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Anti-Corporate Populism: A Brief Rebuttal

John Torinus notes an understudying aspect of Senator Barack Obama’s recent Philadelphia speech on race:

The adversary in Obama’s view of the world is not a person of another color, but “a corporate culture rife with inside dealing; questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.”

In another passage, he reiterates his anti-business philosophy when he says “the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.”

Because Obama is running as a populist and has always ranked as one of the most liberal senators, it is tempting to dismiss his anti-corporate statements as campaign rhetoric and a play to his base of support.

But this speech will go down as the hallmark of his historic run for the presidency. He and his speechwriters prayed over every word in the seven-page document. He isn’t just saying this stuff. This is what he really believes.

In fact, anti-corporate populism is cropping up all over the place:

Acting on a populist, anti-corporate impulse, the director of the movie “Be Kind Rewind” has invited amateurs to make their own movies using a miniature version of a Hollywood back lot constructed in a gallery’s industrial, garage-size space. Visitors not making films can wander among the sets and watch short, intermittently amusing but woefully unskillful films that aspiring filmmakers have made thus far.

A recent law review article by former Delaware Chancellor William Allen contains a concise response to these critics:

The modern business corporation is the instrumentality within which the greatest part of our economic activity occurs, in which jobs and wealth are created and through which, to a great extent, our national competitiveness is maintained. It is largely within the corporate form that all of the great scientific discoveries from the time of the second industrial revolution forward have been shaped into useful products or services and brought to markets to improve human lives. From railroads to automobiles and airplanes, from aspirin to immunosuppressants, from electricity, telephony, and computers, to the internet, WiFi and almost everything else that makes our lives safer, healthier, easier and more pleasant—all are produced and distributed by people organized within the publicly financed corporate form.

I am reminded of John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge’s wonderful book, The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea, which persuasively argues not only that the corporation is one of the West’s great competitive advantages, but also that the number of private-sector corporations a country boasts is a relatively good guide to the degree of political freedom it provides its citizens. Indeed, they make the strong claim that the corporate form is “the basis of the prosperity of the West and the best hope for the future of the rest of the world.” (at p. xv) After 20 years of studying the corporation, I’ve come to agree.