Beyond Corporate Power

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/08/beyond-corporate-power/
Date Written:  2019-02-08
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23360

By concentrating on corporate power we can end up looking to the state for solutions. But the only way to achieve even the moderate reforms necessary is through revolutionary mass movements.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

If we ever want to get closer than "an arm's reach of power" we will need millions of people acting in ways that threaten the elite's power and profit. The quest for limitless power and profit is the new rule underlying the corporate state and the main driver of climate disaster. We must overturn this rule knowing full well just how deeply entrenched corporate power is. No easy victories....

Corporate power has produced multiple interlocking crises that cannot be resolved within the existing system. Consider the mountain of evidence on wealth inequality - a crisis responsible for much of the social dysfunction we face precisely because it combines and intensifies the inequalities of race, gender and class, threatens our environmentand democracy and magnifies global inequalities produced by empire and colonialism....

It's hard to see that any movement against corporate power could succeed without using all the non-violent means at its disposal: social movement unionism, tenants unions, massive non-violent civil disobedience, strikes, communes, cooperatives of all sorts, occupations, rank and file groups, full-fledged social movement for peace and justice and all the forms of disruptive protest activities they can produce. Election do matter, but without these struggles and disruptions electoral efforts will fail to deliver.