Review of The Corporation
Directed by: Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbot
Written By: Joel Bakan, HaroldCrooks, Mark Achbar
Running Time: 165 minutes
Year:2003

The Corporation is an in-depth documentary investigating what the film describes as “the dominant institution of our time.” Based on law professor Joel Bakan’s book of the same name, the film provides perspectives on the corporation based on over 40 interviews and several case studies. The filmmakers interviewed such well-known people as Noam Chomsky, Maude Barlow, Peter Drucker, Milton Friedman, Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva and Michael Moore.

The most significant aspect of the film is the incredible reception it has received from audiences, winning numerous awards, including the Documentary Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. The film has consistently sold out, and has received standing ovations from audiences – not bad for a three-hour documentary that is a little on the dull side. Clearly The Corporation is providing a perspective that people are hungering for.

However, while the film provides a critical perspective on the invidious role that corporations play, including environmental destruction and the exploitation of workers, there are serious weaknesses. The film has a narrow focus on the corporation, and does not consider the political and economic context in which corporations operate. By the end of the documentary it is clear that without Marxism, there is only so far the analysis can go, and even less the filmmakers can offer in terms of solutions.

The Role of Corporations in Capitalism

The film bases its analysis of the corporation on the idea that the corporation is a sick institution that is not functioning as it should. Throughout the film the filmmakers apply the diagnostic criteria used by medical professionals to diagnose mental illness. Based on case studies, the film finds that corporations exhibit symptoms such as self-interest, amorality, callousness, deceitfulness and a lack of guilt over harm caused by its wrongdoing. They then “diagnose” the corporation with a pathological personality.

While corporations certainly demonstrate such characteristics, our concern is with the suggestion that corporations are improperly exhibiting pathological characteristics, as opposed to behaving just as they should in a capitalist system. This is an important distinction. Operating on the premise that corporations are not acting as they should suggests that all that is required is for corporations to either voluntarily, or be forced to, run their businesses in a more humane manner. Such an approach fails to recognize that corporations exist as a component of a capitalist political and economic system. They exist in order to create profit, and to manage the control of private property within the hands of a few. Corporations cannot do otherwise than act with self-interest, amorality, callousness and deceitfulness.

A significant gap in the film is its failure to acknowledge the interrelationship between corporations and the state. The film does not acknowledge that there are other social institutions that are interrelated and which make it possible for corporations to operate in the ways that they do. For example, the legal system is critical in creating the legal landscape that allows corporations to prevent picketing by striking workers through the generous granting of injunctions. The legal system is both premised on and reinforces the role of the “free” market. It is the legal system that dictates the ownership of private property by the corporation, and not by its workers. It is laws created by governments that protect corporations from liability for environmental destruction. However, insofar as the legal system is mentioned in The Corporation, the law is portrayed as being “duped” by smart corporate lawyers into giving it “legal personality.”

The only exceptions to the film’s failure to analyse the links between corporations and state institutions arise in the context of either Fascist states or countries of the global “South.” Two of the most memorable sequences in the film are the bloody, determined, and ultimately successful struggle against Bechtel Corporation’s water privatization program in Cochabamba, Bolivia and a discussion of the use of IBM technology in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Although these are powerful examples, the film does not acknowledge that the same level of integration exists in today’s so-called “democratic” states in North America.

It could be argued that there is only so much that this three-hour film could cover. In part this is true. However, the filmmakers chose to emphasize case studies showing the “pathological” nature of corporations in a vacuum precisely because that is where their analysis took them. Without approaching the study from a Marxist perspective, there were severe limitations on how far their analysis could go.

An unsatisfying prescription for change

The Corporation concludes with a section entitled “Reckoning” presumably intended as an opportunity for the filmmakers to focus on both the future of corporations and struggles against them. The comments of numerous academics, activists and executives, primarily American, are presented, but there is very little attempt to do more than scratch the surface of vague notions such as “corporate responsibility” and “democratic control.” Ultimately, the filmmakers appear to lack a vision or coherent thesis with respect to alternatives to corporate rule.

Among the commentators, carpet magnate Ray Anderson focuses on the prospects for green or sustainable businesses, relying on Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce to argue for a sort of benevolent presence within market capitalism. He readily describes himself as a “plunderer of the Earth” and states unequivocally that the first industrial revolution was the mistake. Anderson argues that we need to visualize the corporation as an organization of people dedicated to the purpose of doing no harm – he notes that through recycling and energy efficiency his carpet company was able to do an additional $200 million in business without using any additional raw materials. While Anderson is clearly on to something – a robust critique of the environmentally destructive character of modern industry – there is no attempt to either detail his critique or note its shortcomings by examining the technological feasibility of sustainable industry or expanding it to other issues such as workers’ rights. However, Anderson’s analysis is actually among the more complete ones portrayed in the film, despite the plethora of high-profile and accomplished experts featured.

Vandana Shiva, an Indian activist and physicist with a long history of involvement in biotechnology, intellectual property and traditional agriculture issues, is given only a few short soundbites to outline how farmers themselves are developing alternatives to corporate control over food production, citing the collection and trading of traditional seeds in an effort to thwart genetically modified ‘terminator seeds’ which produce crops incapable of reproducing further, and an international coalition which fought the patenting of neem and basmati rice plants. Bolivian activist Oscar Olivera gets a bit more time to report on the mass demonstrations against water privatization and the resulting non-profit community-controlled water utilities. However, neither struggle is located within a global context except in the most cursory manner – just as “capitalism” is only mentioned tangentially, “imperialism” and “colonialism” are also avoided, despite the clearly colonial roots of the corporate form (i.e the Dutch East India Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company), the numerous examples in the film of corporate interests in Latin American and Caribbean colonies, and Shiva’s own invocation of Mahatma Ghandi’s legacy.

While these two “Southern” perspectives are provocative and provide at least some hint of social mobilization from below, the remainder of ‘Reckoning’ is taken up by vague prescriptions for accountability and democracy. Writer Jeremy Rifkin lists education, litigation, legislation and direct action as tools against corporate irresponsibility, while a grammatically-questionable checklist scrolls down the screen, with suggestions including: end corporate personhood, people before profit, support unions, ban corporations from politics, support workers’ rights, buy locally, end corporate welfare, ride a bike, support independent media and economic democracy. Fine suggestions all, but woefully ahistorical, ill-defined and decontextualized. Noticeably lacking is a clear conception of the role of the state as anything other than a benign or neutral legislator – for example, government participants in the Summit of the Americas are portrayed as dupes or cronies of corporate interests rather than active participants in the “free” trade agenda. Despite the focus on water privatization, there is no discussion of what public or social control over resources and equally importantly, industrial and infrastructure property, means. Michael Moore’s calls for “strong governmental controls” over corporations and a “democratic” economy are not followed through at all, although he gets the last word, concluding The Corporation with a plea for viewers to do something, anything, to counter corporate greed.