Blue, Honey, I'm Ba-a-a-a-a-ck -- with: Corporate Ideology!
You may think "corporate ideology" is a "silly" term, Blue, but an awful lot of people are using it. Run a search on www.google.com, for example, and you will get enough references to sink the proverbial ship. (The source cited in my post to Bruce was cited only in order to show that the term "corporate ideology" is actually used in practice, not because it gave any kind of explanation of what the term is supposed to mean.)
Corporations themselves use the term routinely, but in what seems to be an idiosyncratic sense, so let's leave them for later.
In the interests of saving (my) time, I am going to cheat, and use somebody else's summation of the core of "corporate ideology," understood in its primary sense (complex of conscious beliefs and underlying assumptions, linked to interests). The passage comes from a book (When Corporations Rule the World), by David Korten, an economist with an MBA and PhD from Stanford's Business School, and with years of experience in international development. Korten, who is what I would call a "small business utopian" is a critic of global multinational companies. However, I think his summary of their "ideology" is fair enough.
The ideology, in his view, is actually supported by an "alliance" of three "strange bedfellows": economic rationalists, free market liberals, and "members of the corporate class" (i.e., corporate managers, lawyers, consultants, public relations specialists, financial brokers, wealthy investors, etc.).
Its core beliefs:
Sustained economic growth, as measured by Gross National Product, is the path to human progress.
Free markets, unrestrained by government, generally result in the most efficient and socially optimal allocation of resources;
Economic globalization, achieved by removing barriers to the free flow of goods and money anywhere in the world, spurs competition, increases economic efficiency, creates jobs, lowers consumer prices, increases economic growth, and is generally beneficial to most everyone;
Privatization, which moves functions and assets from governments to the private sector, improves efficiency;
The primary responsibility of government is to provide the infrastructure necessary to advance commerce and assure the rule of law with respect to property rights and contracts;
International competition strengthens productive efficiency and provides consumers with greater choice at a lower cost.
Core underlying assumptions:
Humans are motivated by self-interest expressed primarily through the quest for financial gain;
The action that yields the greatest financial return to the individual or firm is the one that is most beneficial to society;
Competitive behavior is more rational for the individual and the firm than cooperative behavior and consequently societies should be built around the competitive motive;
Human progress is best measured by increases in the value of what the members of society consume and ever higher levels of consumer spending advance the well-being of society by stimulating greater economic output.
A similar definition from a definitely unfriendly observer, a radical (but non-Marxist) business school professor (yes, the combination is possible):
The main element in corporate ideology is the belief in the sublimity of the market and its unique capacity to serve as the efficient allocator of resources. So important is the market in this ideology that "freedom" has come to mean the absence of constraints on market participants, with political and social democracy pushed into the background as supposed derivatives of market freedom. This may help explain the tolerance by market-freedom lovers of market-friendly totalitarians—Pinochet or Marcos.
A second and closely related constituent of corporate ideology is the danger of government intervention and regulation, which allegedly tends to proliferate, imposes unreasonable burdens on business, and therefore hampers growth. A third element in the ideology is that growth is the proper national objective, as opposed to equity, participation, social justice, or cultural advance and integrity. Growth should be sustainable, which means that the inflation threat should be a high priority and unemployment kept at the level to assure the inflation threat is kept at bay. The resultant increasingly unequal income distribution is also an acceptable price to pay.
Privatization is also viewed as highly desirable in corporate ideology, following naturally from the first two elements—market sublimity and the threat of government. It also tends to weaken government by depriving it of its direct control over assets, and therefore has the further merit of reducing the ability of government to serve the general population through democratic processes. It is of course a coincidence that privatization yields enormous payoffs to
the bankers and purchasers participating in the sale of public assets.
lbbs.org
Now, it could be argued that many people in this country who do not work for corporations share the above attitudes, and/or that none of the attitudes listed are unique to this country or to this century. Those objections can be answered as follows:
1) In the first case, as Gramsci would say, the corporate culture has successfully "hegemonized" its ideology: that is, has won other groups in society over to its point of view by giving them some stake in it.
2) In the second case, all "ideologies" take from the past, but they tend to take what furthers their interests (which do not have to be exclusively economic interests) in the present, and to leave behind what does not.
Let me end, for the moment, by stressing that I personally do not endorse any of the above definitions. What I do endorse is the idea that the corporate community, like any other community that has a unity of interests, has a belief-structure in the light of which it operates (and to advance which it lobbies, makes campaign contributions, etc.). Perhaps the folks I quoted do not have the belief-structure right; but that does not mean there is no belief-structure (ideology) at all.
TO BE CONTINUED! :-) (This is already too damn long!)
Joan |
