song for theme #19B: Corporate Capitalism

“From the Home of Corporate Giants” by Stephen P. Cook

to be sung to the tune of “From the Land of Sky Blue Water—Hamm’s the Beer Refreshing”

words by Nelle Richard Eberhart, music by Charles Wakefield Cadman

From the home of corporate¹ giants [echo]

“Our monied corporations”²

Comes a business conscience

Now with corporate conscience

Born to rein in corporate power³ [echo]

With self regulation

An ethical business movement

Now with corporate conscience

Embracing our democracy [echo]

Working for acceptance⁴

Good corporate citizens

Now with corporate conscience

Serving many stakeholders [echo]

Responsible actors

Good corporate citizens

Now with corporate conscience

Looking past short-term profits [echo]

With broader perspective

Good corporate citizens

Now with corporate conscience

Pro environment and caring [echo]

With people before profit⁵

Good corporate citizens

Now with corporate conscience

SONG—NOTES / COMMENTS

1— The corporation is the key organization unit of modern capitalist economies.  They conduct business as a single legal entity, with rights &duties.  Many argue corporations are not persons with moral responsibilities and cannot be criticized in moral terms.    

2—Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I hope…we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.” Over two hundred years later, someone described capitalism as follows, “A system that privatizes profits and nationalizes losses…” Was this a left wing radical? No, it was a columnist in The Economist. (See the “Buttonwood” column in the November 15 2014 print edition.)

3—Two concerns about corporate power involve a) corporate crime and b) the corporate state. The former recognizes that corporations and/or their employees sometimes break laws and use their power to ruin lives, endanger public safety, pollute the environment and these activities have a big negative impact on society.  The latter recognizes that increasingly government and large corporations are run by the same people,  so intermeshed that government and corporate goals/policy are the same.

4—Corporations are hardly democratic: their decision-making is typically dictated by short-term profit considerations and stock shareholder interests—not broader stakeholder or societal interests. A movement toward corporate social responsibility could begin to change that and give progressive corporations more legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders. Even so, this movement will have a long way to go before qualifying as “economic democracy” —where decision-making is not in the hands of the corporate elite few, but rather vested more in workers through their management/ownership of productive enterprises.

5—The CVS Corp’s early 2014 decision to quit selling tobacco products was praised using this phrase.   

Comment: The song’s “corporate conscience” reference suggests that if you fully embrace this theme you recognize that sensitivity to the needs of a wide range of stakeholders  means also being sensitive to their quality of life—which includes emotional well being.  Critics of this corporate state way of organizing  economic activity charge that it represents a maladaptive coping strategy that, even with minor social responsibility tweaks,  perpetuates inequality. (see comments: theme #48, theme #49B, #50B)