Citizen Hudge, The Corporate Person

“I will whisper in the reader’s ear a horrible suspicion that has sometimes haunted me: the suspicion that Hudge and Gudge are secretly in partnership. That the quarrel they keep up in public is very much of a put-up job, and that the way that they play into each others’ hands is not an everlasting coincidence. Gudge, the plutocrat, wants an archaic industrialism; Hudge, the idealist, provides him with lyric praises of anarchy. ”

--G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With the World,190

This plutocrat/idealist, big business/big government partnership is likely to get even more entrenched after the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC a couple of weeks ago. Reaffirming the doctrine that corporations are persons under the law, the court concluded that corporations, just like other folks, are entitled to free speech protection. Specifically, corporations and unions are allowed to contribute unlimited money in support of political candidates.At The Distributist Review, John Médaille minces no words in responding to this ruling:

The ruling is nothing short of a coup, a fundamental change in the structure of the America polity. It will work not only to the defeat of democracy, but to the destruction of what's left of the small businessman. From this day forward, no one will hold office who does not have the approval of the corporations, no small business will exist save by their sufferance. (http://distributism.blogspot.com/2010/01/welcome-to-plutocracy.html)

You go, Distributist Review! Dire as Médaille's prognosis is, it also illustrates what may be the only good thing about this ruling: Anger at this court-authorized “coup” may widen an already-growing rift within another version of the Hudge-Gudge partnership—the strange partnership between libertarians and corporations at the heart of the Republican Party. How can tea partiers and bailed-out bankers be represented by the same political pary? Other recent posts in the Distributist Review have mused on the possibility of a distributist-libertarian alliance. Perhaps such an alliance would pull libertarians away from uncritical support of policies that exacerbate the divide between the owner and the owned. Perhaps the distributists and libertarians together could then have a more productive dialogue with the left, recognizing a shared interest in limiting corporate power.

That sounds like Democrat propaganda, I’m sure—but think about it for a minute. I know that many Chestertonians still see Hudge and Gudge as as big government and big business—and they’re right; of course, big business often uses big government as its instrument, and big government claims the restraint of big business as its own raison d’etre. (See comments by davymax3 on the post below.) BUT, what if Ron Paul or Dick Armey is Hudge? In America in the Twenty-First Century, I hear “lyric praises of anarchy” (Chesterton’s phrase, above) less from people who call themselves anarchists than from libertarians and tea partiers: “government is the problem, not the solution,” we are told; shrink government to the vanishing point, and a thousand entrepreneurial flowers will fill the air with the sweet scent of freedom. Nostalgic for a past in which people were free of the government, libertarians and tea partiers may promote the interests of others who are nostalgic for a past in which corporations were even more free to exploit the people.

Those who are nostalgic for such times should re-watch Citizen Kane. Orson Wells takes Chesterton’s horrible suspicion a further step. For Wells, the plutocrat and the idealist are more than partners; they are—in body, voice and name—the same. And their union is not only exploitative of the people but ultimately self-destructive.

“The trouble is, you don’t realize that you are talking to two people,” Charles Foster Kane declares when asked how his own newspaper can oppose his own interests. The Charles Foster Kane who is a major shareholder in Metropolitan transfer Trust is not to be confused with the Charles Foster Kane who is publisher of the Enquirer. The shareholder would gladly contribute a thousand dollars to help boycott that scoundrel of a publisher and run his newspaper out of town. And the Kane-the-publisher sees it as his duty to protect “decent, hard-working people” from “money mad pirates” like Kane-the-investor.

And yet even the publisher Kane claims a purpose in the corporate world. If he doesn’t “defend the interests of the underprivileged, somebody else will—maybe somebody without any money or any property and that would be too bad.” The monied tribune of the people maybe the only thing separating the other monied interests from an empowered populace and authentic calls for revolutionary change.

So, Citizen Kane is two people—and they are both corporate. The flesh-and-blood man—the man who remembers Rosebud and wants to love and be loved—gets crowded out between the magnate and the publisher. In fact, it is the attempted return of that repressed third man, in all his human pain and vulnerability, that dooms both Kane-as-Gudge and Kane-as-Hudge; the man’s distorted attempts at love lead to political failure and bankruptcy.

It’s just a movie, and just the story of one life. But do Hudge and Gudge as corporate persons also crowd out the flesh-and-blood human at the level of a whole society? It seems more likely, unfortunately, after Citizens United vs. FEC. This makes it all the more likely that the activists dominating our political scene will not be ordinary humans, like the flesh-and-blood Kane, but corporate entities, like the trust represented by Kane-as-Gudge and the publishing company represented by Kane-as-Hudge. If even the supposed populists are represented by a corporation like Kane’s Enquirer, then where is the place in politics for a real, human citizen?

Am I saying that corporations are evil? I’m really not. I think that corporations have built economies, created jobs, improved standards of living. Good stuff. But they’re not people, and they shouldn’t be in charge. As I understand it (and I’m not a lawyer or an economist, I admit) corporations were created, in part, to take legal liability off individuals and thus facilitate risks that might be productive. But it’s problematic when corporations deflect not only legal responsibility, but also moral responsibility. In a burning building, I’m sure no HMO executive would abandon a baby in favor of a basket of cash. And I’m sure these executives , in their hearts, care more about sick babies than about profits. But if corporations are set up to make money from healthcare, and if corporate systems prioritize profit-making (their very reason for being) over individual human needs, they’re not being malicious; they’re just being corporations. And it’s all too easy for the human employee to defer to the corporate employer. It’s very difficult, in fact, to do otherwise. And if corporations dominate our political system even more than they do now, it will be even more difficult to formulate policies that are just and moral. As Citizen Kane illustrates, deferring individual and political responsibility to corporations is destructive to everyone--most especially to the "corporate types" who do the deferring.

Government: The Good, the Bad and the Big

I'm starting this blog to avoid being too much of a comment-box hog on the blog of the American Chesterton Society. Specifically, I want to respond to a message by Davymax3, who was responding in turn to an obnoxiously long series of messages by me. I had said that the main problem with government is not that it's too big; davy had challenged me to defend this heresy; and we are now arguing about a range of issues, from Katrina to health care reform.

Now, Davy...

On Katrina:

It's not at all clear to me that New Orleans and Louisiana alone had enough resources to prepare for and respond to a disaster like Katrian. If you want me to believe that, I'm going to need some evidence. Regardless, though, I'm sure you would agree that the slow state and local response was justified or made inevitable by the mere existence of FEMA. The state and local governments are accountable to their voters and could have asserted their share of responsibility.

And whether or not the local and state governments had sufficient respources of their own, and whether or not the federal government's customary level of responsibility for disaster relief somehow inhibited the state and local efforts, surely you would agree that the federal govenrment, by principles of subsidiarity or just by the golden rule, had some kind of supporting role to play. And the fact remains that what the federal government did, it did badly. The media did a very good job of exposing this, and evidence should be readily available on a cursory Google search. The federal government's response was too incompetent to be blamed on mere bigness; inexpereinced people were in charge, important pirorities were overlooked, and the government simply hadn't developed to capacity to effectively support its people in the event of this kind of disaster. It was not just big governent, but bad or insufficient government.

On corporate "evil":

You say I described the health care companies as evil because I said they prioritize profits over patients. But I don't think we can describe people as evil simply because they run for-profit businesses for profit. that's they're paradigm; they are accountable to shareholders, for whom they are trying to do a good job. I know people in the insurance people--I even very briefly worked in it myself--and most of them strong me as good, caring, well-intentioned people. None of them struck me as personally evil. Is there an unintended systemic evil in the structure that allows for-profit companies to make healthcare decisions without much regulation? There may be, though I'm not sure the word "evil" is helpful at this time and under these circumstances. I'm not interested in demonizing anyone; I'm interested in developing a system that works better for the public.

On statistics:

One can always impute bias to statistics, but tell me where to find statistics that trump WHO's and support your claim that we have "the best health care in the world." Immigrants I know from Canada and Europe have many good things to say about the health case.

There are many people who don't meet the income guidelines for Medicaid but still can't afford insurance--especially if they have "pre-existing" coverage. Massachusetts mandates coverage but has been giving a lot of hardship waivers; why is this, if insurance is so affordable to everyone who doesn't already have Medicaid or Medicare?

On the insurance mandate:

If your uninsured friends do get sick, they'll get expensive (albeit ineffective) emergency room care that is subsidized by the rest of us. And if they are young, healthy people, their non-pariticipation in the insurance pool is making insurance more expensive for the rest of us. I believe that it is reasonable for society to decide, through our government, that their non-participation is an irresponsible drain on the public treasury which they much make up through an excise tax. I don't think that this reasoning would allow the government to "mandate anything"; I don't see your reasoning for that.

Lowering costs:

The current legistlation doesn;t do as much to control costs as I would like. The mandate would probably help; a larger insurance pool with more young and healthy participants will help to bring insurance costs down.

Changing health care delivery would also help. There seems to be a lot of agreement among experts that our system offers too much incentive to order unnecessary tests and procedures.

If we had a single-payer system or a strong public option, the government could negotiate reasonable rates with providers--as has been done in other industrialized countries. Paying for health care through taxes could be cheaper in that it would relieve businesses and their employers of responsibility for premiums.

Quality:

Of course technological innovation is key, and of course the U.S. must continue to drive it. No one is arguing with that. In fact, the stimulus act invested in health care innovation, and so would the current legislation.

Some of the measures that have been proposed to reduce costs--such as better use of information technology and more research on best practices--would also contribute to improvement of quality. So would the legislation's emphasis on preventative measures. The current legislation doesn't socialize the pharmaceutical companies (or any other sector of the health care industry); drug companies would still do research.

Making the government ours:

I've said that there's fat to cut out of government, and there are certainly areas in which the governmetn exerts too much control. I'm glad the the current Justice Department has relaxed its position on enforcing federal laws against medical marijuana. The idea of withholding federal transportation money from states that don't agree to certain driving policies seems defensible to me; it's reasonable to expect individual states to be good partners in protecting the safety of interstate transportation. I would offer "don't ask, don't tell" as another example of an overly intrusive government; our government should not be in the business of regulated how members of the armed forces define their sexuality.

I think that in the fullness of time, a smaller government is a great goal. But I don't think we'll ever have anything like a "distributist" society if we can;t first, and transitionally, make government into a counterweight against big business.

As President Obama said in his inaugural address, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."

On being a demogogue:

I don't think my arguments are popular enough to constitute demagoguery. :) The CFP writer, I think, is contributing to an extremist subset of conservatism that is rising to power by appealing to people's cynicism and making a slew of false claims (from "death panels!" to "Obama's a foreigner!") that add up to "tyranny." If you Google this writer, you can see him asserting or taking for granted many of these claims, which have been widely debunked. I think he and his colleagues are demagogues. I don't think, though, that they have a monopoly on demagoguery; you can find examples on the left as well.