The Corporation: Reaction Paper

Law
One of the most important videos you will ever see is The Corporation, a documentary by
Zeitgeist Video. The film includes interviews with people like Milton Friedman and Noam
Chomsky and there are also interviews with many other CEOs, whistleblowers, business brokers
and even a corporate spy. This video will open your eyes–even if you think your eyes are
already open–to the evils that are being caused by corporations around the world. From the
film, it was stated that corporation means “business, company, or business community. Every
corporation has one purpose, and that is to provide value and profits to its shareholders while
continuing to grow. In fact, as you’ll see in The Corporation, that is by law the growth strategy
that every corporation must follow. By law, corporations must put the profits of shareholders
first and, in doing so, will necessarily export its problems to the public at large. In the video,
these are called “externalities,” and corporations are machines that will externalize the costs of
their endeavors to society and to the planet.
One of the interesting things about this is that the same is true of really any organization. It
doesn’t have to be a corporation. Organizations created by the federal government–which is
supposed to be created by the people–really have no purpose other than to survive and grow
and accumulate more power. We see the same thing in various nonprofit organizations, as well.
Many nonprofit disease organizations have no other purpose but to survive, grow, make more
money and have more influence.

For example, children are manipulated into buying the product. It’s not wrong to make things
for children. It’s just that they sell it directly to the children by airing commercials of children
that are so happy having that particular toy or what not. Corporations do that because they
need to thrive and survive. They need to grow and extend their influence. It’s not that the
people in that organization are evil; it’s that the organization itself has no other purpose than to
survive and extend its influence in the world.
These concepts are covered in quite a bit of detail in The Corporation. It is very well done, and it
has a lot of intelligent people talking about the subject and really explaining how corporations
get out of control. You’ll also see some rather shocking images in this documentary of some of
the effects of corporations getting out of control–environmental effects and cruelty to animals
in the dairy industry, for example.
You will see how they treat pigs, and you’ll see how they treat other human beings in
developing nations or underdeveloped nations. You will see how these corporations treat their
customers and how they treat the planet. Some of these images are quite shocking and
disturbing. Yet they demonstrate one thing–that corporations are capable of these great acts of
evil, even when human beings that run these corporations are not. And that’s fascinating
because it’s a form of mental illness, and this is explored in The Corporation, as well.

Reaction Essay: The Corporation

The documentary The Corporation, directed by Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar and produced
in 2004, although bias, opens many doors for discussion in regard to capitalism and the role of
corporations in our lives. I found the documentary to be presented professionally, and filled
with legitimate facts more so than extreme opinion. The documentary truly outlines the "all-
pervasive" role the corporation has taken as the "world's dominant institution".

The film opens with a critique on the media's most widely-used metaphor to describe certain
corporations as "a few bad apples". Among many newscasters quoted, George Bush is also
shown belittling unjust corporations to a few bad apples. The documentary takes this and runs,
so to speak, through exemplifying the short-sighted and belittling nature of this metaphor in
describing the majority of the corporate world and its monopolizing, exploitive capabilities and
tendencies. The film deems Dr. Frankenstein's creation to be analogous with the rise of
corporations. The documentary illustrates corporations to have started as something for the
"public good". The film discusses original chartered corporations with clear stipulations to avoid
the multitude of injustices apparent today. This background information creates the outline for
how far corporations have strayed from their role as a social betterment.

The film outlines the turning point to have occurred during the signing of the fourteenth
amendment, this amendment was pushed between 1890 and 1910 in the name of free slaves.
The amendment allots equal rights for individuals in terms of property, capital and the pursuit
of happiness. The film highlights the fact that corporations skewed the amendment to include
all corporations as individuals, thus allotting the rights of a person to a corporation. This in turn
takes the blame off of many individuals leading a corporation and instead views them as one
entity. The documentary quotes a white, male CEO of a company stating: "No soul to save, no
body to incarcerate" this illustrates the danger in deeming corporations as persons.
The film utilizes the film maker Michael Moore, he is first pictured stating that corporations
have "one incentive: make as much money as possible". Moore makes the interesting
distinction that there is no marker for "enough", how much money is "enough" for a billionaire
corporation?

The film places most emphasis on the "harms" of corporations, dividing segments into slides
illustrating particular harms. The first segment depicts corporate harms to workers in the form
of layoffs, union busts, factory fires, sweat shops etc. The film continues to outline harms to the
environment in the form of dangerous production methods, toxic waste, pollution, synthetic
chemicals, etc. The rise of synthetic chemicals is highlighted indicating this allows corporations
to make everything at a lower cost, which as stated by the film is the monetary bottom line for
all corporations. The documentary holds the corporate industry solely responsible for the
United States' cancer epidemic.

The film also focuses on harms to animals: habitat deconstruction, factory farming, and animal
experimentation which in my mind was the most influential part of the documentary: the
discussion on the company Monsanto and animal hormones. The documentary discusses data
showing the negative ramifications of the wide use of Monsanto products. The product Polisic is
shown advertised for a needed increase in farming income, followed by proof of infection
spreading to the milk we consume at home. Other hormones were discussed that in terms of
humans affect the curability of infections in that a resistance to antibiotics is built. The example
of staph infection was given specifically and our difficulty to maintain a cure due to resistance
to antibodies. Back to Monsanto, the documentary stated that persons in the U.S. were able to
sue the company $80million as compensation for health damages such as cancer caused by the
company's Agent Orange used in Vietnam. The film listed a multitude of companies sued for
over $1million in fines, however never mentioned in the press.

Most shocking in the discussion of Monsanto, is the film's coverage of a court case in which two
Fox news reporters stood up for their right to serve as a valid news source. Two workers are
depicted to have been assigned by Fox to change and hide their findings on the Monsanto
companies' injustices and their inability to speak the truth. Rather than a happy ending, after
hours of efforts, many letters, etc. the ex-workers received $425,000 as a settlement however
only later to be withdrawn with shocking reasoning. The case closed with the conclusion that it
is not technically illegal to produce false news. The workers lose and the corporation wins, thus
pus still remains in our milk and most people, save those fortunate to hear the uncensored
truth, will continue to drink it with smiles.