at their helms?not even
those handcuffed CEOs gracing the cover of the business section. Not
even mortgage brokers, credit- card executives, or the Fed. This state
of affairs isn?t being entirely orchestrated from the top of a glass
building by an ?lite group of bankers and businessmen, however much
everyone would like to think so?themselves included. And while the
growth of corporations and a preponderance of corporate activity
have allowed them to permeate most every aspect of our awareness
and activity, these entities are not solely responsible for the predica-
ment in which we have found ourselves.

Rather, it is corporatism itself: a logic we have internalized into our
very being, a lens through which we view the world around us, and an
ethos with which we justify our behaviors. Making matters worse, we
accept its dominance over us as preexisting?as a given circumstance
of the human condition. It just is.

But it isn?t.

Corporatism didn?t evolve naturally. The landscape on which we
are living?the operating system on which we are now running our
social software?was invented by people, sold to us as a better way of
life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self-
sustaining reality. It is a map that has replaced the territory.

Its basic laws were set in motion as far back as the Renaissance;
it was accelerated by the Industrial Age; and it was sold to us as a
better way of life by a determined generation of corporate leaders
who believed they had our best interests at heart and who ultimately
succeeded in their dream of controlling the masses from above.
We have succumbed to an ideology that has the same intellectual
underpinnings and assumptions about human nature as?dare we
say it?mid- twentieth-century fascism. Given how the word has been
misapplied to everyone from police of?cers to communists, we might
best refrain from resorting to what has become a feature of cheap
polemic. But in this case it?s accurate, and that we?re forced to dance
around this ?F word? today would certainly have pleased Goebbels
greatly.

The current situation resembles the managed capitalism of Mus-
solini?s Italy, in particular. It shares a common intellectual heritage
(in disappointed progressives who wanted to order society on a scien-
ti?c understanding of human nature), the same political alliance (the
collaboration of the state and the corporate sector), and some of the
same techniques for securing consent (through public relations and
propaganda). Above all, it shares with fascism the same deep suspi-
cion of free humans.

And, as with any absolutist narrative, calling attention to the inher-
ent injustice and destructiveness of the system is understood as an
attempt to undermine our collective welfare. The whistle-
blower is worse than just a spoilsport; he is an enemy of the people.
Unlike Europe?s fascist dictatorships, this state of affairs came
about rather bloodlessly?at least on the domestic front. Indeed, the
real lesson of the twentieth century is that the battle for total social
control would be waged and won not through war and overt repres-
sion, but through culture and commerce. Instead of depending on a
paternal dictator or nationalist ideology, today?s system of control de-
pends on a society fastidiously cultivated to see the corporation and its
logic as central to its welfare, value, and very identity.

That?s why it?s no longer Big Brother who should frighten us?
however much corporate lobbies still seek to vilify anything to do with
government beyond their own bailouts. Sure, democracy may be the
quaint artifact of an earlier era, but what has taken its place? Suspen-
sion of habeas corpus, surveillance of citizens, and the occasional re-
pression of voting notwithstanding, this mess is not the fault of a
particular administration or political party, but of a culture, economy,
and belief system that places market priorities above life itself. It?s not
the fault of a government or a corporation, the news media or the
entertainment industry, but the merging of all these entities into a
single, highly centralized authority with the ability to write laws, issue
money, and promote its expansion into our world.

Then, in a last cynical surrender to the logic of corporatism, we as-
sume the posture and behaviors of corporations in the hope of restor-
ing our lost agency and security. But the vehicles to which we gain
access in this way are always just retail facsimiles of the real ones. In-
stead of becoming true landowners we become mortgage holders.
Instead of guiding corporate activity we become shareholders. Instead
of directing the shape of public discourse we pay to blog. We can?t
compete against corporations on a playing ?eld that was created for
their bene?t alone.

This is the landscape of corporatism: a world not merely domi-
nated by corporations, but one inhabited by people who have internal-
ized corporate values as our own. And even now that corporations
appear to be waning in their power, they are dragging us down with
them; we seem utterly incapable of lifting ourselves out of their
depression.

We need to understand how this happened?how we came to live
for and through a business scheme. We must recount the story of how
life itself became corporatized, and ?gure out what?if anything?
we are to do about it.

While we will ?nd characters to blame for one thing or another,
most of corporatism?s architects have long since left the building?
and even they were usually acting with only their immediate, short-
term pro?ts in mind. Our object instead should be to understand the
process by which we were disconnected from the real world and why
we remain disconnected from it. This is our best hope of regaining
some relationship with terra ?rma again. Like recovering cult victims,
we have less to gain from blaming our seducers than from under-
standing our own participation in building and maintaining a corpo-
ratist society. Only then can we begin dismantling and replacing it
with something more livable and sustainable.