Excerpt from a review of the documentary film, “The Corporation”

Published on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Corporation as Psychopath
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

People ask — Rob, Russell, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What can we do about it?

We say — read one book, see one movie.

Unfortunately, the movie and the book are available now only in Canada.
(Full disclosure — our work — the Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s — is featured in the movie.)

The book is titled: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. It is by Joel Bakan (Free Press, 2004).

The movie is called: The Corporation. It is by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan.
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THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE: CASE HISTORIES
To more precisely assess the “personality” of the corporate “person,” a checklist is employed, using actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social “personality”: It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a “psychopath.”

The Corporation (2003)

Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of “person” typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.

For years, we’ve been reporting on critics of corporate power — Robert Monks, Richard Grossman, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Sam Epstein, Charles Kernaghan, Michael Moore, Jeremy Rifkin.

For years, we’ve reported on the defenders of the corporate status quo like Milton Friedman, Peter Drucker and William Niskanen.

… Bakan, a professor of law at British Columbia Law School, and Achbar and Abbott have pulled these leading lights together in a 145-minute documentary that grabs the viewer by the throat and refuses to let go.

The movie is selling out major theaters across Canada. And if it detonates here — which in our view is still a long shot — the U.S. after all is not Canada — it could have a profound impact on politics.

The filmmakers juxtapose well-shot interviews of defenders and critics with the reality on the ground — Charles Kernaghan in Central America showing how, for example, big apparel manufacturers pay workers pennies for products that sell for hundreds of dollars in the United States — with defenders of the regime — Milton Friedman looking frumpy as he says with as straight a face as he can — the only moral imperative for a corporate executive is to make as much money for the corporate owners as he or she can.

Others agree with Friedman. Management guru Peter Drucker tells Bakan: “If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him. Fast.” And William Niskanen, chair of the libertarian Cato Institute, says that he would not invest in a company that pioneered in corporate responsibility.

Of course, state corporation laws actually impose a legal duty on corporate executives to make money for shareholders. Engage in social responsibility — pay more money to workers, stop legal pollution, lower the price to customers — and you’ll likely be sued by your shareholders.

Robert Monks, the investment manager, puts it this way: “The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine (shark seeking young woman swimming on the screen). There isn’t any question of malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed.”

Business insiders like Monks and Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Corporation, the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer, lend needed balance to a movie that otherwise would have been dominated by outside critics like Chomsky, Moore, Grossman and Rifkin. Anderson calls the corporation a “present day instrument of destruction” because of its compulsion to “externalize any cost that an unwary or uncaring public will allow it externalize.”

“The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere to destruction,” Anderson says, as pictures of biological and chemical wastes pouring into the atmosphere roll across the screen.

Like Republican Kevin Phillips is doing as he criss-crosses the nation, pummeling Bush from the right, Anderson and Monks are opening a new front against corporate power from inside the belly of the beast. They are stars of this movie and book.

The movie and the book drive home one fundamental point — the corporation is a psychopath.

Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare runs down a checklist of psychopathic traits and there is a close match.

The corporation is irresponsible because in an attempt to satisfy the corporate goal, everybody else is put at risk.

Corporations try to manipulate everything, including public opinion.

Corporations are grandiose, always insisting that “we’re number one, we’re the best.”

Corporations refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions and are unable to feel remorse.

And the key to reversing the control of this psychopathic institution is to understand the nature of the beast.

No better place to start than right here.

Read the book.

Watch the movie (www.thecorporation.tv).

Organize for resistance.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of ‘Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy’ (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).

https://www.hellocoolstuff.com/catalog.cfm?view=CATALOG_DETAILS&category_id=10&product_id=74&currency=USD<— to buy the DVD

I subscribe to ZNet Commentaries - they often have excellent articles regarding the nature of people in positions of leadership. Today’s article by Jeff Cohen starts as follows:

Stepford Republicans: All Caught on Tape!

By Jeff Cohen

“The Stepford Wives” tells the chilling story of once smart, independent women who get abducted and turned into tamed, mindless robots.

I have a theory about a similarly subversive process that turns grown men once capable of independent and reasoned thought into robotic extremists. Call them Stepford Republicans. The nefarious transformation always occurs before the individual gets close to becoming a Republican president or vice president. (end of excerpt.)

You can read the entire article at

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2008-02/08cohen.cfm

Here is a reply I sent to ZNet that I hope they will forward to Jeff:

Jeff, I have a theory that works with your concept of “Stepfordization.” I call it “Predatory Leadership.”

A predatory leader may be sociopathic or may be an abusive personality - like rectangles and squares, these two types of personalities have traits in common.

One set of traits, the lack of conscience, the lack of empathy for pain experienced by others, the lack of responsibility for the consequences of their actions, and a narcissistic sense of personal entitlement, enables them to outperform and outmaneuver the competition as they exercise their proclivity to do whatever it takes to get into positions of power and control.

Once they gain those positions, they create environments and situations in which anyone who wishes to survive needs to work in concert and produce results that support the endurance and inevitability of those environments.

If this sounds interesting to you, I can provide more elements of this theory. To gain a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of these predatory leaders, I also suggest reading books such as “The Verbally Abusive Relationship” by Patricia Evens and “The Sociopath Next Door” by Martha Stout.

All the best,

Matt Kramer
Mediator
Sonoma County, CA

I am writing from Cape Cod where I am attending a week long course taught by Dr. Jean Lipman-Blumen, author of The Allure of Toxic Leaders. She read a brief outline of the theory of Predatory Leadership and was very supportive of concept.

Dr. Lipman-Blumen’s focus is on the relationship between the leader and his/her constituents - how the constituents get sucked into the leader’s game and how they sometimes push the leader into toxicity by exercising their own agendas.

Here are a few notes from today’s class:

Rationalizations & Control Myths
Keeping Toxic Leaders in Power

There are a number of reasons we give ourselves for why we put up with bad leaders are rationalizations - explanations we give ourselves for why we can or cannot act.

Rationalizations eventually harden into control myths - beliefs we hold about why we shouldn’t challenge our leaders.

Using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: A lens for viewing Control Myths

Bottom of Maslow’s pyramid is about deficiency. Primary Survival Needs
The higher levels are the growth needs
Each need has to be satisfied up to a point before the next higher level can be addressed.

Leaders mobilize our fears at the lower levels (safety)

Media and advertising collude to create an economy of fear (milder quote - an economy of discontent)

In 1974 Maslow revised his hierarchy and added several basic needs (cognitive - need to know and understand; need for beauty/aesthetics and order; self actualization - the pinnacle: transcendence (helping other people to realize their potential) Transcending your own needs to go beyond and help others

Need
Physiological - Job pays the bills

Safety - The last person to confront the boss was fired

Belongingness and Love - Everyone else thinks the boss is great

Esteem - I can’t do it by myself

To Know and Understand - Who would replace him? He knows so much that I don’t know

Aesthetic - Things are out of control; we need the leader to put things in order

Self-Actualization - I have so much on my own plate; I don’t have time to unseat the leader or take over his work

Transcendence - I have everything but something is missing - the leader fulfills that gap

Maslow provides 35 definitions of transcendence (self forgetfulness - getting beyond your own needs to address the unmeet needs of others (poverty, lack of opportunity, etc)

An example of transcendence: I don’t speak out for myself; I speak out for the injustice delivered to others

George Schulz - I disagree with the administration’s position and actions but if I leave, who will step up to represent the role of truth? (I’m sacrificing myself - even though the leader doesn’t know what he’s doing, I’m a shadow leader protecting my country).

Ubuntu (Swahili) which roughly means “You Be You Unto You”.
or “you be what he is to you”
You see the other through the other’s eyes - you identify with the other (general translation - respect, help and take care of others)
What is our responsibility to our fellow man?
If somebody speaks up, the bullying stops

Control Myths

Rationalizations stemming from existential, psychological & psychosocial needs we use to explain to ourselves why we can’t act

We are generally unaware that control myths influence our behavior - toxic leaders will not hesitate to act in concert with them.

Six major categories of control myths

Control myths that make us feel both inferior and safe

Control myths that instill the fear of repercussions

Control myths that would reduce our benefits

Control myths that that protect the general status quo

Control myths that enable us to avoid our own responsibilities as leaders

Control myths that promise ennoblement and immortality

Control myths that make us feel both inferior and safe (I’m too weak to take care of myself; my leader will take care of me) we keep ourselves in line

Control myths that instill the fear of repercussions

Control myths that would reduce our benefits (If I leave the circle, I’ll lose income, prestige, access to power, safety of the group)

Control myths that that protect the general status quo (scary to shake up the status quo; we might expose something worse) the devil we know is better than the one we don’t know

Control myths that enable us to avoid our own responsibilities as leaders (we don’t allow ourselves the possibility that we could do a better job - even though the leader is doing great damage).

Control myths that promise ennoblement and immortality (we live in fear and tension amidst the uncertainty of our own death) we have the consciousness that brings with it existential angst. If we don’t confront how to live with that angst, we seek outside reassurance, no matter if it may be false or manipulative.

If you do not confront your own angst, but instead bury the angst in your unconscious, it will drive you. Unchecked, one becomes immobilized in the face of their own mortality.

Enron message - if you follow us, you will be part of a great destiny; one that has never happened before.

The Potency of Control myths;

Controlling ourselves, controlling others

Control myths have enormous potency because they operate below our conscious awareness

We don’t examine them or question their validity

Control myths work so effectively leaders don’t have to waste time imposing constraints on our behavior

Control myths help us to police the behavior of other followers (pressures of conformity)

Three Types of Followers who can push non-toxic leaders towards toxicity

-Benign Followers
-Entourage
-Malevolent Followers (actually want to control or eliminate the leaders)

Leaders can go from good to bad
(or be undone by their followers)

Benign Followers push their leader to a hasty vision
(they’re not deliberately trying to push the leader)

Type A - anxious benign - telling the leader how great he’s going to be

Type P - pragmatic practical concerns for money, professional and political careers; remove threats

Leader’s Entourage (the leader’s alter ego)

Leaders in training

Leader may become the follower of the entourage

They push the leader to a hasty vision

Carry out the leader’s most critical tasks (in the process, they Take the blame, pass the credit to the leader)

Maintain links to reliable sources for reality fix

See the leader’s clay feet and flaws - know his vulnerability

Their future depends on leader’s future; they obsessed about gaining and maintaining power.

A tangent in my mediation work led me to study abuse and the nature of the abusive personality. A combination of personal and professional experience along with reading about abuse contributed to a gradual new insight into the reasons that war and other miseries continue to plague humanity. From a review of one book, “The Sociopath Next Door” by Martha Stout:

We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in “The Sociopath Next Door”, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.

Another review:
“about four percent of the population lacks conscience, the defining characteristic of the sociopath. The number is not drawn from thin air. An endnote recites, among other things, a study by the Federal Department of Health and Human Services.” (you may know that the terms, psychopath and sociopath, are no longer used in the DSM-IV, instead they use the phrase, Antisocial Personality Disorder. I’ve spoken with a number of psychologists who feel that the new terminology is not very helpful.)

Cutting to the chase:

I’m developing a concept I call Predatory Leadership. The premise is that abusive and sociopathic personalities have a distinct advantage over people of conscience who want to be of service in leadership. Climbing the ladders to the positions of ultimate control, the predators prevail to the extent that of the people in positions of power in government, military, corporate and religious institutions, most likely a percentage significantly larger than four percent have some degree of the personality traits identified with Antisocial Personality Disorder. In the process of getting into power, they have learned how to behave in a manner that allows their constituency to believe that they are acting in the best interests of the population. In reality, as predatory leaders, they view the population as a resource that they are entitled to mine and exploit. I fully believe that next to plagues and natural disasters, predatory leaders are the greatest contributors to the past and present state of human misery on this planet.

This year I am accelerating my writing and working to make the theory comprehensible and accessible. I believe that if humanity can find a way to understand this dynamic and learn to identify this trait in their governmental, business and religious institutions, the increased dialogue may lead to some ways to change this age old dynamic. I don’t have a solution; I just believe that the only real hope we have of healing this sociopathic infection is to first identify and understand it. Then we can start to brainstorm on ways to change it.

If you have any thoughts, critiques, corrections and ideas, I would welcome them. As you perused my websites, you may have noticed http://www.mostpeoplearegood.com. Still under construction, I am hoping that people will use the site to learn about the theory and share their thoughts and insights. I was recently introduced to a Ph.D psychologist who is interested in the theory and is about to start writing, researching and collaborating with me to move the project forward. I’m hoping to attract historians, sociologists, political scientists and thinkers in general to contribute their insights and expertise.