The new corporation : how "good" corporations are bad for democracy

A deeply informed and unflinching look at the way corporations have slyly rebranded themselves as socially conscious entities ready to tackle society's problems, while CEO compensation soars, income inequality is at all-time highs, and democracy sits in a precarious situation. “A very important book, an arresting study directed to a central issue of the times” (Noam Chomsky), from the author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Over the last decade and a half, business leaders have been calling for a new kind of capitalism. With income inequality soaring, wages stagnating, and a climate crisis escalating, they realized that they had to make social and environmental values the very core of their messaging. The problem is corporations are still, first and foremost, concerned with their bottom line. In lucid and engaging prose, Joel Bakan documents how increasing corporate freedom encroaches on individual liberty and democracy. Through deep research and interviews with both top executives and their sharpest critics, he exposes the inhumanity and destructive force of the current order--profit-driven privatization subverting the public good, governments neglecting duties to protect the environment, the increasing alienation we experience as every aspect of life is economized, and how the Covid-19 pandemic lays bare the unjust fault lines of our corporate-led society. Beyond diagnosing major problems, in The New Corporation Bakan narrates a hopeful path forward. He reveals how citizens around the world are fighting back and making gains in ways that bolster democracy and benefit ordinary citizens rather than the corporate elite. He does not talk about the forensics of corporate sociopathy or technical psychopaths. He seems almost apologetic after going to Davos and soaking up their do-gooder rhetoric. He seems to have dropped his guard to the greediest men alive as they find new ways to squeeze every last drop of resources and money out of their poisoned planet, create fake news, fake medicine, censor free speech, foster genocide and on and on, dehumanization on steroids. Why aren't these people in jail or on the gallows? Bernie Madoff's brothers are alive and well and sucking up more than they can carry by killing off small businesses en masse, the decimation of the middle class. Caveat lector. Corporate liberation, my foot, "a lie told once remains a lie, a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth." Funny how the richest men alive never have enough money or power. Is the cure for corporate psychopathy really the depopulation of the planet? Too many unanswered / unaddressed troubling questions. "A brilliant follow up to the internationally bestselling The Corporation, with a new look inside the minds of corporations to see how they've changed and, most importantly, how they haven't. In 2004, Joel Bakan released The Corporation, a seminal book and documentary of the same name, which diagnosed corporations as institutional psychopaths. In its wake, corporations began proclaiming they had changed. Newly committed to social purpose and eschewing narrow self-interest, they now had a conscience, they said, and were poised to become part of the solution to global ills, claiming they would reduce social and environmental harm and reorient themselves to solving the world's problems. The new corporation had emerged. But, as it turned out, it was not fundamentally different. Legally programmed to prioritize its own best interests, like its predecessor, the new corporation was capable of doing good, but only in kinds and amounts that would help it do well; and it could refrain from doing bad, but not when doing bad was better than doing good for doing well. In short, the corporation's self-interested compulsions had not changed. It remained a psychopath--albeit a more charming one. And with its new charm, the corporation set out to cajole governments to free it from regulation (claiming it could now be trusted to self-regulate) and grant it control over previously public domains (claiming it could now be entrusted with public interests). Societies began to change, now no longer just having corporations, but being, in all dimensions, corporate. The results were ruinous. Corporate crime and malfeasance hit all-time highs, democracy was hollowed out, inequality widened and deepened, climate change spiraled, and, of course, Donald Trump became president. What, then, do we do? Joel Bakan's new book tells the updated history of corporations and the surging global resistance to them that has risen over the last fifteen years. Drawing from interviews with business and thought leaders, politicians, economists, activists, disruptors, and more, Bakan shines a light on the corporation of today: an entity that is somehow worse for trying to do better."-- Provided by publisher Silver WINNER of the 2021 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Ethics WINNER of the 2021 Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes From the author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power comes this deeply informed and unflinching look at the way corporations have slyly rebranded themselves as socially conscious entities ready to tackle society's problems, while CEO compensation soars, income inequality is at all-time highs, and democracy sits in a precarious situation. Over the last decade and a half, business leaders, Silicon Valley executives, and the Davos elite have been calling for a new kind of capitalism. The writing was on the wall. With income inequality soaring, wages stagnating, and a climate crisis escalating, it was no longer viable to justify harming the environment and ducking taxes in the name of shareholder value. Business leaders realized that to get out in front of these problems, they had to make social and environmental values the very core of their messaging. Their essential pitch was: Who could be better suited to address major societal issues than efficiently run corporations? There is just one small problem with their doing well by doing good pitch. Corporations are still, ultimately, answerable to their shareholders, and doing well always comes first. This essential truth lies at the heart of Joel Bakan's argument. In lucid and engaging prose, Bakan lays bare a litany of immoral corporate actions and documents corporate power grabs dressed up as social initiatives. He makes clear the urgency of the problem of the corporatization of society itself and shows how people are fighting back and making gains on a grassroots level.