Corporations are not People

The big Supreme Court ruling that opens the floodgates to corporate cash flowing into elections takes as its key assumption that corporations are, essentially, persons.  Or, at least, that is what five justices believe.   Four others disagreed.  Justice Steven wrote the dissent, in which he rejects the central assumption:

Stevens hammers, more than once this morning from the bench on the principle that corporations "are not human beings" and "corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires." He insists that "they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

Confucius would agree.  Corporations are businesses, driven by profit motive.  Not only do they have no feelings or thoughts, but they also have no parents, no children, no relatives.  They lack the fundamental familial and social duties that make humans human.  And given their basic purpose of profit-making they are, for Confucius and Mencius, fundamentally destructive of Humanity.  Remember these words from the Analects:

The Master said: “If there were an honorable way to get rich, I’d do it, even if it   meant being a stooge standing around with a whip.  But there isn’t an honorable way, so I just do what I like.” (7.12)

子曰：“富而可求也，雖執鞭之士，吾亦為之。如不可求，從吾所好.”

Mencius agrees.  When talking with Sung K’eng about a plan to convince political leaders that they should avoid war with the argument that “there’s no profit in it,” Mencius pressed back:

  “Your intent is noble, but your appeal misguided. If you talk to these emperors about profit, and in their love of profit they stop their armies – their armies will rejoice in peace and delight in profit. Soon ministers will embrace profit in serving their sovereign, sons will embrace profit in serving their fathers, younger brothers will embrace profit in serving their elder brothers – and all of them will have abandoned Humanity and Duty. When these relationships become a matter of profit, the nation is doomed to ruin.” (12.4)

曰：先生之志則大矣，先生之號則不可。先生以利說秦楚之王，秦楚之王悅於利，以罷三軍之師，是三軍之士樂罷而悅於利也。為人臣者懷利以事其君，為人子者懷利以事其父，為人弟者懷利以事其兄。是君臣、父子、兄弟終去仁義，懷利以相接，然而不亡者，未之有也.

But corporations are not even stooges with whips.  They are inanimate, impersonal and, ultimately, inhumane.  They should not be treated in the same manner as persons.  If they are allowed to infuse the profit motive into all human relationships, the nation is doomed to ruin...

Comments

[peony]

Corporations are legal persons (法人)and it seems to me that rather than basing your dissent on the fact that legal persons are fundamentally different from natural persons (as Stevens does) it would perhaps make more sense to ask whether in fact we do want to grant legal persons (ie corporations) all the same rights as natural persons (ie human beings). If we conflate the two, then what? Corporations with the right to bear arms and the right to marry and the right to drink after they are 21...

And the other side of the coin?
http://mountainrunner.us/2006/02/google.html

[The Rambling Taoist]

What's even worse is that natural people DIE, but a corporation can live in perpetuity. In essence, from the perspective of Christian belief, corporations have been afforded the same status as God.

[justsomeguy]

I don't know whether corporations are people. If we accept Tu's line of thinking (and, admittedly, there is as much Kirkegaard there as there is Confucius) then a case could be made for corporations being an expression of personhood that is in keeping with a Confucian vision.

But that isn't the question a Confucian needs to ask. What a Confucian needs to ask is whether or not they are benevolent persons, whether or not they actualize ren. And corporations do not actualize ren; indeed, they are designed not to so that they can further their profit.

And Mencius has a bunch of bad things to say about people (however we conceive them) that are in a position of power (which corporations undeniably are) that fail to actualize ren in order to further their own bottom line . . .

Confucius does too, for that matter.

[Casey Kochmer]

rent the movie " the corporation" excellent and details this process of what we see.

[stevelaudig]

The Supreme Court may have just made the First Amendment a suicide note for representative democracy in the U.S. But it was in ill-health anyway.