10

Love in Action: Resistance and Rebuilding

“It is a complex journey from consciousness to the concrete politics of empowerment, and one which is, by definition, full of contradictions and detours. It is perhaps most important, individually and collectively, simply to stay on the right road.”

Patricia Hill Collins[1]

“I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can.”

Edward Everett Hale

We are not morally powerless in facing the economic and ecological violence that inundates our lives. To the contrary, as “I’s” that are “we’s” spanning the globe, and as “we’s” attentive to the beckoning of God whose love will bring abundant life for all, we are replete with moral power. That divine love breathes in us, urging us to dedicate intelligence, creativity, energy, political savvy, skill, and the song or our souls toward a world in which all people and all of creation may flourish. That love beckons us to renounce economic and ecological violence and to craft more moral economic policies and practices.

We now step into a landscape of world-changing practices and public policies that already are resculpting our world. My aim is not to be exhaustive but to illustrate in such a way that the most important point emerges clearly. It is that we are not bound to “the way things are.” We, ordinary people of the Global North, can live toward justice and sustainability. We can resist being “uncreators” and exploiters.

Many of the goals suggested in chapter 9 may seem nearly impossible. One purpose of this book is to argue that they are not. Therefore, it behooves us to spend time with one goal that appears, in the public consciousness, to be far from the realm of the possible. It is the goal of increased citizen control over large global business corporations. In my years of teaching and public speaking, I have found a nearly ubiquitous assumption that transnational corporate power is beyond common citizens’ power to rein in. To the contrary, as this chapter demonstrates, policies and practices aimed at increasing democratic power in relationship to global corporations are currently at work. They are playing out in households, civil society organizations, governments, and even some corporations.

Unaccountable corporate power plays a role in all of the “life stories” recounted herein. Significant movement toward this goal would help to transform each situation of economic and ecological violence portrayed in these stories. Moreover, making headway in increasing public power over the transnational corporation would open doors toward most of the other aforementioned goals.

Crucial Clarification

I want to be clear. The point of this goal is not that all large corporations do flagrantly bad things (environmental destruction, child labor, inadequate wages, and so on). Nor is the point that large corporations are solely to blame for the environmental and social damage done by our economic practices. This is not true. The primary point of this goal is otherwise.

It is to curtail the concentration of power in the hands of a tiny segment of humankind, the high-level leadership of large corporations. The world economy—which can determine the fate of ecosystems and can determine who has and does not have access to water, seeds, food, jobs, and other means of survival—should not be so heavily influenced by so few people.

This goal serves an additional purpose. By lessening the control that the finance industry has over business, progress toward this goal would enable small and medium-size business to thrive without doing social and ecological damage. The demands of Wall Street limit the power of business leadership to choose moral options. In order to maintain a financially competitive edge and a standing in the stock market, business corporations must take actions that counter the aims of sustainability and justice, in the long-term if not the short. From a moral perspective, finance should not have that degree of control over business.

Good and evil are always intertwined in human life. No person, group, or entity composed of human beings is singularly good or singularly evil. Moreover, as we have noted already, morality is often ambiguous. An uncompromisable guideline in the effort to discern what we, as people and societies, are to do and be is that no persons or groups may be demonized.

Six “Gateways” Introduced

Imagine a world in which global investment firms, mortgage markets, and other globally operating corporations do not have the “freedom” to pursue self-interest regardless of the cost to millions of human beings and their homes, jobs, health, food and water supplies, and communities. The goal of curtailing unaccountable corporate power intends to bring that image into the realm of the real. This goal has a companion goal among those noted in the previous chapter. It is to “control and regulate global financial markets.” These two goals are the antithesis of advanced global capitalism. Its central tenet is the “freedom” of corporations and capital to pursue their interests unencumbered by public accountability.

A vibrant, vast, and highly diverse global movement is oriented around these goals. Active the world over, its composition spans the fields of human endeavor and expertise. This movement includes peasants and other farmers, scientists, lawyers, landless and homeless people, religious communities, small businesswomen/businessmen, artists, students, and others. They work not as autonomous individuals but as parts of networks.

These actors, while diverse in race/ethnicity, nationality, social class, caste, religion, gender, age, political stance, and more, share three conclusions. The first is that the drive to maximize profit (as opposed to simply make a profit) is the problem. It leads to exploitation of people and environmental devastation. Secondly, corporate and finance control of the global economy tends to hurt small farmers, low-level workers, indigenous peoples, impoverished people, women, and other sectors of society who tend to be marginalized. There are many exceptions to this rule in people who have benefited from the global economy as we know it. However, the damage to the many vastly outweighs the benefits to a relative few. Finally, “there are goals more important than efficiency, growth, and getting the cheapest goods to the consumer or the most profit to the seller.”[2]

Here I offer a simple schema that should help ordinary people establish public policies and practices that rein in the power and negative impact of large corporations. Equally important, the examples herein should spur imagining other such policies and practices. The schema entails six “gateways” for redressing the power imbalance between global corporations on the one hand and people and their governments on the other.[3]

In the context of this book and its inquiry into the moral norm of neighbor-love, the reason for pursuing these goals takes theological form. “We,” as all people, are called to love neighbor as self and to nurture Earth’s well-being. Yet powerful corporate structures are shaping our relationships with neighbors around the globe and with the Earth. By participation in those structures (as consumers, employees, investors, voters or nonvoters, silent bystanders) we do great damage to people whom we are called to love. Christian traditions throughout history have claimed that where the “powers that be” require people to defy God’s call, then allegiance to God takes precedence; we are to obey God rather than other powers. To do otherwise is to worship other gods.[4] The goal of curtailing unaccountable corporate power may be articulated theologically. It is to reduce the power of large global corporations and finance agencies to determine our relationship with neighbors and the Earth and, thereby, our allegiance to God.

Following are six “gateways” to gaining more public power in relationship to corporate power in order to protect workers, communities, and marginalized sectors in them, and ecosystems:

  1. Small-scale business alternatives with emphasis on the local and regional, and on reducing consumption.
  2. Moral culture within the business corporation.
  3. Citizen action / consumer pressure to achieve “voluntary” constraints on corporate conduct.
  4. Citizens using governments to achieve publicly mandated (regulatory or legislative) constraints on corporate conduct, and limitations on the privatization and marketing of some essential goods (for example, water, seeds, and HIV/AIDS drugs).
  5. Citizen action to rescind corporate personhood and the first amendment rights of the “natural person” that personhood grants to the corporation.
  6. Organizing to expel or prohibit the establishment of unwanted corporations.

These approaches are complementary. Each has strengths and weaknesses. None of these gateways is adequate without the others; they work in concert.

The first gateway is the turn to local and small- or medium-scale business and finance as an alternative to global corporate business and finance institutions. The second and third gateways—widely known as “corporate social responsibility” (CSR)—entail voluntary change in corporate behavior.[5] The next, in contrast, seeks legally mandated constraints and often is called “corporate social accountability,” because it renders corporations accountable to laws and regulations. The fifth seeks constitutional change in the rights of the corporation, tackling the mechanisms that have enabled its accumulation of power. The final gateway prohibits corporate activity where the citizenry finds it destructive to human or environmental well-being.

We consider each in turn, pausing along the way to compare voluntary corporate change with legally mandated change. The intent is to illustrate: (1) the nature of each gateway, (2) its viability, (3) the interplay of different kinds of action within each gateway, and (4) the interchange between individual behavioral change and change at the macro level. The emerging picture should reveal possibilities for change that are not evident when only one or two forms of action are viewed apart from the others.

All six gateways are composed of both policies and practices. The proposed practices pertain to “us,” overconsumers who also are U.S. citizens. The central message of this schema as a whole bears repeating: We, you and I, are not powerless. As parts of networks of committed people—including and informed by those who suffer the consequences of the systems that enable life as we live it—we can move mountains.

Before looking more closely at each of the six gateways, we pause for a sequel to the story of “International Hazardous Waste.” In this story, the gateways to change in corporate power and behavior appear.

**********************************

A Life Story Revisited

International Hazardous Waste Revisited

This story in chapter 2 left Alma Bandalan and her family immersed in highly toxic scrap waste, and left Jason enjoying a new iPod, unaware that his recycled iPod may have ended up in just such a toxic site.

A hemisphere away from the Bandalan family and the recycling plant on Mactan Island, Jason made his way to class. He drank a fruit smoothie concocted that morning in his new blender and strode to the beat of a favorite song playing from his new iPod. His first class was Environmental Justice: Analysis of Contemporary Issues. Jason enjoyed this class. The professor was engaging, the assignments were usually a bit unorthodox, and several of his friends were taking the class.

True to form, Professor Robbins announced an interesting new assignment. “Each group will select a contemporary issue related to environmental justice and illustrate some current actions that address it. Your challenge is to demonstrate all six of the ‘gateways’ to curtailing the power of large business corporations and holding them accountable for their public impact, presented in last week’s lecture.”

Jason thought about some of the approaches that Dr. Robbins had presented earlier: changes in the moral culture of the corporation itself, voluntary constraints, small-scale or local alternatives, etc. Recalling his broken blender and iPod, and all the appliances his mom was currently discarding in her kitchen renovation, he knew of an idea to pitch to his group.

“Electronic waste, or hazardous waste,” Jason stated in the study lounge that night. “We can use the six gateways to illustrate approaches to the problem of transferring all these electronic products into the developing world for ‘recycling.’” No one objected, and before long textbooks, class notes and laptops were out as the four friends began searching for examples.

“Okay, here’s a big one,” said Yasmin, scanning her textbook. “The Basel Ban Amendment. It looks like there was a huge conference in 1995 around the transport, tracking, and minimization of hazardous waste in Basel, Switzerland. The attending countries were trying to address the movement of hazardous waste into developing countries, saying that it could only be imported with ‘prior informed consent’ by the receiving nation. But after the convention some countries and environmental groups said it didn’t really go far enough and they proposed this Basil Ban Amendment.”

“Yeah, it says here that Denmark and many nations of the Global North adopted this amendment,” said Jordan, who had found the same page in the textbook and was reading ahead. “It bans the export of hazardous waste, including recycling, from OECD countries to developing countries. It was controversial, of course, and the vote seems to have been messy. It looks like it was technically blocked by some of the wealthier nations and industries, but it’s still considered ‘morally binding’ by the signatories.” Jordan was involved in several campus activism clubs and was more familiar with this terrain than the rest of the group.

“But that didn’t stop some countries from moving ahead,” said Jason, who was reading about the Basel Convention online. “Several EU countries have made this amendment legally binding under their own countries’ laws, and called it the Waste Shipment Regulation (EWSR). Other countries launched more informal approaches to ensure the sound management of hazardous wastes when they are moved to developing countries. And also, several African nations made a treaty called the Bamako Convention that prohibits importing any hazardous waste.”

“So this would probably apply to gateways 3 and 4, right?” asked Cortney, a business major and good friend of Jason’s. “In some cases there are mandatory legislative restraints imposed by the Basel Convention, and then the Amendment invites voluntary self-regulation, or country-specific laws.” The group agreed and kept searching.

“There seem to be a decent number of organizations working on the fourth gateway—publicly mandated limitations on corporate conduct,” said Jordan. “I keep coming across examples of activist groups across the globe working for national policy reform around transboundary dumping, trying to pass laws that ban e-waste from landfills, establishing recycling programs at home, and targeting the electronics industry itself.” He looked up. “This is probably the area in which citizens in industrialized nations can really join forces with people in poorer countries. We can support their protests to block transboundary dumping and pass legislation that changes corporate practices.”

“But on the other hand, businesses are more likely to respond to an economic incentive than a rule,” said Cortney. “I’m interested in the third gateway, the voluntary limitations on corporate conduct or self-regulation. Any ideas?” The other three scanned books and computer screens for a moment.

“Some electronics companies, such as Apple, Dell, and Sony have eliminated or at least reduced a carcinogenic flame-retardant chemical called PBDE,” said Jason. “And Apple will recycle your old laptop in the United States if you buy a new one through them. But that’s not really ideal—it just perpetuates the consumer cycle.” He suddenly thought about the laptop he was currently using, the third one he had ever owned, and wondered where the old ones were at this moment.

“Well, since so many citizens in wealthier nations consume electronics, I think the primary responsibility lies here at the production and consumption levels,” Jordan explained. “Our recycling club here at school has been talking about all the computers that end up discarded on this campus and what we can do about it. They’re thinking of partnering with the Grassroots Recycling Network and their ‘computer take-back campaign’—it asks computer producers to claim responsibility for the products at the end of their lifespan.” Jordan described the concept of “zero waste”—redesigning products so that every part can be reused or composted, and reclaiming the waste that’s already out there.

“The fifth gateway is tricky,” Cortney observed. “Getting rid of ‘corporate personhood’ and corporations’ constitutional rights as ‘persons’ seems important, but hard to do.”

“Well here’s a group called Network of Spiritual Progressives that’s organizing to do just that,” offered Yasmin as she checked out the organization’s website. “And here’s another, Move to Amend. They have local groups all around the country. Hey, both of them are working on that Supreme Court decision that we discussed in class.”

“What ruling?” Jordan asked. “Well if you came to class on time once in a while, you might know,” quipped Cortney. “It’s the ruling that corporations can spend as much as they want on federal elections because they’re legally ‘persons,’ and in this country people have freedom of speech under the First Amendment,” she explained. “Anyway, the Network of Spiritual Progressives really explains the need to reform corporations here on their website, and it totally relates to our project.”

Yasmin paused. “For the first gateway,” she mused, “I don’t need the Internet. I can just use my cousin as an example. She and her family have a system in their neighborhood, like a little co-op, where they share household goods including electronics. They decided about a year ago that they didn’t need all the gadgets and appliances that they have, and started sharing with their neighbors: DVD players, blenders, lawn mowers, etc. They all live on the same block so it’s pretty convenient, and one guy is really handy with electronics, so he fixes things when they break. I don’t think they’ve bought any new electronics this whole year. That’s definitely one way to address the issue—stop hazardous waste at the source. If we don’t buy as many electronics, there’s less waste to deal with at the end.”

“Here’s an example of gateway six, prohibiting the establishment of unwanted corporations or expelling them,” said Jordan. He read from the class textbook. Citizens in Malaysia protested so vehemently to the construction of a massive e-waste processing plant by Citiraya Industries Inc. that the State rejected the proposal, even though their own Department of the Environment approved the Environmental Impact Assessment. And get this,” he read on, “it pertains to us: ‘Environmental Justice activists from several nations helped to locate resource persons to provide expert input on the environmental impact statement and provided comments on the reality of the dirty technology.’ [6] I sure hope some of those groups were from the United States.” “Well, doing something like that would be a great senior project for environmental science majors,” Jason noted, looking at Yasmin, a junior who was majoring in just that.

“We haven’t found many specifics for the second gateway,” observed Jason.

“I can think of one,” said Cortney suddenly. “Me.”

“Huh?” puzzled Jordan.

“Well,” said Cortney, “right here in the business school, one of my professors, Dr. Amity, has convinced me that business has a responsibility for its environmental and social impacts, as well as its financial viability. It’s called the ‘triple bottom line.’ And she’s been teaching us about this thing called ‘cradle-to-cradle,’ the idea that production processes can be efficient and waste free—like the way nature cycles nutrients. For example, we read about some companies that offer electronics take-back programs, where the producer takes back the product at the end of its life and reuses as many parts as possible. It’s not perfect but it helps, and often makes good business sense as well. After studying with Dr. Amity and taking this class, I can tell you that when I’m in management, I’m definitely not going to be exporting dangerous materials regardless of how much money it could save my company! People are talking this way more and more in my business classes. It makes me feel hopeful about the future.”

The four students began to consolidate the information they had gathered and type up a formal presentation, eager to share their knowledge with the rest of the class.

*********************************

Gateway 1: Small-Scale Local and Regional Alternatives

It may be difficult to imagine a world in which globe-spanning investment firms, banks, and other corporations do not shape our lives. However, alternative forms of banking, saving, credit, production, and other business are operating and have been for decades. Two long-term advocates of “the new economy,” John Cavanaugh and Jerry Mander, write:

Transition to more economically democratic structures becomes easier to visualize once we recognize that many human-scale, locally-owned enterprises already exist . . .

There are very few of our daily needs that cannot be met by small and medium-sized enterprises operating within a market economy of a kind—but one that is characterized by a multitude of small players rather than a handful of giant, absentee owners. And all of them would operate without the benefits of stock market investing, limited liability, or corporate personhood, so crucial to large corporations.

From the point of view of sustainability and democracy, there is no reason why giant transnational corporations are needed to run hamburger stands, produce clothing and toys, publish books and magazines, grow and process and distribute food, make the goods we need, or provide most of the things that contribute to a satisfying existence.[7]

Many people counter corporate power by withdrawing their economic activity as much as possible from enormous corporations and, instead, doing business with small-scale local or regional business. Likewise they shift their banking and investing from global financial corporations to community-based banks and finance. This is the epitome of “resistance and rebuilding,” the two streams of action toward social change.

This trajectory has a long and rich history, especially in Europe.[8] In the United States, the last decade and a half has seen this movement flourish.[9] Many people involved in it refer to these small and medium-scale business alternatives and the values they demonstrate as the “new economy.” Others use the terms “economic democracy,” “localizing the economy,” or “alternative economy.” It is far more than a shift in size of business. It also is a shift in purpose of economic life, a move from profit alone to also building community and community well-being.

Much has been written about the “new economy.”[10] What follows is a glimpse adequate to demonstrate the crucial role of alternative economic endeavors and their widespread and vibrant nature. Noted too are two problems that could inhibit the movement’s growth.

The vignettes throughout this book illustrate many streams of this movement. They include coalitions of small independent business, community-supported agriculture, fair trade/alternative-trade networks, consumer and producer cooperatives, community land trusts, partnerships, community-based banking, and local credit unions. Among these are both new and longstanding endeavors. New initiatives are sprouting up constantly and jubilantly, with astounding confidence in their ability to bear the fruits of equity, participatory power, and ecological sustainability.

One prime and broad-based example is BALLE, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. This network of socially responsible businesses is committed to building bottom-up, community-oriented “local living economies” in which “economic power resides locally to the greatest extent possible, sustaining vibrant, livable communities and healthy ecosystems in the process.”[11] BALLE assembles coalitions of community leaders and government officials, social innovators, local and independent business leaders, and economic development professionals who work together to build these “local living economies.” Employers and profit-makers are first and foremost neighbors and community-builders. This kind of economy serves as a powerful challenge to overly concentrated power. It is a significant step toward economic democracy.[12]

The new economy includes locally owned banks that emphasize the triple bottom line—financial, social, and environmental goals. Local deposits tend to support businesses and projects in the community, including such things as renewable energy, low-income housing, and green building. Most community banks shun the speculative investment that is so central to the banking industry as we know it.

The Fair Trade movement, one aspect of “the new economy,” aims at supporting small-scale producers, and ensuring fair wages and working conditions. Initially known as “Alternative Trade Organizations,” these networks emerged first in Europe in the 1960s, and spread to the United States within a decade, becoming more commonly known as fair trade. The rapidly growing movement now boasts federations or networks in many countries.

What qualifies a business as “alternative” or as part of the “new economy movement”? The response must be contextual, varied by industry and locale as well as by mindset and theoretical stance. There is no normative prototype and the movement is marked by diversity and creativity, but across the board there seems to be a general consensus that size, ownership/control, and accountability are primary factors.

“Size” refers to small-scale (or small- and medium-scale), but what constitutes small or medium is understood variously. The European Commission defines “small and medium business” as “those with less than 250 employees, annual sales under $35 million, and total assets under $24 million. Even this may seem too large for some, but not by the standards of mega-corporations; total sales of the Forbes Global 500 list of companies for 2002 ranges from a low of $4.9 billion to Citigroup’s $1,051 billion in assets. Still, the category of small and medium can include substantial enough enterprises to be able to produce most essential goods and services efficiently.”[13] To others, “small scale” is much smaller.[14] Most proponents, I believe, would agree that small scale means not large enough to monopolize the market, determine consumer choice on a widespread basis, shape political agendas or international treaties, displace smaller thriving businesses, or “manipulate the symbols of personal identity through mass advertising.”[15]

Community-based ownership and control is another key standard. Like size, its interpretations are many, and a variety of ownership and control structures mark the movement.[16] Broadly speaking, in an alternative business, ownership is not in the hands of people thousands of miles away who are largely unaware of or unaffected by the harmful consequences of a company’s actions (loss of water supplies, closure of plants, outsourcing, foreclosures, toxifying the environment, etc.). Rather, control is largely in the hands of or accountable to people who stand to bear the consequences of the company’s decisions.[17] Control shifts from shareholders to stakeholders (of which shareholders may be one element).

The “new economy” and alternative business does not mean a full rejection of global business connections or corporations. That idea would be untenable. It does mean prioritizing local business and consumption, and turning to global business where the local or regional cannot suffice. Regarding banking and finance, German theologian Ulrich Duchrow attests, “[S]mall-scale alternatives are not in a position to be able to transform the entire financial system into a life-enhancing system, but they are starting the process of removing money from a cycle based on wealth accumulation.”[18]

Some voices argue that practicing fair trade and small-scale or local business will not change the world. This effort, they aver, just leaves prevailing power structures in place. People therefore ought not waste time and energy on them but rather invest their energies in the other gateways that seek structural change or at least direct corporate change. Here emerges another version of the “paradox of practice.” Indeed, practicing alternatives will not in itself bring about just and sustainable business as the norm. Yet, doing so is crucial. It moves us toward more viable, accountable, and ecologically healthy economies on a large scale. These alternatives signal that a different way is possible.

Claiming that developing small-scale or local alternatives is “the” singular solution to excessive corporate power is equally problematic. Where this notion leads people away from work for change on a larger scale, it too is a dangerous assumption. The other gateways are necessary complements to bring about structural change. Here again we see the necessary interplay between personal practices (in this case, supporting businesses in the “new economy”) and public policy advocacy, community education, and other efforts to change structures of society.

Choosing small-scale, locally or regionally based alternatives to the corporate- and finance-driven economy is a vital gateway along the road to freedom from being forced by economic systems into exploitative relationships with Earth and with neighbors far and near. The power of this move is more than it seems. Birthing and nurturing alternatives proves that they are possible. It shatters the façade of inevitability that enshrouds advanced global capitalism. This move spawns hope for a different future by breaking into it.

Gateway 2: Moral Culture Within

A second impetus for corporate constraints comes from within corporate leadership itself. In some cases the moral consciousness of corporate managers and executives leads to substantive action toward fair wages, safe working conditions, reduced carbon emissions, and other such steps toward ecological and economic justice. Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface, Inc., discussed in chapter 7, is a prime example. I refer to this as the “moral culture within the corporation.”

Enter here the role of society’s morally formative influence. Business schools could play a decisive role in reshaping the forms and roles of business in the world. Imagine business schools teaching Paul Hawken’s call for “a system of commerce and production where each and every act is ecologically sustainable and restorative.”[19] Educators from preschool through graduate school, families, faith communities, and other mentors of the young may be the root of such decisions.

Not long ago, an Islamic student who was a graduating senior in my ethics course wrote his paper on a serious moral dilemma that he faced. His major was business and, as a very accomplished student, he had been offered more than one excellent well-paid position in banking. These positions would put him in line for significant advancement. His dilemma was this: according to his scripture, the Koran, charging interest is not acceptable. The student used his ethics paper to deliberate this decision. His conclusion was not to accept any of the banking positions offered to him. Granted, this decision did not change the banking industry, but I have little doubt that this young man—whether he enters some other aspect of the corporate world or not—will be capable of difficult moral decisions that could have sweeping significance. (I recently met this young man again, at a lunch with Cornel West and Tavis Smiley, held for leaders in anti-poverty work in the Seattle area. This former student has become a highly successful leader in the nonprofit world.)

Gateway 3: Voluntary Constraints: Corporate Social Responsibility

A third approach to limiting corporate power for the sake of the widespread good is widely applauded within the corporate world. In some cases this approach serves the ends of equity and sustainability. In many others it betrays those ends.

“Voluntary constraints” designates changes in corporate behavior that are not legislated and are monitored by the corporations or their designees. These changes may be initiated from within, but more commonly are achieved through citizen/consumer pressure. For at least four decades, concerned citizens of the Global North and South have engaged in national and transnational citizen action networks to constrain corporate practices considered detrimental to human or other well-being.[20] These citizen alliances catalyze public pressure by raising public awareness.[21] Consumer boycotts and shareholder actions are a primary tool. The international campaign against sweatshops is a recent example.

Historically, faith communities, working with other organizations of civil society, have played a leadership role. Foremost has been the World Council of Churches, one of the early voices to critique the dangers presented by what were then known as transnational corporations (TNCs) to workers and other vulnerable people of the Global South. The Sisters of Loretto, an order of Catholic women religious, are credited with beginning the movement of shareholder activism in the United States. In the 1960s they brought public attention to the environmental and labor problems with strip mining in Appalachia by initiating shareholder resolutions against the Blue Diamond Coal Company.

Citizen and consumer pressure for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has born significant fruits. They include fair trade networks and companies, green buildings, more energy-efficient business operations, safer working conditions, environmentally friendly products, and much more. Consumer boycotts have improved worker conditions in Hanes factories of El Salvador and Guatemala, Gap factories in El Salvador, carpet production in South Asia, and Nike’s child labor sites in Vietnam. Voluntary “codes of conduct” are proliferating.[22]

It is becoming normative for business corporations to claim “corporate social responsibility” grounded in moral consciousness, and to depict that responsibility through public relations. Their assertion is that with this kind of moral consciousness, mandatory regulation (accountability) is not necessary. “The growing popularity of these programs is undeniable,” conclude Richard Morgenstern and William Pizer, in their study of corporate voluntary environmental programs.[23]

One burning question, of course, is whether voluntary self-regulation actually works. Are codes of conduct established, monitored, enforced, and assessed by the corporations themselves likely to have adequate impact? More pointedly, “can such programs serve as a substitute for mandatory requirements or should only modest gains be expected from these [voluntary] efforts?”[24] The question has led the CSR movement to experiment with varied certification and monitoring schemas aimed at external third-party certification by NGOs not affiliated with the company in question, to replace corporate self-monitoring. The question is hotly contested to say the least.[25]

The corporate world attests, “yes”: If consumer initiative, through boycotts, shareholder action, and responsible purchasing, makes social or environmental responsibility good for the bottom line, then corporations will do so. Advocates assert that a public ethos is developing that encourages multiple forms of corporate social responsibility. The Motorola Company declares, “We’re on the threshold of a new era in which all of us—corporations, individuals, government, and other organizations—can join together to cooperate on the healing of our earth. . . . Our challenge for the new millennium is to learn how to live in harmony with the earth.”[26] McDonald’s Social Responsibility Report for 2003 notes, “Social Responsibility . . . has always been a part of who we are and will continue to be the way McDonald’s does business.”[27] According to Ford Motor Company, “A great company . . . offers excellent products and services but also strives to make the world a better place.”[28] The Kellogg company notes that “we hold ourselves accountable for our social responsibility.”[29]

Not surprisingly, prominent leaders in corporate social responsibility among relatively smaller corporations express similar sentiments. Jeffrey Hollender, founder of the American Sustainable Business Council and member of the board of directors of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, avers that CSR is “the future of business. It’s what companies have to do to survive and prosper in a world where more and more of their behavior is under a microscope.”[30]

Other analysts and concerned citizens argue that while voluntary self-regulation serves some good purposes, it cannot substitute for laws. History, these voices argue, illustrates the importance of law to constrain corporate practice on behalf of the common good. Starting in the late 1900s, the United States saw a trend of corporate mandatory regulation to protect against monopolies, price-fixing, child labor, and other labor abuses. The eight-hour work week and the right to unionize were established and child labor was banned. The mid-1960s saw further legislation to protect against occupational hazards, environmental dangers, unsafe consumer products, and so on. Legally mandated constraints are known in some circles as “corporate social accountability.”

The deregulation agenda of the mid-1970s on, led by the U.S. but quickly spreading elsewhere, reversed that trend. The emphasis quickly shifted away from public legal accountability to self-regulation.[31] Within the United States, voluntary self-regulation or “corporate social responsibility” replaced the prior emphasis on external, legally binding regulation that ensured a degree of corporate accountability to the broader society.[32]

Danger looms where claims to corporate social responsibility mask the opposite. Illustrations abound. Some corporate signatories of the UN Global Compact (the voluntary code of conduct launched in 2000) turned the Compact into a public relations tool by reporting on and exhibiting their best practices while retaining largely socially and environmentally degrading practices.[33] The World Business Council on Sustainable Development issued a “manifesto” titled “From Challenge to Opportunity,” promising to “seek greater synergy between our goals and those of the society we serve.” This engaging document celebrates the “role of business” in addressing pressing social issues such as poverty and the environment. Co-chaired by BP’s Chief Executive for “Refining and Marketing,” the document emphasizes the “imperative” that business “operate within the carrying capacity of the earth.” Among companies creating “the most strategic options” to “embrace a low-carbon world,” the manifesto notes BP, Shell, and ChevronTexaco. One marvels at the contradictions between this statement and BP’s role in the Gulf oil spill or Shell’s role in the Niger Delta. Cargill Dow is credited for its “commitment to ‘eco-efficiency.’” Not mentioned is the role of Cargill in hundreds of thousands of small farmers going out of business and losing their livelihood. (This, along with other mitigating economic conditions as a result of unfettered globalization, has driven thousands of farmers in India to suicide, as seen in chapter 7’s story of Ravi.)

Advocates of mandatory constraints argue that voluntary self-regulation, though it may appear effective, is in fact sorely inadequate and, at times, dangerously deceptive. Their reasons are many.

A Brookings Institute study of “market forces that encourage and limit the practice of corporate social responsibility” concludes that although the CSR movement does “promote social and environmental innovation by business,” the reality that it is voluntary and market-driven means that “companies will engage in CSR only to the extent that it makes business sense for them to do so. . . . Unlike government regulation, it [CSR] cannot force companies to make unprofitable but socially beneficial decisions,” which limits CSR’s functional agency.[37]

Another set of case studies on corporate voluntary environmental programs concludes that: “voluntary programs can affect behavior and offer environmental gains but in a limited way. . . . [N]one of the case study authors found truly convincing evidence of dramatic environmental improvements . . . we find it hard to argue for voluntary programs where there is a clear desire for major changes in behavior.”[38] Yet the corporate world continues to promote the adequacy of self-regulation.

Questionable effectiveness is not the only problem. Another is the matter of power imbalance discussed throughout this text.[39] Economic and ecological violence are rooted in asymmetrical power relationships. Voluntary self-regulation as a substitute for publicly mandated regulation maintains power in the hands of an infinitesimally small elite subset, corporate management, and out of the hands of the demos. Power here is no small thing; we are talking about the ability to decide who will control and use the world’s water, food supplies, and lands. These may be the means of survival of existing communities who stand to lose them for the sake of corporate profits. “A 1996 study of campaigns [for social responsibility] conducted by European NGOs on transnational corporations . . . cautioned: ‘The system of voluntary codes of conduct needs to be questioned from a long-term perspective, since it gives in to the TNCs’ strategy to keep control of TNCs out of public/governmental hands.’”[40] Voluntary self-monitored constraint on corporate behavior is a problem to the extent that it is seen as a substitute for democratic control aimed at protecting the widespread good or vulnerable populations through publicly mandated requirements.

Environmental leader Bill McKibben sums up well the dangers of limited effectiveness and asymmetrical power:

Without public policy established by the people through their governance structures “Will business save the world?” turns out to be the wrong question. The right question is “How can we structure the world so that businesses play their part in saving it?” And the answer to that, inevitably, is politics. Some of it is the politics of public awareness. . . . But mostly we need politics of a more straightforward, and entirely unglamorous, variety. If you want energy companies to rearrange their portfolios so that way more money goes to renewables and way less to hydrocarbons, the best way forward is not to appeal to the CEO’s conscience—it’s to pass laws to push him in the right direction. This is what has happened in Europe, where regulators told car manufacturers . . . to cut vehicles’ greenhouse emissions by 25 percent—or else.[41]

I tend to agree, and also see a place for voluntary corporate social responsibility if the following conditions were upheld: (1) compliance standards were established with valid participation of the more vulnerable stakeholders, (2) monitoring and certification were by a third party having no vested interests in the corporation or industry in question, (3) workers who testify against a company were in fact protected from repercussions, (4) rhetorical claims to mitigate climate change and other environmental damage were tested for veracity, and (5) the weaknesses and dangers of voluntary mechanisms noted above were born in mind.

Voluntary self-regulation is dangerous where it leads the public to believe that a company is having predominantly positive social and environmental impact when it is not. That is, the move to environmental or social responsibility may represent a tiny fraction of the company’s activity, and may be outweighed heavily by the company’s negative impacts. Yet the company’s marketing may portray a singularly beneficial impact and distract public attention from the negative. Walmart’s decision to sell organic produce, for example, is problematic to the extent that it leads people to assume that Walmart’s impact is becoming largely positive and to overlook the facts that this organic produce represents a minute fraction of the company’s products, the produce was shipped long distances and undercuts local organic producers, and the company’s labor abuses may go on unchecked. I am reminded of a small group of activists in Delhi, India supporting tribal people’s rights. They quietly showed me the vibrantly green and ecologically progressive self-portrayal of a steel company on the company’s web page. From there, the activists proceeded to document for me that company’s extensive abuses of indigenous rights, displacement of tribal peoples and forest dwellers, and environmental devastation. The effectiveness of corporate social responsibility is compromised if it hides significant ongoing negative social and environmental impacts behind an image of CSR.

Gateway 4: Publicly Mandated Constraints

Having considered voluntary corporate social responsibility and its relationship to publicly mandated constraints, we look now more closely at the latter. This gateway entails legally enforceable standards for corporate conduct, galvanized by citizen action or by policy makers at any level of governance: local, state, national, and international.

The following illustrations begin with the local level and move up to the national level. The first few are specific laws already proposed or passed. The remainder are forms of laws under consideration in various locations.[42]

Moving from specific legislation to forms of legislation demonstrates the wide range of possibilities at the national level for shifting power from the large business corporation to the demos. The following examples are either proposed or under public discussion.

Equally important are moves at the international level toward legally mandated corporate constraints. Among possible implementing institutions are the United Nations through its various agencies, a reformed IMF and World Bank, and the International Criminal Court. Again, the illustrations below represent policy proposals already under discussion and having a substantive international movement behind them.

Publicly mandated corporate constraint is, then, a fourth gateway or approach to regaining a degree of democratic control over large corporations, and particularly to hold them accountable for their impacts on human beings, society as a whole, and Earth’s life-systems.

Gateway 5: Rescind Corporate “Personhood”

In recent years another approach to reining in corporate power on behalf of human and ecological well-being has emerged. It is the movement to revoke “corporate personhood” and the constitutional rights of a person that personhood grants. Under the 1886 Supreme Court ruling that a corporation is legally a person, corporations are protected by the Bill of Rights and have the rights granted under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

The latter enables corporations to block local and state legislation protecting lands and people. The demise of family farms in the United States, which has caused untold suffering, illustrates. Laws protecting family farms from corporate takeover have been undone by agricultural corporations. Citizens of Iowa, for example, seeking to protect family farms from large out-of-state meatpacking corporations passed a law “making it illegal for pork processing corporations to own and raise hogs in Iowa.” Smithfield Foods Corporation together with Murphy Farms LLC and Prestage-Stoecker Farms, Inc. sued the state of Iowa and won. The Iowa law protecting family farms was nullified on the grounds that it violated corporate rights under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. This case is but one of many in which corporate personhood has enabled agricultural corporations to uproot family farming. Some communities have attempted counter-legislation.[57]

Corporations defend their right to unlimited spending on congressional lobbying, arguing that it is an expression of freedom of speech protected under the first amendment. In 2010, based on constitutional rights including free speech, the Supreme Court overturned congressionally established limits on corporate spending to influence federal elections. The ruling ignited widespread energy behind the movement to revoke corporate personhood. The Move to Amend campaign now has branches in cities and states across the country. It is one of many networks calling for a constitutional amendment to establish that the inalienable rights of human beings belong to people only.[58] The advocates argue, along with Supreme Court Justice Stevens in his dissent to the 2010 ruling, that “corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations . . . are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”

Gateway 6: Expelling or Prohibiting Unwanted Corporations

Activists in many communities and countries have organized to expel corporations that are putting small local businesses out of business, displacing communities, usurping their water supplies, poisoning their air or water, or destroying their food supplies. Other threatened people have organized at an earlier phase to preclude a corporation from establishing itself in a community in the first place. These two recourses comprise the sixth gateway to constraining corporate power. It was seen in the story of Ravi and Monsanto in India and in the story of Robin and campaigns against Walmart. Many cities or towns in the United States have successfully prevented Walmart from locating in their areas.

In some parts of the world, the effort to expel or preclude a corporate presence is motivated by the near impossibility of holding global corporations accountable when human rights or other abuses occur. Essentially, the corporate entity can “get away with anything” because a nation’s legal and governance systems cannot or will not prevent it. A 2011 report by the International Commission of Jurists notes: “The complex corporate structure of the multinational, with networks of subsidiaries and divisions, makes it exceedingly difficult or even impossible to pinpoint responsibility for the damage caused by the enterprise. . . . Persons harmed by the acts of a multinational corporation are not in a position to isolate which unit of the enterprise caused the harm.”[59]

The moral framework developed in the previous chapter began by noting two streams of action toward social change: resistance and rebuilding. Preventing or curtailing corporate activity where the citizenry finds that such activity would damage the community’s well-being is a form of resistance. In some, cases people resort to this form of resistance at grave risk to their safety or lives. The resistance to bauxite mining in India portrayed in chapter 2 illustrates both the action and the danger. So too does the Monsanto Quit India Campaign noted in the story of farmer suicides in India.

In Sum

The previous chapter sketched a moral framework for movement toward a moral economy. It is an economy grounded in the principles of ecological sustainability, environmental equity, economic equity, and economic democracy. The framework included a set of midway goals that direct the way toward realizing these principles.

Our aim in this chapter was to illustrate the viability of these mid-way goals by examining one that seems least possible, and teasing out the kinds of public policies and practices that could achieve it. It is the goal of increased citizen control over transnational business corporations and finance institutions in order to protect workers, communities, marginalized sectors in them, ecosystems, and democracy. Among the many goals noted in chapter 9, I chose this one in order to challenge the widely held public assumption that it borders on impossible. Moreover, this goal addresses a theme running throughout the book. It is that too much power concentrated in too few hands, or too much power unaccountable to broader society, imperils the widespread good. A commitment to the widespread good calls for distributed and accountable power, that is, democracy.

We examined a tool for identifying public policies and practices that lead toward this goal of increased citizen power in relationship to corporate power. The tool entails six gateways to achieving this goal. By moving through these gateways we viewed a small sampling of the myriad practices and public policies already at work or proposed that lead toward the goal. The intent was to suggest an approach to a seemingly impossible situation (concentrated and unaccountable corporate power) that would crack open its façade of intractability and reveal it as a humanly constructed situation that is, therefore, subject to human actions.

An indispensable point emerged: All of these gateways to reining in corporate power rest ultimately on citizen action, be it direct action or action through governance. Tenacious informed people’s action through organized public networks—transnational where appropriate—may be the most important factor in constraining socially and environmentally destructive corporate power. Judith Richter, following her extensive analysis of corporate social responsibility and accountability, concludes, “The most crucial ingredients in any attempt to curb corporate power . . . are lucid analysis, principled and concerted action, and the courage and stamina to continue raising controversial issues if the public interest so requires.”[60] These are keys to achieving the moral vision of a more equitable, democratic, and sustainable world. Democracy—people power to shape the terms of their life together—requires citizen action. Morality in the context of economic and ecological violence requires citizen action. Neighbor-love toward people whose lives or livelihoods are being destroyed by corporations that provide our food, toys, metals, electronics, clothing, vacations, and household goods requires our action.

To be sure, we have illustrated only one of the nearly fifteen goals identified in the previous chapter. The transition to a more equitable, ecologically sustainable, and democratic society entails movement toward all of them. Some—such as “vastly reducing energy use” and “conversion to renewable nonpolluting energy”—are quite different from the one illustrated herein. All will require some degree of increased citizen power relative to corporate power. And all depend upon “tenacious informed people’s action through organized public networks.”

My hope is that conceptualizing these gateways to change and how they facilitate each other will generate faith that this goal and the others noted are far from impossible. Significant movement toward them is underway and clamors for the engagement of additional concerned, courageous, ordinary people. Glimpsing the practices and policies in this chapter also should catalyze the creative thinking needed to generate others. Efforts such as these, where aimed at claiming and creating ways of life that enable all people to have the necessities for life with dignity, and that enable Earth to flourish, enact neighbor-love as an ecological-economic vocation.


  1. Patricia Hill Collins, Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), citing Barbara Ransby and Tracye Matthews, “Black Popular Culture and the Transcendence of Patriarchal Illusions,” in Race and Class 35 (July 1993): 57–68.
  2. Robin Broad, Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 17, 243.
  3. Many proposals for limiting the power of global corporations focus on one or more of these “gateways” but do not use that term. For proposal, see James Gustave Speth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); David Korton, The Post-Corporate World: Life after Capitalism (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1999); The New Economy Working Group at www.neweconomyworkinggroup.org; Allen L. White, “Transforming the Corporation,” GTI Paper Series: Frontiers of a Great Transition (Boston: Tellus Institute, 2006); Broad, Global Backlash.
  4. Even Martin Luther, renowned for his allegiance to civil authorities, insisted that where the civil authorities call for actions that disobey God, Christians are to obey God.
  5. See Philip Kotler and Nancy Lee, Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005), 3.
  6. Sangaralingam, cited by David Pellow in Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 213–14.
  7. John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander, eds., Alternatives to Economic Globalization (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2002), 144–45.
  8. “By 1990, there were between 12,000 and 15,000 self-managed companies in Germany with around 1,000,000 workers.” Ulrich Duchrow, Alternatives to Global Capitalism (Utrecht: International, 1995), 254.
  9. The movement includes alternative schools of business, centers theorizing alternative economic models, organizing networks, and consumers as well as small-scale or local businesses. Helpful “centers” include the New Economics Foundation (London), New Economy Working Group of the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, DC), Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Rocky Mountain Institute, and E. F. Schumacher Society.
  10. Bill McKibben’s idea of the “new economy,” described in Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2008), calls for building local economies, which yield fewer goods but richer relationships. Ulrich Duchrow offers a theological vision for a new economy, economic theory to match it, and examples. Cavanaugh and Mander demonstrate the viability of small-scale alternatives for four key “economic operating systems”: energy, agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing (151–207). They provide a general blueprint for a shift from “factory-farming” to “small-scale, diversified . . . agricultural systems” (172). Gary Dorrien provides a descriptive and normative account of economic democracy in Economy, Difference, Empire (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 168. Michael Shuman, in TheSmall-Mart Revolution (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006), 9–10, and Going Local (New York: Free Press, 1998), articulates how localities may “reinvigorate their economies by ‘going local.’” The “NGO Forum Treaty on Alternative Economic Models” produced by the NGO forum at the “Earth Summit” in Rio includes a set of principles elaborating a “vision of alternatives to the current economic models.” Ekins and Max-Neef offer critique, theory, and practical examples of the “new economy.”
  11. See the BALLE website at: www.livingeconomies.org.
  12. Localized democratically operated economic alternatives have flourished for decades: for example, Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union (SCCU), a Japanese federation of twenty-nine consumer cooperatives; Mondragon cooperative system in the Basque region of Spain; Co-op Atlantic in Canada.
  13. Cavanaugh and Mander, Alternatives to Economic Globalization, 146.
  14. For some, the term “small-scale” refers less to size than to being locally owned.
  15. Cavanaugh and Mander, Alternatives to Economic Globalization, 146.
  16. See Dorrien and Duchrow.
  17. “Fair share” is variously defined.
  18. Duchrow, Economy, Difference, Empire, 264.
  19. Paul Hawken, Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (New York: Harper Business, 1993), xiv.
  20. The movement arose in the 1970s largely in response to the rapidly expanding “global reach” of (what were then referred to as) transnational corporations (TNCs) into nations of Africa, Latin America, and Asia and TNCs’ increasing influence over those nations’ economies and governments.
  21. In 1975 this movement pushed the UN to establish the UN Commission on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC). The agency’s focus was on achieving a UN-based “code (or codes) of conduct.” Free market forces under the Thatcher and Reagan administrations caused the closing of the UNCTC before UN-based code could be achieved.
  22. One is the UN Global Compact (UNGC) launched in 2000 by then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. It specifies ten principles of corporate social responsibility regarding human rights, labor, and environment. As we will see, it also epitomizes many shortcomings of voluntary self-regulated constraints.
  23. Richard Morgenstern and William Pizer, Reality Check: The Nature and Performance of Voluntary Environmental Programs in the United States, Europe, and Japan (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2007), 2.
  24. Ibid., 1.
  25. Judith Richter, Holding Corporations Accountable (London: Zed, 2001), 28–43, analyzes the debate.
  26. Motorola’s “Environmental Vision Statement” cited in Kolter and Lee, Corporate Social Responsibility, 207.
  27. CSRwire, Oak Brook, “McDonald’s Social Responsibility Report: One-Year Global Update” (2 May 2003). Cited in Kotler and Lee, Corporate Social Responsibility, 7.
  28. Telephone interview with Andy Acho, worldwide director, Environmental Outreach & Strategy, Ford Motor Company, April 13, 2004. Cited in Kotler and Lee, Corporate Social Responsibility, 6.
  29. Carlos M. Gutierrez, “Corporate Citizenship,” Kellogg Company. Cited in ibid., 6.
  30. Jeffrey Hollender and Stephen Fenichell, What Matters Most: How a Small Group of Pioneers Is Teaching Social Responsibility to Big Business and Why Big Business Is Listening (New York: Basic Books, 2004), dust jacket.
  31. Richter writes: “Through the end of the 1960s corporate regulation was seen as a matter of democratic control over corporations . . . it was understood that firm rules were needed to ensure both optimal operation of markets and the prevention of . . . abuses of power and corporate neglect of responsibility” (17). See Richter (6–27) for a historical account of the regulation of transnational corporations and the ensuing deregulation movement. One of the most vociferous attacks on the idea of “regulation” was from the Chicago School of Economics.
  32. Richter, Holding Corporations Accountable, 6–26.
  33. Two were Nike and Rio Tinto.
  34. Pharis Harvey, Terry Collingsworth, and Bama Athreya, “Developing Effective Mechanisms for Implementing Labor Rights in the Global Economy,” in Lance Compa and Maria Cook, eds., Workers in the Global Economy: Project Papers and Workshop Reports (Cornell University, International Labor Rights Fund, Institute for Policy Studies, and Economic Policy Institute, January 2001), 42–49, cited in Broad, Global Backlash, 231.
  35. Harris Gleckman and Riva Krut, The Social Benefits of Regulating International Business (Geneva: UNRISD, 1994), 8–9, cited in Richter, Holding Corporations Accountable, 41.
  36. The process whereby toxic “sludge” was renamed “biosolid” and reassigned from “hazardous waste” status to “class A fertilizer” exemplifies the power of corporate PR to avoid regulation by manipulating public perception. In the early 1990s, the sewage industry, faced with limited locales for storing “sludge” contaminated by industrial waste, enlisted its PR organization to orchestrate a name change and pave the way for sludge to become a fertilizer. The Name Change Task Force landed on “biosolids,” and the EPA modified its standards regulating the application of sludge to farm lands; “sludge” (biosolids) became a “Class A” fertilizer for use on food crops. The EPA enlisted a PF firm to educate the public regarding benefits of sludge as a fertilizer. It remained toxic. See John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, “A R.O.S.E. by Any Other Name,” PR Watch 2, no. 3 (Third Quarter 1995).
  37. David Vogel, The Market for Virtue (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2005), 3, 4.
  38. Morgenstern and Pizer, Reality Check, 184.
  39. Richter says as much, arguing the need to “reassess the trend away from externally binding regulation” (5). While self-regulation and co-regulation are in some instances sufficient, she posits, the need is to “explore how balances of power can and should be shifted back in favor of such regulation” (5). Richter goes on to propose a number of “ways of limiting and offsetting the power of [transnational corporations]” (208–9).
  40. M. Vander Stichele and P. Pennartz, Making It Our Business: European NGO Campaigns on Transnational Corporations (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1996), 47, cited in Richter, 192.
  41. Bill McKibben, “Hype vs. Hope: Is Corporate Do-Goodery for Real?” Mother Jones, November–December 2006, 52.
  42. Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel, Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity (New York: New Press, 2000), propose multiple legislative moves to rein in corporate power and decrease the income gap and wealth gap in America.
  43. Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, cited in Collins and Yeskel, Economic Apartheid in America, 182.
  44. Collins and Yeskel, Economic Apartheid in America, 189, using data from the Living Wage Resource Center.
  45. Paul Cienfuegos, “The Arcata Initiative on Democracy and Corporations,” Synthesis/Regeneration 17 (Fall 1998).
  46. Introduced in 2001 and 2006, the bill was referred to committee and did not come to a vote.
  47. Summary of bill at www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-382&tab=summary.
  48. Collins and Yeskel, Economic Apartheid in America, 184–85.
  49. See Robert Pollin, “Applying a Securities Transactions Tax to the United States: Design Issues, Market Impact, and Revenue Estimates,” in Gerald Epstein, Financialization and the World Economy (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2005), 409–25 for a rather conservative proposal.
  50. Numerous campaigns exist at state and national levels. See for example the New England Fair Trade Campaign.
  51. Political theorist Robert Dahl suggests “campaign finance reform” as one of seven “reforms to increase political equality in the United States.” Robert Dahl, On Political Equality (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 100–103. Collins and Yeskel, in Economic Apartheid in America, propose fifteen “rule changes that would create a more equitable system of financing elections” (152–56).
  52. See Collins and Yeskel, Economic Apartheid in America, 204–10.
  53. Michael Northcott, A Moral Climate (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), 284.
  54. A Tobin-like tax is more widely discussed in Europe and Canada than the United States.
  55. WCC testimony.
  56. TRIPS agreements—pushed through largely by the United States and huge agribusiness corporations—allow seeds to be patented by companies, effectively denying peasant farmers the right to save seed for replanting. These agreements figured in the story of Ravi and cotton seeds in chapter 7.
  57. In 2002, the township of Porter, Pennsylvania passed “the first ordinance in the nation declaring that corporations are not people.” See “Township Ordinance Attracts National Attention,” Clarion News (5 February 2003). Section 5 of the Ordinance states that “corporations shall not be considered to be ‘persons’ protected by the Constitution of the United States . . . within the township of Porter, Clarion County, Pennsylvania.” Subsequently similar ordinances were passed in other municipalities. See Community Environmental Legal Defense fund and Richard Grossman, The Daniel Penncock Democracy School Curriculum (Chambersburg, PA: CELDF, 2009), 229–334.
  58. They include: the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD), Network of Spiritual Progressives, Alliance for Democracy, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Reclaimdemocracy.org, and the U.S. branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, among others.
  59. Union of India v. Union Carbide, before the District Court, Bhopal, 6, cited in International Commission of Jurists, “Access to Justice: Human Rights Abuses Involving Corporations—India” (Geneva: International Commission of Jurists, 2011), 62.
  60. Richter, Holding Corporations Accountable, 5.