The Corporation
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Template:Infobox Film The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film critical of the modern-day corporation, considering it as a class of person (as in US law it is understood to be) and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a psychologist might evaluate an ordinary person. This is explored through specific examples.
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Creators
The film was written by Joel Bakan, and co-written and co-directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary has been displayed worldwide, on TV (sometimes in 3 parts) and is also available in DVD. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power is also the title of a book (ISBN 0-74324-744-2) written by Bakan during the filming of the documentary.
Basic plot
Image:Corp5.jpg The film charts the development of the corporation as a legal entity from its genesis to unprecedented legal protection stemming from creative interpretation of the 14th amendment, that is from its origins as an institution chartered by governments to carry out specific public functions, to the rise of the vast modern institutions entitled to the legal rights of a "person." One central theme of the documentary is an attempt to assess the "personality" of the corporate "person" by using diagnostic criteria from the DSM-IV; Robert Hare, a University of British Columbia Psychology Professor and FBI consultant, compares the modern, profit-driven corporation to that of a clinically diagnosed psychopath.
Topics addressed
Other topics addressed include the Business Plot - where in 1933, the popular General Smedley Butler was nearly implicated to lead a corporate coup against then US President Franklin Roosevelt, the tragedy of the commons, Dwight D. Eisenhower's warning people to beware of the rising Military-industrial complex, economic externalities, suppression of an investigative news story about Bovine Growth Hormone on a FOX News affiliate television station, and the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the privatization of Bolivia's municipal water supply by the Bechtel Corporation.
Other important topics Bakan brings insight into include: corporate social responsibility, the notion of limited liability, the corporation as a psychopath, and the corporation as a person.
Interviews
The film also features interviews with prominent corporate critics such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore and Howard Zinn as well as opinions from company CEOs such as Ray Anderson (from the Interface carpet & fabric company), the conservative viewpoints of Peter Drucker and Milton Friedman, and think tanks advocating "free markets" such as the Fraser Institute. Interviews also feature Dr. Samuel Epstein with his involvement in a lawsuit against Monsanto for promoting the use of Posilac, (Monsanto's trade name for recombinant Bovine Somatotropin) to induce more milk production in dairy cattle.
Criticism
The Economist review[1] points out that the idea for an organization as a psychopathic entity originated with Max Weber, in regards to government bureaucracy. Also, the review points out that the film weighs heavily in favor of public ownership as a solution to the evils depicted, while failing to acknowledge the magnitude of evils committed by government in the name of public ownership.