in which the state integrates labor and capital under the control of
the corporate structure.
That’s what a fascist system traditionally was. It can vary in the
way it works, but the ideal state that it aims at is absolutist—top-
down control with the public essentially following orders.
Fascism is a term from the political domain, so it doesn’t apply
strictly to corporations, but if you look at them, power goes strictly
top-down, from the board of directors to managers to lower
managers and ultimately to the people on the shop floor, typists, etc.
There’s no flow of power or planning from the bottom up. Ultimate
power resides in the hands of investors, owners, banks, etc.
People can disrupt, make suggestions, but the same is true of a
slave society. People who aren’t owners and investors have nothing
much to say about it. They can choose to rent their labor to the
corporation, or to purchase the commodities or services that it
produces, or to find a place in the chain of command, but that’s it.
That’s the totality of their control over the corporation.
That’s something of an exaggeration, because corporations are
subject to some legal requirements and there is some limited degree
of public control. There are taxes and so on. But corporations are
more totalitarian than most institutions we call totalitarian in the
political arena.
Is there anything large corporate conglomerates do that has
beneficial effects?
A lot of what’s done by corporations will happen to have, by
accident, beneficial effects for the population. The same is true of
the government or anything else. But what are they trying to
achieve? Not a better life for workers and the firms in which they
work, but profits and market share.
That’s not a big secret—it’s the kind of thing people should learn
in third grade. Businesses try to maximize profit, power, market
share and control over the state. Sometimes what they do helps
other people, but that’s just by chance.
There’s a common belief that, since the Kennedy assassination,
business and elite power circles control our so-called democracy.
Has that changed at all with the Clinton administration?