Gary Gutting, professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, has an incisive piece on how to think about corporations. Must read, especially for leftists and liberals who tend to see corporations as evil, rather than as dangerous—a distinction that is really important to understand.
Far more important than questions about what corporations are [i.e., whether they are "people" or not] is the question of what attitude we should have toward them. Should we, as corporate public relations statements often suggest, think of them as friends (if we buy and are satisfied with their products) or as family (if we work for them)? Does it make sense to be loyal to a corporation as either a customer or as an employee? More generally, even granted that corporations are not fully persons in the way that individuals are, do they have some important moral standing in our society?
My answer to all these questions is no, because corporations have no core dedication to fundamental human values. (To be clear, I am speaking primarily of large, for-profit, publicly owned corporations.) Such corporations exist as instruments of profit for their shareholders. This does not mean that they are inevitably evil or that they do not make essential economic contributions to society. But it does mean that their moral and social value is entirely instrumental. There are ways we can use corporations as means to achieve fundamental human values, but corporations do not of themselves work for these values. In fact, left to themselves, they can be serious threats to human values that conflict with the goal of corporate profit.
More here.
The article deals with similar ground as the excellent documentary, The Corporation. I highly recommend that doc to lay out the logical groundwork for what Gutting delves into a little more deeply here.
Posted by: Usha | October 14, 2011 at 08:08 PM