Article by Katrina Villanueva

Photo by Paul Fiedler on Unsplash

The idea of corrupt organisations and the evils of capitalism is a topic that has permeated academic literature, but what does this really mean? Well, to truly understand this concept we must first define what a corporation is. Simply put, the phrase corporation describes a business organisation with its own legal identity. This means corporations are not defined by their ownership, for instance how Tesla was its own legal identity prior to being owned by Elon Musk. These corporations are also defined by their distinct hierarchical structure made up of multiple layers, such as how workers are overlooked by managers and these managers are also overlooked by a higher power. Moreover, this system is void of democracy as workers cannot vote on who will become their next manager, boss etc like they would be able to vote for a political leader. Instead workers must accept the authority of whoever is appointed. This system gives us a small insight into how dehumanising the corporation can be.

Previous to the birth of the modern day corporation businesses had never been able to grow globally as companies have now. Corporations have grown so much that it is essentially impossible for the individual not to endorse them. For instance, the company Nestle owns over 2,000 brands globally and many of them produce food and other necessary household items. And these items are then sold by stores owned by other huge corporations, such as the UK supermarket ASDA which is owned by the American corporation Walmart. Or even in media consumption, the corporation Vivendi owns the channel Canal+ which is available across Europe, Asia and Africa. The corporation now “governs our lives” (Bakan, 2004).

However, to truly understand how corporations grew to be the dominant economic institution we must also discuss the history of the corporation to understand why it is inherently corrupt. The corporation is a relatively new social structure, “over the past 150 years the corporation has risen from relative obscurity to become the world’s dominant economic institution” (Bakan, 2004) The first corporations only emerged in 17th century Europe, during the colonial period. These were corporations such as the South sea Company formed in 1710, a key actor in colonialism much like the other original corporations. The South Sea Company, for example, was “a scam from the very start” as the directors lacked knowledge of the entire continent of South America. The directors simply wanted to make “fabulous profit” from their British exports. This shows how corporations were born from theft of materials and people.

Within these colonial corporations, we also see the birth of the aforementioned organisation of the corporation. These companies were huge in their profit, size, and global reach due to them being built off of slave labour. Another distinct feature of corporations was born, these colonial corporations originated the concept of having shareholders separate investors from owners and managers. However, many corporations have not strayed from their colonial pasts. Many corporations, such as infamous fast fashion brands, are known for making overseas branches often in Asia so that they can pay workers below minimum wage and continue to exploit them. Another key contemporary example would be the corporation Shell, which owns oil rigs on the Niger Delta which have led to it being “one of the most oil-polluted places on Earth” (The Guardian). This shows how western corporations continue to exploit countries that have already faced the harms of colonialism.

So, what is meant by the corrupt corporation is that corporations were built on the blood of slaves and continue to reap the benefits of colonialism. And, like a slap in the face, corporations have grown to the point where supporting them is inevitable no matter how hard you try. But, hope is not lost. As evidenced by the existence of activist groups such as greenpeace, or even the existence of worker unions, corporations cannot prevent civil actors from acting against them. This shows the “double movement” (Polanyi, 1944) which describes how as markets grow into new unregulated territories civil actors begin to fight back. For instance, climate activists such as the have been protesting against corporations such as Shell for the harm they’ve done to the environment. So although the corporation itself is corrupt, we can put our faith into civil actors to make change as these corporations rely on the exploitation and profit from civil actors to continue.

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