Customer Reviews

Corporate Predators: The Hunt for Mega-Profits and the Attack on Democracy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The one-star, long-winded review offered below by Greg Peisert almost entirely misses the point of this rich and rewarding book. Peisert's comment cites low unemployment in the United States, but ignores the atrocious condition of overseas work for American corporations and the proliferation of unlivable-wage jobs here at home. Both of these trends are well-documented in "Corporate Predators". You may also notice that Peisert's refutation of the book is based upon cases in which one corporation succumbs to another; he forgets the subject matter of the book is the treatment of workers by corporations, not the treatment of corporations by one another. As the book documents, the treatment of many workers by their employers has become simply shameful, and much of this trend is due to the rise of de facto corporate government here and world-wide. A book well worth reading, and one that's long overdue.

The text, after the three page intro by Nader, consists of 202 pages with some cartoons as well as section title pages included, followed by a ten page index that includes subjects and publications as well as names.

Mokhiber is the editor of the "Corporate Crime Reporter" and Weissman is the editor of the "Multinational Monitor." The text of the book consists of 60 articles taken from these two periodicals divided into eight sections as follows:

1. Corporate Crime and Violence

2. The Corporate Attack on Democracy

3. The Global Hunt for Mega-Profits

4. Corporation Nation

5. The Big Boys Unite: Merger Mania in the 1990's

6. Commercialism Run Amok

7. Of Sweatshops and Union Busting

8. Do I Have to Arrest You? Corporations and the Law

As a collection of news columns, the book consists of anecdotes with conclusions that tend toward hyperbole, but for the most part are accurate, if a bit emotionalized. Since each article was written for the intended audience of subscribers to the two periodicals (the date is indicated at the beginning of each), they read like they are preaching to the converted. No neoliberal will be convinced of such a statement as:

"Most corporate criminologists agree that corporate crime and violence inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined. That includes killings and deaths."

The authors provide no non-anecdotal evidence for what might seem an astounding statement, but I have read widely enough to know that it is essentially true, depending on how you define "corporate crime." This assertion is repeated twice elsewhere, indicating little or no editing before assembly here. A few of the articles are followed by a one or two paragraph update bearing on events that happened between original publication and the date this book went to press. There are no footnotes, and scant reference to any sources for their information. I suppose if you have access to Nexus or something similar, you could do a date-limited search (based on when the article was written) to find out more.

It would have been nice if Mokhiber and Weissman had provided an over-arching introductory essay of, say, 20 pages, giving an overview of the problems involving the ever-increasing expansion of corporate behemoths, drawing a relationship between relative power and systemic greed-driven flaunting of the law, and putting into historical context the privatization of profits and socialization of costs. It was lazy and irresponsible of them not to do this, and that is why it gets only three stars.

The book is a quick and fascinating read, but I recommend you check it out from your local library. That's what I did!

For the past twenty years, after a decade and a half of populist resurgence against corporate abuses by consumer, environmental, women's rights and civil rights forces, big business has been on a rampage to control our society. Whether these business supremacies are called corporatization, commercialism, monopolies or the corporate state, the overall concentration of power and wealth in ever fewer multinational corporate centers is a matter of record.

In arena after arena -- government, workplace, marketplace, media, environment, education, science, technology-- the dominant players are large corporations. What countervailing forces that our society used to depend upon for some balance are not in retreat against the aggressive expansion of corporate influence far beyond its traditional mercantile boundaries?

The enlarged power that corporations deploy to further increase their revenues and socialize their costs comes from many sources -- old and new. Roughly eighty percent of the money contributed to federal candidates come from business interests. The mobility to export capital has given transnational companies major leverage against local, state and federal officials, not to mention against organized and unorganized labor. The swell of corporate welfare handouts has reached new depths. The contrived complexity of many financial and other services serves to confuse, deplete and daunt consumers who lose significant portions of their income in a manipulative marketplace. Alliances, joint ventures and other complex collaborations between should-be competitors have made a mockery of what is left of antitrust enforcement.

The opportunities to control or defeat governmental attempts for corporate accountability that flow from transcending national jurisdictions into globalized strategies to escape taxation and pit countries and their workers against one another appear to be endless. The autocratic systems of governance called GATT and NAFTA reflect to the smallest detail ways that giant corporations wish to control the world. These firms are on a collision course against democratic processes, and the merging of states and businesses, to the latter's advantage, weakens relentlessly both the restraints of the law and the willingness of legislators to do anything about it.

Taken together, the world is witnessing its subjugation to the large corporate model of economic development, the large corporate model of technology and the large corporate model of culture itself. These accelerating trendlines invite accelerating comprehension and response. History demonstrates that commercialism knows few boundaries that are not externally imposed. All the major religions have warned their adherents against the excesses of commercial value systems, albeit with different languages, images and metaphors.

Specific descriptions of corporate misbehavior do nourish proper generalizations that in turn lead to more just movements and practices. Here, columnists Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman provide a distinct service in Corporate Predators. It is not just the versatility of their writings -- covering bribery, pollution, corporate crime, fraud and abuse, failure of law enforcement, union-busting, the mayhem inflicted by product defects and toxics, the deep gap between the rich and the rest of America, corporate front groups, the media censorship and self-censorship, the profiteering, the pillaging overseas and more-- but it is also the impact on the reader that comes from aggregating evidence. Our country does not collect statistics on corporate crime e way it does on street crime. For it to do so would begin to highlight a little-attended agenda for law enforcement and other corporate reforms. Neither Congress nor the White House and its Justice Department have made any moves over the years to assemble from around the country the abuses of corporations in quantifiable format so as to drive policy.

So, description -- accurate, representational description -- must now suffice. As the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter (Mokhiber)and the editor of the Multinational Monitor (Weissman), the authors know well the difference between anecdotes that are illustrative and that are idiosyncratic. This volume of their weekly columns carries the evidence that illustrates patterns of continuing corporate derelictions, not lonely deviations from a more congenial norm.

The authors' experience over the years with the impact of disclosures has led them to the conclusion that the facts must be linked to civic engagement and democratic activity for change. If disclosure produced its own dynamic imperatives for change, the recurrent exposure of corporate abuses in such mainstream publications as the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and some national television programs like Sixty Minutes would have caused these changes. Such, unfortunately has not been the case. The linkages between knowledge and action have not been sufficient. But readers of Common Courage Press published books tend towards citizen activism. They want to know because they want to do. Some may even agree with the ancient Chinese saying that "To know and not to do is not to know."

So, go forward readers who wish to be leaders in the advancement of justice -- what Daniel Webster once called "the great work of men on Earth"-- and savor the writings that will motivate more and more women and men to band together in organizations that build a more just democracy.

Ralph Nader, 1999

Mokhiber and Weissman provide plenty of potential fuel for the fire with their insightful discussions on corporate chartering, democracy for sale, and Constitutional abuses. Unlike many, they name names and reference credible sources. Unless the dangers of corporate dominance are addressed, we can expect books such as Corporate Predators to become very popular during the next economic downturn. Read it now and not only avoid the rush, avoid the dangers they point to so well.

While the gentleman bellow makes some good points about a balance that should be maintained in this type of work, I think that some level of extreme is needed in a counter attack against the un-emotional, profit driven pseudo-science that staunch capitalists spout as if pure Capitalism and the so-called "free market" were the only option this world has. If the previous reviewer were realy concerned about balance and fairness, then he would recognize that some level of emotion is needed to help the people of the world achieve some level of economic and social equality. The rapidly growing gap between rich and poor is an obvious result of the type of socialism for the wealthy and capitalism for the poor that exists in this country, and this book does a good job of exemplifying the extreme consequences of this situation. Besides, Capitalism is just a eco-philosophical theory espoused as science.

Yawn...more of the same tired drivel. Mokhiber and Weissman have produced yet another Chicken-Little (the sky is falling!) diatribe against big business. Blatantly one-sided, the relentless jeremiad fails to offer either coherent substance or any fresh ideas on a strategy to preserve the key strengths of the free market while mitigating some of its weaknesses. The book is comprised of a series of short vignettes, some of which are interesting, but most of which contain unsubstantiated claims and some obviously false assertions. It's a kind of "Jerry Springer version" of the corporate world. When speaking of corporate mergers in the 90's, the authors write, "The new mergers, like their forebears a decade earlier, pose serious threats to society. They undermine job security, raise consumer prices, inhibit small business development, undermine the dynamism of the economy and sap the vitality of our political democracy." It is more than obvious to the most casual observer that such claims are, to put it bluntly, crap. You don't need to be a genius or read a really well-researched and informative book, like Michael Cox and Richard Alm, "Myths of Rich and Poor", to know that unemployment has never been lower, the economy has never been more dynamic or resilient, consumers have never enjoyed lower prices in real, inflation-adjusted terms, and small businesses have never been a more "thriving" or more important part of the economy. True, the vitality of our democracy is in question, but it could be argued that corporations have nothing to do with that, as Jesse Ventura, who brought new voters out in droves, seems to be demonstrating. And while some of the canards here are obvious, for others, you might need to read Cox and Alm to understand why statements like those on the back cover of Weissman and Mokhiber, that "American's incomes have plummeted since 1980", are pure nonsense. Over and over again Mokhiber and Weissman pound on the pseudo-science drum that passes among the scientifically illiterate for "fact" on everything from cancer to global warming. (This penchant for irrational, emotion-driven pseudo-science in our society does not bode well for our long term prosperity.) Mokhiber and Weissman spend a lot of time talking about corporations buying political influence, and about corporate "power" as if it is the same as the de jure power of the state. They do a disservice by confounding the issues. I would claim that in so doing they are being intellectually dishonest, but I can't make that judgment. It may be that they actually don't grasp the issue. It is as if the politicians who accept corporate money are helpless to do otherwise and in the Wacky World of Weissman, escape all culpability in the trade. (It takes two to tango.) Rather than blather about "corporate influence" it would be more helpful if Mokhiber and Weissman would give some thought to the overall dynamics of political influence and power-brokering, with some creative suggestions concerning how it could be better neutralized in the halls of Congress. Weissman and Mokhiber ignore the obvious fallacy in their oft-repeated claim that large corporations survive by manipulating markets, consumers and government regulations. Right. Tell that to Control Data, U.S. Steel, and now, Compaq, only a few among a host of huge companies who have found that if you don't compete, you're dead meat in the marketplace, money and influence be damned. Finally, Weissman and Mokhiber blast the Clinton administration for being hard on the small guys and going light on the big companies. True, the administration's policies toward small business are abysmal. But it would be hard to argue that the government has gone "light" on Microsoft and Intel, for example, among many others that are mysteriously not mentioned in this hopelessly biased work. What is needed is not another myopic, Chicken-Little diatribe about how we're all victims of some mythical corporate conspiracy to take over the world. What we need is some well-researched, balanced, rational, strategic thinking about how our government policies create an unhealthy alliance between government and corporations. It would be interesting if Weissman and Mokhiber could take a serious, balanced look at how government policy motivates corporate misbehavior, and how corporations could be curbed in their efforts to obtain through legislative fiat what they may be unable to obtain in the rough and tumble competition of the open market. In closing, I was surprised that Ralph Nader wrote the introduction to this book. Even though Weissman and Mokhiber are part of his organization, I would have thought he would demand better quality, maybe a rewrite, before he would attach his name to it.