[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Now we are human commodities

Thu Jan 24 19:08:05 MST 2008

by Chris Maser

Culture Change (December 28 2007)

Editor's note: Chris Maser's observations and insights are as sharp as a
laser. He truly sees the big picture through the millennia of human
experience. Such as: "... people themselves are increasingly seen as
economic commodities. How can a commodity find security from another
commodity? In this sense, the marketplace satisfies only temporarily our
collective neuroses, while hiding the values that give true meaning to
human life." This article is Part Two in Maser's series for Culture
Change. This one starts out with a run-down of the origin of the
corporation and its rise to dominant power today; this section is vital
for those uninformed about corporate personhood. -- Jan Lundberg

The corporation, it turns out, is an invention of the British Crown
through the creation of the East India Company by Queen Elizabeth I in
1600, which, being the original, transnational corporation, set today's
precedence for big businesses. The East India Company, "found India rich
and left it poor", says author Nick Robin. The corporate structure of
the East India Company was deemed necessary to allow the British to
exploit their colonies in such a way that the owner of the enterprise
was, for the first time, separated from responsibility for how the
enterprise behaved.

This conscious separation of personal responsibility from the act of
looting is not surprising because "looting" is, theoretically as least,
considered immoral in Christian circles. The corporation is thus a
"legal fiction", that lets the investors who own the business avoid
personal responsibility whenever the business dealings are unethical or
even blatantly illegal, despite the fact that such unscrupulous behavior
profits them enormously.

A corporation, after all, has but one purpose - to make money for the
owners. Economist Milton Friedman gave voice to this pinhole vision when
he answered his own rhetorical question: "So the question is, do
corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have
responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much
money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no
they do not." In fact, the "corporate system", say analysts, "has no
room for beneficence toward employees, communities, or the environment",
a notion endlessly demonstrated on a daily global scale.

Founders of the United States, such as Thomas Jefferson, recognized the
dangers of corporate greed, which accounts for why the founding fathers
believed corporate charters should be granted only to those entities
willing to serve the greater public interest. Throughout most of the
19th century, therefore, states typically restricted a corporation they
chartered to the ownership of one kind of business and strictly limited
the amount of capital it could amass. In addition, states required
stockholders to be local residents, detailed specific benefits that were
due the community, and placed a twenty to fifty year limit on the life
of a corporation's charter. Legislatures would withdraw a corporation's
charter if it strayed from its stated mission or acted in an
irresponsible manner.

Although the power of modern corporations dates back to this era, it has
been greatly augmented by two major legal dodges aimed at giving them
unencumbered authority to serve only the self-interest of a few people.
This was accomplished first by the piecemeal removal of those
restrictions imposed to protect the welfare of the public from the
self-serving interests of the few.

The second change came in 1886, when the US Supreme Court made the
corporation all but invulnerable by decreeing, in a case brought by the
Southern Pacific Railroad against Santa Clara County, California, that a
corporation has the right of "personhood" under the 14th Amendment
(originally intended to protect the rights of freed slaves) and, as
such, enjoys the same constitutional protections that you or I do as
individuals. This second change was reaffirmed in 1906, when the US
Supreme Court ruled that, "The Corporation is a creature of the state.
It is presumed to be incorporated for the benefit of the public." Within
a century, the corporation had been transfigured into a "superhuman
creature of the law", that is legally superior to any American citizen
because the corporation has civil rights without civil responsibilities {1}

When People become Commodities

We, as a society, are losing sight of one another as human beings -
witness the Wall-Street money chase in which numerous, large
corporations discount human value as they increasingly convert people
into faceless commodities that are bought and sold on a whim to improve
the corporate standing in the competitive marketplace. After all, market
share translates into political power, which translates into higher
profit margins, both of which exacerbate the corporate disregard for
people, the rampant destruction of Nature, and the squandering of
natural resources.

There was a time when people were valued for what they were as
individuals. Although American workers have long had an enforced
workweek of forty hours, there currently is an insidious infringement
into personal life due to pagers and cell phones, which allow
corporations to "own" employees 24 hours a day. Businesses seem to have
no moral compunctions about calling employees whenever they choose -
"for the good of the company". For those who would choose to live by the
corporate proverb, "for the good of the company", the Families and Work
Institute said that in 2001 employees are more likely to:

* lose sleep
* have physical and emotional health problems
* make mistakes on the job
* feel and express anger at employers
* resent co-workers who they perceive are not pulling their weight
* look for different jobs

In the workplace, these feelings translate into more injuries and thus
more claims for workers' compensation, increased absenteeism, higher
health insurance and health-care costs, impaired job performance, and
greater employee turnover - all of which are counterproductive and
costly not only for employees but also for employers {2}.

At home, these feelings are often converted into a sense of not enough
time to care for once-loved pets. About four million pets were brought
each year to 1,000 shelters surveyed during 1994, 1995, and 1996, the
vast majority of which were dogs. Of those, about 64 percent were
killed. Only 24 percent were adopted; others were primarily lost pets
that were ultimately reunited with their families. Most of the owners
who gave up pets were under thirty years of age. When asked why they
were giving up their pet, many said that the hours they were being
required to work disallow time to adequately care for their animal {3}.

Moreover, if American workers want more time with and for their
families, the corporate response is: "If you aren't willing to do the
job the way we want, we'll find someone who will". This attitude raises
the question of what comes first today in our land of opportunity, where
supposedly one is free to seek liberty and the pursuit of happiness -
love or money? This question seems all the more relevant in light of the
Enron debacle.

The collapse of Enron highlights how some corporations are using people
simply as commodities to boost company earnings. While Enron's employees
were both forced to purchase and simultaneously prohibited from selling
company stock in their Enron-heavy 401(k) retirement accounts, Enron
executives cashed out more than $1 billion in stocks when it was near
its peak in value. Regular employees, however, had to watch helplessly
as their Enron stock plummeted in value and their life savings
disappeared. {4}

Clearly, the punishing free-for-all of globalization and open markets
has not invited love into its house and thus is as much about the fear
of lost opportunity as it is about maximizing profit. And now, as fear
enters into the monetary counting houses, one must realize that any rosy
face painted on the economy is done so with far too many temporary and
dead-end jobs in the service sector.

The growing use of long-term, temporary workers by American businesses
has created a new kind of employment discrimination, but not across the
board because some people actively choose such an arrangement. Employers
typically hire contingent workers, such as independent contractors and
temporary workers, to fill gaps in personnel, especially to meet high
seasonal demands in business. Because, technically, they are not
"company employees", long-term, temporary employees or "permatemps" can
work at a job for years without being entitled to paid vacations, health
insurance, pensions, and other benefits (such as rights and protections
under federal labor statutes) enjoyed by permanent employees who do the
same work {5}. Although not all corporations operate this way, the
arrangement is, nevertheless, desirable from the employer's point of
view because it holds down the cost of labor, which means higher profits.

The result is millions of employed people in the United States who
cannot afford the basic necessities of food, housing, clothing, and
medical care. This problem is well depicted in the movie "Hidden in
America", which shows that below the image of shining prosperity is a
hidden layer of poverty with its desperate but proud parents and hungry
children.

There is also a kind of sweatshop alive and well in the United States -
faster and faster with no time to slow down. A Gallup Poll in the summer
or 1999 found that 44 percent of working Americans referred to
themselves as "workaholics". Yet, 77 percent said they enjoyed their
time away from work more than they did their time while working. In
fact, our American quest for material wealth - the money chase - leads
to profound unhappiness, emotional isolation, and higher divorce rates
because we are so busy striving for income there is no time for normal,
human relationships {6}.

Our American ration of irony, however, is that the more connected we
become electronically, the more detached and isolated we become
emotionally because we are losing the human elements of life: the sight
of a human face, the sound of a human voice, a smile, a handshake, a
touch on the shoulder, a kind word. In essence, we're losing the human
dimension of scale in terms of time, space, touch, sound, and size; we
are physically and emotionally losing one another and ourselves. Nothing
makes this clearer than such things as home fax machines, laptop
computers, cell phones, beepers, Palms, BlackBerrys, and iPods.

People are now "on-line" at home; in transit to work; at work; in
transit to home via cars, planes, trains, and on foot. In other words,
people are virtually tethered to work. Such workaholism is not only
expected by employers, it's often demanded if one wants to keep their
job, which has added "24/7" to our lexicon.

This kind of workaholism is especially hard on women because they are
increasingly expected to work outside the home, juggle childcare, school
activities for their children, and also maintain the home as though they
had to nothing else to do. In addition, the 24/7 phenomenon hit the
American work scene shortly after woman became a major part of the
workforce.

As things pile endlessly upon one another, the whole of life seems to
melt down into a gigantic obligation that becomes increasingly difficult
to meet because there simply is not enough time to get everything done,
let alone done well. A standard greeting today is: "I'm so busy".

This greeting is worn like the "red badge of courage" was in the past,
as though our exhaustion is proof of our worth and our ability to
withstand stress, which, in turn, is a mark of our maturity. In fact, we
seem to measure our importance by how busy we are. The busier we are,
the more important we feel to ourselves and, we imagine, to others,
which is reminiscent of the underlying theme of the British television
program "Keeping up Appearances".

If we do not rest, however, we will lose our way because action without
time for reflection is seldom wise. Rest nourishes our minds, bodies,
and souls, which are poisoned by the hypnotic trance of perpetual motion
as accomplishment and social "success". Therefore, we never truly rest,
especially many who are self-employed.

In the quarter century following World War II, giant corporations like
Ma Bell, General Motors, General Electric, and Westinghouse were the
place to be, representing, as they did, the pinnacle of what capitalism
had to offer workers: extraordinary job security and a cornucopia of
benefits. In fact, college graduates tripped over one another seeking
life-time careers with these bedrock corporations because they could
expect a comfortable house, a generously financed retirement package,
lifelong health insurance, and, more often than not, a nine to five job
that allowed an organized man to form a healthy balance between work and
family.

That was the era when job security formed the underpinnings of the
corporate operating principle. In 1962, Earl S Willis, manager of
employee benefits at General Electric, wrote, "Maximizing employee
security is a prime company goal". Later, he wrote, "The employee who
can plan his economic future with reasonable certainty is an employer's
most productive asset". In recent times, however, General Electric's
John F Welch, Jr, was known as "Neutron Jack" for shedding 100,000 jobs
at the company.

Job security has vanished at numerous companies. Today, chief executives
dump thousands of workers in the blink of an eye, hoping such moves will
please securities analysts and thus investors, so their stocks will inch
up five percent on the stock exchange. In addition, corporate managers
slash away at employee benefits as though employees have suddenly ceased
to be humans and have become commodities that can be forced into a more
efficient mode of production with less cost to the corporation. They
also phase out "defined benefit" retirement plans in favor of the
far-less expensive 401(K) "do it yourself plans".

Many employees of the post World War II era, until the latter part of
the 1960s, were true believers in their companies. They were also
exemplary employees who worked twelve and fourteen hours days, six and
even seven days a week, whatever it took to ensure their company's
success. They did this enthusiastically because their company's success
was the foundation of their job security, and hence their success as
family providers.

Then things changed. The corporate mind-set closed and corporate
attitudes hardened. Now, despite their dedication, despite all the
birthdays, bedtimes, and school events they have missed as their
children grew up, many have been chopped from their company's payroll in
a "merger", "re-engineering", "rightsizing", "downsizing", and
"re-deployment". Bitter at the callous way they have been treated, many
workers regret having been so dedicated, only to be treated like
commodities that are discarded at will. {7}

"In a personal sense, it hurts, but in a macro sense, it is the action
we've got to take to remain competitive", says Joel Naroff of Naroff
Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. "Ultimately the adjustments
that the economy is making is going to set us up for the next strong
period of growth". What Naroff seems to be saying between the lines is:
While it hurts to be fired, it's not personal; it's business.

Others contend, however, that companies may well harm themselves by
firing the people who purchase their products, potentially damaging the
economy in ways that cannot be rectified with quick fixes, such as tax
cuts or lowering the interest rate. In other words, layoffs (especially
large, continuous ones) can only hurt the economy.

An economist, on the other hand, would counter with the notion that what
really matters is how consumers view the situation. Some would even
suggest that workers have become relatively used to being fired for the
market convenience of their employer, as though that makes it
"acceptable", even "okay". One could also rationalize that many of the
job cuts will be less painful than they sound, in part because companies
in a tight labor market have scores of unfilled jobs that are easy to
eliminate. And then there is the argument that many other cuts would be
spread over years, and some might not even occur. {8}

While this all sounds very "rational", workers and consumers act on
emotions, not what passes for economic "logic", and announced layoffs
can lead them to panic, because uncertainty and fear of the unknown are
powerful allies when it comes to irrational thinking and the
often-unwise actions it spawns. Thus, even if nothing in a person's own
job changes, the fact that their company has fired people to increase
the economic bottom line can, and often does, drastically change an
employee's attitude about the wisdom of loyalty to the company and thus
cripples the company's real wealth - the allegiance and imagination of
its employees.

No wonder it 's called "downsizing". The end result is that a worker's
dignity levels out near zero! And what does the corporation lose when
employees are fired - especially older, long-term employees? The
corporation loses its collective memory and its history, both accrued
through years of loyal service.

All of this revolves around consumption and consumerism. Consumption to
the economist is the "end-all and be-all" of production. It means
economic growth. Consumption is the heart and soul of capitalism itself.
The rate of consumption by a populace is also the standard economic
measure of human welfare.

Consumption as an end it itself arose with the conceptualization of "the
economy" as a macro-social entity and "economics" as a macro-social
science - rather than as household management, which is the true meaning
of the word economy. To this end, Adam Smith wrote: "Consumption is the
sole end and purpose of all production".

Because consumption and consumerism dominate social discourse and
political agendas of all parties, consumerism hogs the limelight at
center stage as the prime objective of Western industrialized societies,
which, in the collective, are known as "consumer societies". Within
these consumer societies, the purpose of consumption is: variety,
distraction from daily stresses, pleasure, power, and the status that
one hopes will bring with them a measure of happiness and social
security. None of this comes to pass, however, because people themselves
are increasingly seen as economic commodities. How can a commodity find
security from another commodity? In this sense, the marketplace
satisfies only temporarily our collective neuroses, while hiding the
values that give true meaning to human life. {9}

Author James B Twitchell puts it nicely: "Once we are fed and sheltered,
our needs are and have always been cultural, not natural. Until there is
some other system to codify and satisfy those needs and yearnings,
commercialism [consumerism] - and the culture it carries with it - will
continue not just to thrive but to triumph." {10}

In the final analysis, it is doubtful many people really subscribe to
the economist's notion that human happiness and contentment derives
solely from, or even primarily from, the consumption of goods and
services. It's therefore surprising that such a notion has come to hold
nearly dictatorial power over public policy and the way industrialized
societies are governed.

We are today so ensnared in the process of selling and buying things in
the market place, that we cannot imagine human life being otherwise.
Even our notion of well-being and of despair are wedded to the flow and
ebb of the markets. Why is this so much a part of our lives? It is
largely because people have yet to understand the notion of conscious
simplicity, which is based on the realization that there are two ways to
wealth: want less or work more. Put differently, true wealth lies in the
scarcity of one's wants - as opposed to the abundance of one's possessions.

Endnotes

1. The discussion of corporate beginnings is based on: (1) Jim
Hightower. 1998. Chomp! Utne Reader. March-April: 57-61, 104, (2) Nick
Robins. 2001. Loot. Resurgence 210:12-16, and (3) David C. Korten. 2001.
What to Do When Corporations Rule the World. Yes! A Journal of Positive
Futures. Summer: 48-51.

2. Diane Stafford. 2001. Workers feeling overwhelmed. Knight Ridder
Newspapers. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, Oregon. May 21.

3. Dru Sefton. 1998. Busy owners are abandoning pets. Knight-Ridder
Tribune News Service. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, Oregon.
June 7.

4. The Associated Press. 2001. Enron retirees: Collapse wiped out life
savings. Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, Oregon. December 19.

5. Tony Pugh. 1999. Sad Ballad of the Long-Term Temp. Knight Ridder
Newspapers. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, Oregon. December 7.

6. The Editors. 2000. No time to slow down. US News & World Report. June
26:14.

7. The preceding four paragraphs are based on: Steven Greenhouse. 2001.
After the Downsizing, a Downward Spiral. The New York Times. April 8.

8. The preceding three paragraphs are based on: Adam Geller. 2001.
Economists fear cuts will affect consumer spending. The Associated
Press. In: Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis, Oregon. February 1.

9. The preceding three paragraphs are based on: Paul Ekins. 1998. From
Consumption to Satisfaction. Resurgence 191:16-19.

10. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. 2001. Sales Pitches That Put the M (for
Mega) in Madison Ave. The New York Times. January 3

* * * * *

This essay is condensed from Chris Maser's 2004 book The Perpetual
Consequences of Fear and Violence: Rethinking the Future. Maisonneuve
Press, Washington, DC. 373 pages.

Chris has written several books that are showcased on his website,
chrismaser.com. Chris lives in Corvallis, Oregon. He is a consultant on
environmental land-use development, sustainable communities and forestry.