Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy

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Summary: The gang we all have to deal with
Review: "Gangs of America" is an excellent an thorough work that details the successive rise and falls of corporate power and its influence on the lives of the worlds people.

In it Nace traces the birth of corporations as an entity in Europe, their rise to dominance in the world in the 17th and 18th century. He outlines the oppressive business practices and appauling treatment of "employees" in pre-Independence America that eventually lead to the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence.

Nace then goes on to outline how the fiercely anti-corporate conditions and protections of the early 1800s were gradually erroded away in the courts of America, until the landmark and now infamous 1886 Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County vs. South Pacific Railroad. He brings new insight and understanding to the circumstances of that case and its outcome which explain how it came to enthrone corporations as people in American civilisation. From there on he traces the second great rise of corporate power in America from late 1800s through to the end of the 1930s which occured in the name of the social Darwinism, a widely held belief at the time. Social Darwinism was a particularly evil piece of work that believed marking live hard for the unfortunate was good for society and helped weed out the weak elements to build a stronger, more vital society. It seems all to close to an economic form of eugenics, the scheme siezed on by Adolft Hitler to breed a "master race".

Finally the social unrest and rampant unemployment the followed the depression finally got so out of control that in 1937 Roosevelt was elected and his "New Deal" finally put a halt to the rapid decay in workers and peoples rights and put expansion of corporate powers on hold. The thirty or so years following Roosevelt's turn around brought unprecedented economic growth that was beneficial to both the corporations and the people of America. This was a period in which the share of wealth owned by the top 1% of the nation fell from 45% in 1929 to 20% in 1971.

Nace then goes on to chart the change in corporate fortunes that began in the early seventies. The dramatic and important Supreme Court cases that slamed down, one after another and re-invigorated the corporate demons that had laid low and disempowered for so long. Nace takes us all the way to the very epitome of corporate power gone bad - the modern corporate crime wave of Enron, Global Crossing, and all the rest of the companies lead by CEO celebrities gone bad.

The remainder of Nace's book brings forth some concrete ideas that may inspire the average reader, who no doubt feels weak and demoralized by the crushing blows of corporate power they have endured with thus far. It is easy to feel hopeless and helpless, and conclude that corporate rule on our lives and our relegation to have no other role in soceity than consumer is inevitable. Life as only a consumer i s a meaningless onethat naturally leads to depression. For this we are prescribed legalized drugs for which we pay (of course) to take away the pain and boredom of a meaningless life. Chemically fortified we can return to working and consuming thus sustaining growth of wealth over growth of quality of life, liberty and happiness.

To quote Douglas Adams:

"This Planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy"

Having read this book it is clear to me that it is not too late to make a change, and that it is essential to do so for the good of all people on this planet. We must unite and press for a constitutional ammendment that will irrevokably grant natural people, those that are born and die according to the natural cycle of nature, the right to supreme sovereignty over their country and destiny. The effect of this will spread like ripple across the world as American corporations are cut off from exploiting people across the world. It will empower the people to direct their country to act with courage, honour and humility. Yes we will still have the power to screw things up, but it will be at the will of the people and not the will unconcious, inhuman mega-corporations that have no interest other than the perpetuation of wealth and a supplicant all-consuming population.

You can find out more about Ted Nace's book and the issues it addresses at the books web site www.gangsofamerica.com.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening analysis of corporate influence
Review: As an attorney and former college agitator (long, long ago), I read with profound interest Ted Nace's "Gangs of America", which along the line of Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" challenges us to imagine an economic and legal universe other than the one we live in. Most Americans, and especially attorneys who are the high priests to the corporations, take it for granted (kind of like the inhabitants of the "Matrix") that multi-billion dollar corporations should enjoy and have always enjoyed preferential tax treatment, tort immunity, and government handouts by the gazoo.

What is valuable about such authors as Nace and Zinn is that they break free from the trap of blaming our current social and economic inequalities on a select group of evil men in the White House or Congress. While alternative historical analysis became an endangered species when Berlin Wall fell, the need for other voices did not go away. It is not enough to simply bash the current Administration a la Michael Moore, Jim Hightower and Al Franken, although such rants have their place. Nace tells us instead that it is vital to understand that such governments are organic to the same economic and legal system which allows Wall-Marts, Enrons and Worldcoms to flourish. If a non-entity such as Bush were not around to elect, there would be plenty others to take his place to service the machinery. If we do not get the government we deserve, at least we get the best goverment corporate money can buy. This power is enabled by a steadly-built array of laws to establish the modern limited liability corporation and its holding companies as a superior economic and legal entity ahead of the individual, despite the fact that the Constitution nowhere provides such status.

"Gangs of America" stakes out the historical origins of the status of the modern corporation as a preferential legal entity enjoying rights and freedoms superior to that of the individual. This is all true. While I was familiar with the late 19th century cases which gave recognition to the corporation as a "person", Nace adds additional color to the facts of these decisions, which I certainly did not hear in law school. Rather, in corporations class, liberals devoted their time to debating the nuances of "shareholder democracy", a concept which, applied to giant megaliths such as Pepsico, has all the relevance of Stalin's Inner Circle...

It takes considerable courage to tackle such a subject on a macro level without clinging to the conventional icons of either capitalist or Marxian theory, or conventional legal analysis. Rather, what is being attempted is close to a pure historical analysis which follows the paths of money and influence in a very practical way. This is, ultimately, a very important book.

Rating:
Summary: Putting the Dog to Sleep
Review: GANGS OF AMERICA is a penetrating account of how the corporation came to claim the same rights and freedoms as citizens. In retelling the history of this slow-motion grab for power -- it takes place over a hundred and fifty years through a variety of decisions and (mis)interpretations of the 14th amendment (among others) -- Nace shows how the corporation grew from a mistrusted, highly regulated entity into a virtually unregulated shape-shifting bacteria which, claiming to be human, has now subsumed many of the civil rights of Americans, and, further, through international agencies such as the IMF and WTO, the rights of citizens around the world.

Two insights Nace offers are particularly noteworthy. The first is the rise of the counterrevolutionary corporation in the 1970s. According to Nace, corporations in late 60s early 70s were caught "flat-footed" by rise of environmental and consumer movements, both outgrowths of the 60s social justice movements. Bending to the popular will, government legislation like the Clear Air and Water Acts, the establishment of oversight agencies like the EPA, limits on tax shelters, and strengthened occupational safety and health bills were passed. The "revolt of the bosses" was activated by Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer whose memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System" laid out the reactionary agenda for business. In a key passage he wrote, "The day is long past when the chief executive of a major corporation discharges his responsibility by maintaining a satisfactory growth of profits.... If our system is to survive, top management must be equally concerned with protecting and preserving the system itself." Powell, who later served on Supreme Court, planted with this memo a seed that sprouted into right wing think tanks, massive corporate political lobbying, and the became battle plan of the Business Roundtable and Conference Board. CEOs, who before had only defended the"rights" of business in a piecemeal, industry by industry fashion, now signed on to long-term commitments through these umbrella organizations. Powell's memo, Nace notes (along with other recent historical accounts), was a key turning point in recent political and social history.

A second related insight he offers is in a comment made describing the recent change in the conception of corporate actors -- from bureaucrats in the 1940s through the 1970s to entrepreneurs in the 80s and since. Taking up the laissez faire rhetoric of the Chicago School, preening themselves in the din of cheerleaders Reagan and Thatcher, CEOs in the 1980s began to step onto the national stage and tout the glories of capitalism as the purest expression of democracy. They eschewed their previous role as one of three legs of the post WWII liberal business, labor, government consensus, an agreement designed to answer to the threat to capitalism posed by the governments of the Soviets and Chinese Communists. This agreement was born in the long shadow of possible alternative political and economic arrangements, served to provide a fair and living wage to employees and reasonable profits to shareholders during the long post-war boom. Moving away from this cooperative bureaucratic model of governance to the entrepreneurial model (which students of history will recognize as a version of Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth" and the myth of the Rugged Individualist), Nace suggests that Lee Iacocca was the avatar of the new CEO. So thoroughly has this reconceptualization of the CEO taken hold 20 years later that half of the shelf space in airport bookstores is now packed with triumphalist B-School cant from "dynamic" CEOs and their consultants. Not uncoincidentally, the other shelves are stuffed with the vociferous defenders of the conservative political order.

During the Reagan revolution the notion of the entrepreneur was buffed to a high gloss. Its was burnished to a blinding sheen in the dot com era when entrepreneurs were hailed as heroes and an overwhelmed public was fed a high-fat media diet of swashbuckling venture capitalists, code jockeys, and those fabulous rule-breaking, hyper-innovative MBAs. The shift from bureaucrat to entrepreneur ran parallel to the shift in America from the bureaucratic state with its small safety net to the new night watchman state where business prerogatives became the only prerogatives and profit the only possible goal. Despite their recent bad behavior in the business scandals of 2001-2002 we remain enthralled to these super-empowered, and loudly trumpeted individuals. Our ever compliant media continue to fail us in their fawning coverage of the business elite, an elite who manage economies that are larger than most nations, who unlike nations are not accountable to citizens, who play governments off one another for better tax breaks, who lay off middle managers at home to the cheers of Wall Street, and sell manufacturing jobs off to the highest overseas bidder when no one is looking.

Other interesting insights along the way: the wrong-headed ACLU defending corporations "right" to speech, erroneously accepting the definition of the corporation as a "person" with the same rights as persons. Nace also suggests that the American Revolution was not so much a revolution against the English government as an anti-corporate revolution against the British East India Company's monopoly on tea in the U.S. colonies. In other words, not a political revolt so much as an economic revolt which finally gained traction when the merchant class began to find that their pecuniary interests were being trampled upon.

Nace suggests the legal fiction of the corporation can be undone through citizen action, that the corporation can be housebroken and that if certain corporate actors continue to terrorize their neighborhoods that they should be put down by their true owners: the citizenry. His last chapter, which narrates the actions of people who are attempting to do so may give some hope to a population who has all but given up on putting this power-mad conjuration back into its once solid, and now almost non-existent legal vessel. A helpful summary of key Supreme Court decisions included.

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Summary: Tracing the roots of this phenomenon
Review: Gangs Of America: The Rise Of Corporate Power And The Disabling Of Democracy by Ted Nace is an expert and sharp drawn scrutiny of just how contemporary corporations have amassed more political and economic rights than ordinary citizens within America's legal system. Tracing the roots of this phenomenon, and warning of the dangers such preferential treatment could have upon American society as a whole if continued unchecked, Gangs Of America is an informed and informative analytical history of the origins and implications of a very real imbalance of political and economic power upon our judicial and legislative systems.

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Summary: Smart White Men
Review: I was expecting this to be a fairly dry read, given the subject, but I was so pleasantly surprised. As the New York Times said review put it, Gangs of America is a "entertaining examination of the rise of corporate power in America" (note the "entertaining"). The book starts on a very personal note about how businessman Nace came to write a book examining the roots of the system he founded, built, and finally sold his own publishing firm. Then jump back 700 to 200 years to look at the british corporate charters and their antecedents (most notably the East India Company). The story then moves to America with the corporate side of Jamestown, and later with the anti-corporate component of the American revolution (in which the Boston Tea Party is seen as sort of a revolt by local merchants against the nationwide chain trying to set up shop in town), and finally how the founding fathers sought to keep corporate power in check. Next the story moves to the characters of the nineteenth century who one by one undid the restraints on corporations (including chapters titled The Genius, The Judge, The Court Reporter, and The Lavender-Vested Turkey Gobbler). The story continues in the twentieth century with the new deal reforms and then jumps to the seventies where some fairly recent decisions have expanded coporate rights. Then it is on to the corporate scandals of 2002 and how trade agreements are the latest tactic for adding corporate rights and defeating democracy. Finally, there is a summary of the movements springing up to redress the radical changes that have given us corporations with more rights than people, and then a look back on just what is so worrisome about about where we find ourselves (the chapter titled "Intelligent, Amoral, Evolving"). The book is filled with useful tables and appendices summarizing court decisions and other relevant events, and the quotations throughout the book are thought-provoking. All and all a good read.

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Summary: The missing link to the globalization question
Review: I was thrilled to finally read a thorough analysis of just how corporations arrived at the powerful position they occupy today. I knew of corporate personhood, but heard only superficial explanations. Nace logically and comprehensively filled in the who, what, when, and why gaps, providing a powerful tool for those who want to understand our society, consider alternatives or challenge the concept and consequences of corporate personhood.

I thought it was written succinctly with just the right amount of detail. It reads fast if you want to know about this topic. I stopped only to ponder the details and to get my work done.

This book is not where you start in the process of understanding corporatism or the economy. It is a book for those who have already introduced themselves to globalization and Democracy issues and realize that corporate personhood has covertly become a serious and fundamental component in our perceptions. I know of no other book that will put you on more solid footing when analyzing and confronting the issue of corporate personhood.

Thanks Mr. Nace. You have made a contribution to the democratic process. I hope we all can learn from what you have offered and reclaim Democracy from corporations.

Rating:
Summary: Smart White Men
Review: If the hijacking of the 2000 presidential election by Stupid White Men incensed you, then take heed of the Smart White Men who have dealt a thousand blows to democracy over the past century. Ted Nace's "Gangs of America" is an intense history of corporate America's deliberate and relentless effort to empower itself aided by congressmen and judges entrenched in a sea of vested interests.

In a Matrix-like prequel, Nace carefully chronologizes the efforts of corporations to gain freedoms and protections as "persons" at the very expense of the people the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect. Even the self-serving ACLU cannot see the "real slippery slope is the ever-increasing tendency to treat corporations as though they were human beings."

Nace's witty and engaging tale compels the reader to follow the roller-coaster ride of corporate dominance which begins by going down the murky path by which the courts came to treat corporations as "persons." As the author of "Be Careful Who You SLAPP" I especially enjoyed Nace's treatment of corporate Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs).

Nace points the reader to the success of this concerted corporate effort to dominate as measured by the public image of the CEO who is once seen as the dutiful bureaucrat and is now transformed into the swashbuckling dot-com "hero" in the likes of Bill Gates. But as the corporate juggernaut rolls forward we find this local boy does good is soon testifying at his company's anti-trust hearing, one of the most egregious examples of corporate abuse of power of the 20th century.

Are we doomed to an Orwellian future where a large unaccountable "modern" entity enjoys more rights and freedom than the citizens who work its factories and offices? Can the same legal system that allowed corporations to add "field to field, and power to power" now check its unfettered growth? Can we as citizens tap into our human propensity for creativity and utilize the restraints that will morph the corporations into welcomed tools of society? Or is our future to be trapped in "The Matrix" where corporations and machines now control our reality?

Nace's answer is practical and inspiring. Just as corporations have bit by bit turned the tables on us, we citizens can take back our liberties by chipping away at the same old block - the legal institutions that have empowered them. One beginning is for each State to simply enact charter revocation by which modern day corporations can be tamed with the threat of dissolution as they once were.

Nace's "Gangs of America" is an insightful view of the basis for the sense of invincible arrogance that fueled Enron, WorldCom and others yet to appear on the public radar. Thanks to Nace, we know the trajectory of corporate America. It's not too late to redirect the flight plan.

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Summary: Intreaging story on American corporate history
Review: Ted Nace has written an intreaging story on American corporate history in Gangs of America. Starting in the 17th century with the Founding Fathers, we witness railroad barons play powergames with Washington judges from the Supreme Court, get to know historical figures like Tom Scott, Stephen Field and Lewis Powell jr. All these people have played a part in the rise from American corporation, from local organisation in the midth of the 19th century to world dominant players as we know them nowadays. What happened was a great game where business, political and juridical objectives meet.
The events and people Nace describe have their influence till today: the position of many business people in the Bush administration! the role of the tens of thousands lobists? the protest and fears of "globalists" against the power and influence of corporate America on world politics!

Ted Nace has written a beautiful tale, probably unknown to most of us, working in modern corporations. Knowledge of the US political and juridical system is handy. Of course some parts of the text are somewhat dry, other are very colorfull. The full text of the book can be downloaded at www.gangsofamerica.comwhere a lot of background information can be found.

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Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: This interesting book traces the history and development of corporations from the time of Queen Elizabeth I to the present day. Much of the book focuses on little-known episodes in the corporate chronicle - the cruel Jamestown settlement in Virginia, for example, or the British East India Company's depredations in India. About midway through, the book shifts from such tales to a close examination of Supreme Court justices who tilted the playing field in favor of corporate power. Breezily written and accessible, this book puts a lengthy and complicated history easily within reach of ordinary readers. Its bias is clear - the subtitle leaves no doubt that author Ted Nace is a foe of corporate power - and the closer to the present the story comes, the more accusatory the author's conclusions may seem. Nonetheless, We find this is a worthwhile read for those who seek background information on the dark side of the American corporate success story.

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Summary: Two books in one leaves me half satisfied
Review: While Nace is a good writer, this book didn't live up to my expectations by being long on history and short on commentary and solutions. Roughly 70% of the book is devoted to the long and somewhat tedious history of the modern corporation and the various laws and Supreme Court decisions that have led to the current legal status of corporations in America. This is great material to have if you're taking a first-year law school course, but I was looking for a book about the examples of corporate power and ideas and policies for how to combat abusive use of that power. Nace finally gets to these issues in the last couple chapters, but I was left unsatiated a feeling shortchanged.

I wanted to give this book a 4 or 5 star, but the tedium of the history lesson (I'll admit to nodding off more than once) and the rather dry prose mandates I knock it down a couple notches. I found Bakan's The Corporation (...) to be a more readable, interesting and innovative look at the same topic of corporate power and greed.