The Neglect of Democracy

John Ikerd

The 2008 presidential candidates raised and spent more than one billion dollars, about $8.50 per voter in the presidential election. Obviously, each person who voted didn’t contribute $8.50 to support their candidate’s attempts to win the election. Some contributed millions while others contributed nothing. Other than each casting one vote, Americans did not participate equally in determining the outcome of the election or even in deciding which candidates appeared on their ballots.

The most fundamental principle of democracy is that all people are of equal inherent worth and thus have equal inherent rights, including the right to participate in making the rules by which all are governed. The democratic government of the United States was founded upon this principle of equal rights for all. Our government has been exemplary, though less than perfect, in protecting the rights spelled out specifically in our Constitution. However, the inherent right of all people to an equal voice in the political affairs of the nation has been solely neglected.

Throughout American history, the wealthy have had more political influence than the poor. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed this inequity in 1976 when it affirmed that spending money to influence elections represents “constitutionally protected free speech.” With this decision, the person who can afford $1,000 dollars was granted one-hundred times as much influence over political processes as the person who can only afford to spend $10. Two years later, the Supreme Court affirmed that corporations have a constitutional right to make political contributions, allowing the corporate concentration of economic power to be wielded as political power. In addition, the political power of corporations is not limited to campaign contributions: they lobby our lawmakers, advise our regulators, influence public opinion of political matters, and essentially dictate the economic policies of the United States.

When wealthy individuals support various political causes, they may or may not be motivated by the public good. Corporations, on the other hand, are legally committed to serving the interest of their stockholders, not the good of the public in general. They are not real people and thus have no innate sense of social or ethical responsibility. Corporations are legal entities, created for specific purposes: in the case of for-profit corporations, to maximize economic returns for their investors. Anything they do that serves the public good must be justified to investors as a means of enhancing their wealth. Individuals are capable of pure altruism and patriotism; corporations are not.

Regardless of whether wealth is individual or corporate, the people of the United States in general have been denied their basic democratic right to have an equal voice in making the rules by which all must abide. However, as corporations have come to dominate the U.S. economy, the source of most personal wealth has become corporate wealth. Over time, corporations have replaced wealthy individuals as the dominant source of political as well as economic power. Perhaps most important, corporations now have the political power to block any laws that might limit their political powers. We are losing our democracy in America; we are drifting toward “corpocracy.”

Corpocracy seems an appropriate word for a government that is dominated by corporate power. The word democracy has its roots in the Greek words "demos," meaning common people, and "cracy," meaning rule or strength. Plutocracy comes from "plutos" – rich people – and aristocracy comes from “aristos” – high-class people. "Corp" is a common abbreviation for corporation.  Following the pattern of the other Greek words, "corpos" would mean "corporate people" and corpocracy “corporate rule.” Since the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that corporations are “legal people,” with the same political rights as “real people,” the U.S. government might accurately be called a corpocracy – which rhymes with hypocrisy.

The gradual transformation from democracy to corpocracy is not so much a matter of intent or design as public neglect. Democracies require constant attention from the people, particularly when coupled with capitalist economies. The capitalist is always motivated by economic value – profit and growth. Economic value accrues to individuals, not to society as a whole. Thus, anything done solely for the benefit of others – or for society in general – is of no economic value. For-profit corporations are pure capitalists. Certainly corporate investments and employment create benefits for society as well as individuals, but societal good is not their motivation.

Anytime the government collects taxes for purely public purposes, the economic opportunities of corporations are diminished. Corporate taxes reduce dollars for dividends or investments and investors could have spent their dividends or capital gains to stimulate the economy. Government restrains on corporate exploitation of natural resources or workers are seen as wasteful government interference. Anything that ensures the economic rights for all people to adequate food, shelter, and healthcare are opposed as being socialistic.

The primary responsibility of government is to do those things that are necessary for the benefit of society in general, but for which there is no economic incentive – meaning things that have no economic value. As a result, the most important things governments do for the common good of real people are invariably opposed by “corporate people.” In a pure corpocracy, the only legitimate function of government would be to ensure the individual’s right to private property – meaning the right to acquire and accumulate individual wealth.

The Constitution is our only defense against the rising power of corpocracy in America. The only sure way to roll back more than one-hundred years of Supreme Court rulings is to amend the Constitution. The U.S. Constitution was designed to be amended from time to time – to be a living document. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “As [the human mind] becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.” The erosion of the American democracy has been too long neglected. It’s time to reclaim our democracy from corpocracy, before it’s too late.