Article by Frederick Bell

Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash

The corporation has obtained absolute power in society that is becoming untouchable by all public spheres, including your own government. Overtime they have acquired the ability to lobby in elections and therefore interfere with public policy, such as environmental laws and control consumption trends by using targeted adds via social media, they are doing all this through laws and legal frameworks that are protecting them. But how has this happened and what can we do to prevent this from becoming too excessive, or has it already?

The term ‘corporation’ can be understood as a ‘social institution’, it has become the world’s most dominant economic institution and controls domains of society positioned within the public sphere. By nature, the corporations legal mandate is to pursue relentlessly its own self interest regardless of the harm it might cause, Joe Balkan (2005)[1]. It is considered by many a ‘pathological institution’ a formidable power that stands above everyone and acts entirely in self-interest. This is certainly true in the case of 2025 US election. In Trumps latest electoral success BP lobbied his administration to weaken environmental laws, (despite their past commitment to sustainability), preventing them from expanding their oil pipelines and power plants, they got reviews reduced and eliminated the need for federal agencies to calculate the environmental impacts on such projects. Zack Polanski’s[2], Green party leader recent comments summarise this as ‘it’s the corporations who are destroying our environment and the same people who are also destroying our democracies’.

Corporations relate to others superficially, their goal is to present themselves to the public in a way that is appealing, Balkan (2005). They are constantly trying to evolve to appeal to the public, for instance, they adhere to more morally based business programmes, to appeal to the consumer conscience. Is this a genuine concern for society or is it just to present themselves to their consumers? If you look at environmental protests and the responses from corporations, you can start to see a pattern. For example, ‘GREENPEACE VS SHELL: BRENT SPAR’, this campaign to stop the sinking of the Spar oil platform sparked massive public support across Europe which led to their share price dropping and a significant decrease in their sales, the project to sink the oil platform was terminated to the success of green peace. Although this was a win for environmentalism it was clearly just a move to appeal to consumer demands and trends , this idea of ‘capitalism with a conscience’ is just a method for corporations to compete for higher moral ground and to please their consumer demands (Balkan, 2005) .Human trends are at the root of everything and are shaped by corporations to boost their economic outcome, for instance, there has been a cultural shift to individuals eating hamburgers pushed by food corporations as it’s a more profitable product, the corporations incentivise farmers to shift their land from forestry to grass to raise the beef, creating a pollutant source that contributes to 20% of greenhouse gases, (Charles Perrow and Simone Pulver, 2015)[3].

Economist Milton Friedman believes that new moralism is in fact immoral, as there is but one corporate responsibility, they must make as much money as possible for their shareholders, however, this doesn’t consider our consumer and worker power. What can you do take back control from the corporations?  We have to put pressure on the government to impose regulations and use enforcement agencies to strengthen the liability of top directors, improve accountability by using grassroot politics to look to local government bodies as state bodies are more likely to forge alliances with citizen groups and to weaken corporations the democracy must be strengthened, for instance, proportional representation as a voting system would make electoral investment less decisive and it encourages a more widespread group of parties so there could be less capture for the corporations. We have to be a push for publicly financed elections so organisations cant lobby public policy any longer, (Bakan, 2005).

Overall, corporations have gained an excessive amount of power that has destabilised the equilibrium. They have been granted authority in politics which creates an undemocratic institution and have gained a formidable influence over public trends and consumption patterns. However, it’s not too late to stop, as Bakan has argued there are many powers we hold as induvial and as a community to take back our freedoms and to stabilise society again.

[1] https://read.kortext.com/reader/epub/607073?hash=e0c7a2fb

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KsgxOrgbOA

[3] https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/manchester/reader.action?c=RVBVQg&docID=3564729&ppg=83

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