We Are It, or Not: Government versus Corporation
By Robert Higgs • Sunday January 24, 2010 10:43 AM PDT • 18 Comments
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, we are witnessing an outpouring of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Progressives emphatically deny that a corporation consists of nothing more than a voluntary aggregation of natural persons and that therefore it has all the rights of speech that its individual members have. Leftists have long maintained, and continue to maintain, that a corporation is something apart from, and more menacing than, the aggregate of its shareholders. They hold that corporations as such have no rights at all, but only privileges, which the state may revise or revoke as it deems desirable.
The progressive position is not obvious nonsense. Highly intelligent people have argued, and continue to argue, for it. Whether these arguments are valid as a whole or in part does not concern me here. I am struck, however, by a manifest inconsistency between the progressive position on the corporation and the progressive position on the government.
When aggrieved persons complain about the state’s actions and speak as if it were nothing more than an alien aggressor against an individual’s rights—and an impudently highhanded one at that—progressives have long replied that “we are the government.” In this instance, they steadfastly maintain that the whole is identical with the sum of its parts. Thus, no person has a firm ground on which to complain about the government because, after all, he is (a part of) the government.
This reply is so manifestly silly and transparently false that libertarians seldom pause to consider it except to mock it and to denounce the seeming foolishness or arrogance of anyone audacious enough to advance it. And rightly so, I think. I did not buy shares in the U.S. government; I simply happened to be born in a place known as Oklahoma, and by virtue of this happenstance, the gang of armed bandits who style themselves the U.S. government has claimed the right to rob and bully me at its pleasure from the day of my birth till today. Nor do they have any plans to lighten this oppression, however unwelcome I may consider it to be. I cannot escape from it by “selling my shares” or by declining to deal with it.
That I bear any responsibility whatsoever for the manifold crimes of this gang strikes me as too preposterous to deserve debate. The fact that I have spent the preponderance of my life in the land of my birth and rearing, rather than emigrating to another place where I would also be robbed and bullied (because similarly overbearing governments operate virtually everywhere), in no way validates the government’s treatment of me. In short, I am not the government, not even an iota of it. It is as alien to me as the Martians who land their flying saucers in the Arizona desert and undertake to probe the local hysterics.
That progressives and other collectivists can maintain with a straight face that “we are the government” while simultaneously maintaining that “a corporation is separate and apart from its owners” stands of one of the most glaring inconsistencies in their ideologies. If they hate private property and individual liberty, so be it. But such hatred does not exempt them from an obligation to comply with the rules of logic and to respect the evidence of plain facts.
Tags: Civil Liberties, Constitution, Elections, Law, Liberty, Politics, The State 
Wonderfully put!
Anirudh Bhati | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
The progressive argument is, if not obvious nonsense, at least special pleading. They’re already at work protecting themselves from its implications. For example, when I pointed out that it implies that freedom of the press doesn’t apply to any newspaper of consequence in the US, I was told that since the purpose of a news corporation is to make money by publishing news, it remains free to publish news (presumably with no more right to remain unregulated than progressives impute to any other line of business).
By the progressive argument, advocacy organizations, at least the ones organized as 501(c)(3), have no free speech rights. Similarly, churches have no freedom of religion; only their individual members do.
But logic and consistency aren’t what the screaming is about; it’s the horror that people are free to criticize politicians, even during the election campaign season when people should sit down in respectful silence.
GaryM | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
I have argued for several years now that corporations are de facto agents of the state. Corporations collect taxes on behalf of the state. Corporations collect personal and financial information on its employees and customers on behalf of the state and then, without any court order or subpoena, turns that information over to various law enforcement and/or regulatory agencies.
For example, corporations gather information on its customers and employees and prospective employees and then that data is turned over to the Feds for the purported purpose of tracking down and identifying ‘deadbeat parents’. Since these functions are carried out by corporations the individual does not have any protection, as weak as they maybe, that they would have under the Constitution/Bill of Rights had the Feds attempted to gather this information directly.
To pretend that corporations are ‘persons’ is ludicrous and ignores the nexus of Big Government and Big Business that enables both entities to grow and prosper at the expense of the individual and individual rights.
Paul | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
I agree they think that corporations are more than the sum of their parts. They believe society itself is a separate independent entity.
Ayn R. Key | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Robert, I happened to be born in Indiana, and that same gang of armed bandits who rob and bully you do me also, but I would suggest they are merely the proximate cause of what troubles us.
An ornery pit bull is naturally a menace if he was trained to be vicious when he was a pup. And how likely do you suppose it would be that his trainer grew up without a father in his home when he was a child? And which would you consider would account more for the dog’s temperament, the dog himself or his trainer?
Statist politicians are merely the proximate cause of oppressive governance likewise only because an incompetent electorate put them in office. And how likely do you suppose it is that a great many of the idiot voters who elected them grew up without a fathers in their homes when they were children?
Now poor early childhood rearing isn’t the only flaw in our culture, but I suspect it ranks right up there. Plot the quality of governance in the last century on the same graph as the proportion of kids who grew up in single parent homes a generation earlier and notice their inverse correlation. And what could be a more plausible and parsimonious explanation for that correlation than cause and effect?
William Best
William Best | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Good post. The free speech argument is of course ludicrous. On top of that, I believe free speech has essentially nothing to do with the issue. It’s mostly just an excuse used to get the decision passed. The problem with giving corporations this power is that they will now be able to buy and sell candidates—with the money of their investors, most of whom probably don’t even want their money being spent on said candidates. I feel like this fact is so blatantly obvious, the idea of giving corporations this kind of power shouldn’t even be an option! If I am a candidate and I win an election—and later find out Starbucks spent millions on advertising for me—you better believe I’m going to repay them handsomely for their contribution. Likewise, if I’m running for office, you better believe I’ll be making deals with companies in which I’ll promise to enact policies that help them in exchange for their contribution. We’ll all be screwed soon enough, at least until Congress puts a check on this—not that they’ll even be able to, given their recent “successes.”
Dekker | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Also, I know one might argue that this system already exists, and the decision doesn’t really change anything. I agree with that, but I believe the amount of political buyouts and the scale they occur on will have HUGE consequences. It will make what’s going on now look like child’s play. No longer called the United States of America, this country will become the “United (Airlines) Starbucks of Aamco.”
Dekker | Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
I appreciate the arguments provided by Mr. Higgs. But is this the proper perspective from which to view Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission?
As I see it, the First Amendment is not about protecting speakers or guaranteeing the rights of speakers. Rather, the First Amendment protects an individual citizen from a powerful government which would determine what the citizen may hear or read. Citizens United is not so much about protecting a corporation or a union as it is about protecting the citizen’s right to the ideas of others.
McCain-Feingold was an egregious assault on the citizen’s right to thoughts. It was pure censorship. Hurray for Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy!
John Dewey | Jan 26, 2010 | Reply
Corporations are an idea realized by greedy elitists to further control the peons. By giving rights to corporations you grant them an individuality previously granted only to living breathing people. However with this right: they can gradually change the laws and systems they thrive in. You see they can do this by virtue of unlimited life. This gives them the upper hand in every aspect. If you can’t win now then wait a few years till the conditions change and well you get the picture.
Thomas Jefferson knew full well what would happen: If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.
How prophetic he was.
Dennis | Jan 26, 2010 | Reply
Why should corporations be granted rights above and beyond those held by the individuals employed by them? Those individuals already have first amendment rights, so granting them as a group the same rights as each one of them has is redundant–if it only ended there. But individuals pay taxes, and these corporations don’t. Individuals want to live in a clean environment. Most corporations lobby against environmental laws. A corporation’s only responsibility is profit for its shareholders even at the risk of breaking the law (because, especially now, they can have their lobbyists right laws to change any laws they might break). Individuals are never not bound by law and an individual cannot lobby congress to change laws. They might have the right, but it isn’t even a realistic concept.
Corporations already had enormous powers over govt, the population, the economy. All the court did was let them do in the open what they used to do behind closed doors.
Those who don’t see the probability for rampant corruption because of this decision have no foresight or connection to culture. I marvel whenever I hear some pundit say the govt has too much control over the corporations. Everyone knows the corporations control the govt.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” –Benito Mussolini
Jeffrey | Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
Dennis, the right guaranteed in the Constitution is not a right for the speaker. It is a right of the the citizen to listen to all speech—regardless of source—without censorship by the government. In Citizens United the Supreme Court did not grant new rights to corporations. Rather, it affirmed the citizen’s freedom from government censorship of speech to which the citizen may hear.
John Dewey | Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
I highly recommend Michael Hoy’s essay: “Why Corporations are Not People...”
Mr. Hoy was the owner and publisher of Loompanics and had been for decades until the Feds and the Patriot Act put him out of business.
Paul | Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
Great article.
I love some of these comments – corporations apparently are not taxed, can exist without owners, and have some method for expressing themselves without a voicebox...or a will.
bob | Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
John,
Exactly right! I have been trying to find the right words to explain this to those who do not understand and you nailed it! Thank you.
Suzanne Cole-Rice | Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
Dennis,
So according to your censoring ideology, your form of censorship can apply to newspapers and non-for-profit groups. Corporations aren’t “evil” by nature. The democratic political economy allows the corporation do such heinous acts. And also, lobbying isn’t a de facto bad or good thing. It can go both ways; for example, if a certain manufacturer wants to lobby congressmen to get rid of steel tariffs so they can be more competitive with their foreign competitors who also use steel in their manufacturing process.
The_Orlonater | Jan 31, 2010 | Reply
Jeffery,
Corporations don’t pay taxes? The U.S. has some of the highest corporate income taxes in the world. Secondly, what kind of absurd statement is that concerning corporations lobbying against environmental laws? The bigger corporations have a tendency to lobby for them if they can afford it and their smaller and foreign competitors who already have such laws in their respective country or state cannot afford it. And also, what should be a corporations responsibility if not profit for its shareholders? How does it get it in the first place? From consumers rewarding choosing to buy whatever they provide, or they can go through the political capitalist route of intervention. And lastly, why don’t we just censor non-profit groups who also “send a lot of money” and newspapers? But let me ask you, who should do the censoring? Don’t the regulators also have incentives of their own? Can you not see the problems that can occur with the overturning of this case?
The_Orlonater | Jan 31, 2010 | Reply