Corporate Power

At the end of the second world war, I was the director for overall effects of the United States strategicbombing survey - Usbus, as it was known. I led a large professional economic staff in assessment of theindustrial and military effects of the bombing of Germany. The strategic bombing of German industry,transportation and cities, was gravely disappointing. Attacks on factories that made such seemingly crucialcomponents as ball bearings, and even attacks on aircraft plants, were sadly useless. With plant and machineryrelocation and more determined management, fighter aircraft production actually increased in early 1944 aftermajor bombing. In the cities, the random cruelty and death inflicted from the sky had no appreciable effect onwar production or the war.

These findings were vigorously resisted by the Allied armed services - especially, needless to say, the aircommand, even though they were the work of the most capable scholars and were supported by German industryofficials and impeccable German statistics, as well as by the director of German arms production, AlbertSpeer. All our conclusions were cast aside. The air command's public and academic allies united to arrest myappointment to a Harvard professorship and succeeded in doing so for a year.

Nor is this all. The greatest military misadventure in American history until Iraq was the war in Vietnam.When I was sent there on a fact-finding mission in the early 60s, I had a full view of the military dominanceof foreign policy, a dominance that has now extended to the replacement of the presumed civilian authority. InIndia, where I was ambassador, in Washington, where I had access to President Kennedy, and in Saigon, Ideveloped a strongly negative view of the conflict. Later, I encouraged the anti-war campaign of EugeneMcCarthy in 1968. His candidacy was first announced in our house in Cambridge.

At this time the military establishment in Washington was in support of the war. Indeed, it was taken forgranted that both the armed services and the weapons industries should accept and endorse hostilities - DwightEisenhower's "military-industrial complex".

In 2003, close to half the total US government discretionary expenditure was used for military purposes. Alarge part was for weapons procurement or development. Nuclear-powered submarines run to billions of dollars,individual planes to tens of millions each.

Such expenditure is not the result of detached analysis. From the relevant industrial firms come proposeddesigns for new weapons, and to them are awarded production and profit. In an impressive flow of influence andcommand, the weapons industry accords valued employment, management pay and profit in its politicalconstituency, and indirectly it is a treasured source of political funds. The gratitude and the promise ofpolitical help go to Washington and to the defence budget. And to foreign policy or, as in Vietnam and Iraq,to war. That the private sector moves to a dominant public-sector role is apparent.

None will doubt that the modern corporation is a dominant force in the present-day economy. Once in the USthere were capitalists. Steel by Carnegie, oil by Rockefeller, tobacco by Duke, railroads variously and oftenincompetently controlled by the moneyed few. In its market position and political influence, modern corporatemanagement, unlike the capitalist, has public acceptance. A dominant role in the military establishment, inpublic finance and the environment is assumed. Other public authority is also taken for granted. Adversesocial flaws and their effect do, however, require attention.

One, as just observed, is the way the corporate power has shaped the public purpose to its own needs. Itordains that social success is more automobiles, more television sets, a greater volume of all other consumergoods - and more lethal weaponry. Negative social effects - pollution, destruction of the landscape, theunprotected health of the citizenry, the threat of military action and death - do not count as such.

The corporate appropriation of public initiative and authority is unpleasantly visible in its effect on theenvironment, and dangerous as regards military and foreign policy. Wars are a major threat to civilisedexistence, and a corporate commitment to weapons procurement and use nurtures this threat. It accordslegitimacy, and even heroic virtue, to devastation and death.

Power in the modern great corporation belongs to the management. The board of directors is an amiableentity, meeting with self-approval but fully subordinate to the real power of the managers. The relationshipresembles that of an honorary degree recipient to a member of a university faculty.

The myths of investor authority, the ritual meetings of directors and the annual stockholder meetingpersist, but no mentally viable observer of the modern corporation can escape the reality. Corporate powerlies with management - a bureaucracy in control of its task and its compensation. Rewards can verge onlarceny. On frequent recent occasions, it has been referred to as the corporate scandal.

As the corporate interest moves to power in what was the public sector, it serves the corporate interest.It is most clearly evident in the largest such movement, that of nominally private firms into the defenceestablishment. From this comes a primary influence on the military budget, on foreign policy, militarycommitment and, ultimately, military action. War. Although this is a normal and expected use of money and itspower, the full effect is disguised by almost all conventional expression.

Given its authority in the modern corporation it was natural that management would extend its role topolitics and to government. Once there was the public reach of capitalism; now it is that of corporatemanagement. In the US, corporate managers are in close alliance with the president, the vice-president and thesecretary of defence. Major corporate figures are also in senior positions elsewhere in the federalgovernment; one came from the bankrupt and thieving Enron to preside over the army.

Defence and weapons development are motivating forces in foreign policy. For some years, there has alsobeen recognised corporate control of the Treasury. And of environmental policy.

We cherish the progress in civilisation since biblical times and long before. But there is a needed and,indeed, accepted qualification. The US and Britain are in the bitter aftermath of a war in Iraq. We areaccepting programmed death for the young and random slaughter for men and women of all ages. So it was in thefirst and second world wars, and is still so in Iraq. Civilised life, as it is called, is a great white towercelebrating human achievements, but at the top there is permanently a large black cloud. Human progressdominated by unimaginable cruelty and death.

Civilisation has made great strides over the centuries in science, healthcare, the arts and most, if notall, economic well-being. But it has also given a privileged position to the development of weapons and thethreat and reality of war. Mass slaughter has become the ultimate civilised achievement.

The facts of war are inescapable - death and random cruelty, suspension of civilised values, a disorderedaftermath. Thus the human condition and prospect as now supremely evident. The economic and social problemshere described can, with thought and action, be addressed. So they have already been. War remains the decisivehuman failure.

Courtesy, Znet