Is Walmart a psychopath?
In his book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, argues that in contemporary society, corporations become inherently immoral creations due to their legal obligation to increase stock value.
“The corporation is created as an institution in a certain way in that its managers and directors always have to put the interests of the corporation and the shareholders first,” said Bakan by phone this week. “Its primary goal is to make money.”
Bakan, who is speaking at the MacEwan Hall Ballroom Thu., Oct. 27 as part of the Students’ Union Political Action Week, is probably best known for his role in the production of the award-winning documentary of the same name.
The Corporation, which was shown in That Empty Space earlier this week, won eight awards including the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Most Popular Canadian Film and the Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award, and has viewpoints from people such as Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and Naomi Klein. According to Bakan, documentaries are important as they not only entertain and bring public awareness to issues, but also act as vehicles for change.
“I think there’s no question documentaries have helped create a public awareness around issues and by implication, this is going to effect corporations as people learn more,” said Bakan. “[People] are going to be demanding different things as consumers and as citizens, and that hopefully will have an impact on what governments do in relation to corporations and what corporations themselves do.”
That said, Bakan maintains the social and environmental changes made by corporations are mostly created to improve public-relations and are limited by their strategic importance. Furthermore, media concentration by for-profit groups is making the presentation of alternative and dissenting viewpoints difficult. As such, governmental institutions need to be empowered by an educated population and given more power to regulate corporations.
“We are existing in a political context where increasingly corporations are positioning themselves as not just money-making institutions but also political actors,” he noted. “They’re positioning themselves as entities that want to form partnerships with various non-governmental and governmental organizations pursuing environmental goals and social justice goals.”
“Be wary of this. Be sceptical of this. Corporations aren’t institutionally created in a way where they can actually pursue these progressive agendas honestly and fully. While with one hand, companies are making partnerships with the United Nations on environmental issues, with the other hand they’re lobbying as hard as they can against Kyoto and against various regulatory protections against toxic chemicals. It’s basically a public relations move on their part.”