New Dimensions; The Corporate State; Part 1

<v Michael Toms>[music] It is only through a change of consciousness that the world will be transformed. <v Michael Toms>As we bring mind, body, psyche and spirit into harmony <v Michael Toms>and unity so also will the world be changed. <v Michael Toms>This is our responsibility as we create <v Michael Toms>and explore new dimensions of being. <v Michael Toms>[music] <v Michael Toms>'We've all known the loneliness, the emptiness, the isolation of contemporary

<v Michael Toms>America. <v Michael Toms>Our forebears came thousands of miles for the promise of a better life. <v Michael Toms>Now there is a new promise. <v Michael Toms>Shall we not seize it? <v Michael Toms>Shall we not be pioneers once more? <v Michael Toms>The breakdown of the corporate state and the growth of radicalism would still lead <v Michael Toms>nowhere, would still justify only despair <v Michael Toms>if there were not a new vision. <v Michael Toms>It is the power of the vision that can turn hope into reality. <v Michael Toms>There is a revolution coming. <v Michael Toms>It will not be like revolutions of the past. <v Michael Toms>It will originate with the individual and with culture. <v Michael Toms>And it will change the political structure only as its final act. <v Michael Toms>It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully <v Michael Toms>resisted by violence. <v Michael Toms>It is now spreading with amazing rapidity.

<v Michael Toms>And already our laws, institutions and social structure are changing in <v Michael Toms>consequence. <v Michael Toms>It promises a higher reason a more human community <v Michael Toms>and a new and liberated individual. <v Michael Toms>Its ultimate creation will be a new and enduring wholeness and beauty, <v Michael Toms>a renewed relationship of man to himself, to other men, <v Michael Toms>to society, to nature and to the land. <v Michael Toms>This is the revolution of the new generation.' <v Michael Toms>It's been almost a decade since Charles Reich wrote those words in The Greening <v Michael Toms>of America. <v Michael Toms>On this edition of New Dimensions, we're gonna be talking with Charles Reich <v Michael Toms>about the corporate state, about the condition of America, <v Michael Toms>where this country is today and where it can go if <v Michael Toms>you and I are willing to do our part.

<v Michael Toms>We must remember that this land is our land. <v Speaker>[Song: This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie] <v Michael Toms>Welcome to New Dimensions. My name is Michael Toms, and I'm going to be your host, and

<v Michael Toms>you were just listening to the music of Woody Guthrie. <v Michael Toms>And I'm here with Charles Reich, the author of The Greening of America and <v Michael Toms>a book entitled, The Sorcerer of Bolinas Reef. Charles, it's really good to be with you <v Michael Toms>again. <v Charles Reich>Nice to be here. <v Michael Toms>Charles, we set the theme of this program as the corporate state. <v Michael Toms>And I remember when we talked about it several months ago as to what we wanted to talk <v Michael Toms>about, the things that we're thinking about, and it's amazingly appropriate that we <v Michael Toms>pick that theme for this time and this place. <v Michael Toms>I guess the best way to begin is just to kind of talk about just what is the corporate <v Michael Toms>state. You wrote about it in your book, The Greening of America. <v Michael Toms>And it doesn't seem to have gotten any- any less than it was then. <v Michael Toms>If and- indeed- in point of fact, it may have even gotten larger than it was then. <v Charles Reich>Well, the corporate state is really a system of social control. <v Charles Reich>And to me, it's something alien. <v Charles Reich>It's something that has come along and usurped our American idea. <v Charles Reich>It's usurped our democratic system and it's taken over our free

<v Charles Reich>economy. What it consists of is the big corporations, <v Charles Reich>the vast government regulatory bureaucracy that goes with those <v Charles Reich>corporations, the legal system that supports them. <v Charles Reich>The technocrats and the professionals who work in that system. <v Charles Reich>And the whole idea is to monopolize, <v Charles Reich>to limit, to- to make this a country <v Charles Reich>for the few and to exclude the many. <v Charles Reich>And this system is really only perhaps 50 years <v Charles Reich>old, and it's grown up mostly in the time <v Charles Reich>after the Second World War. <v Charles Reich>So we're finding something that to me is very un-American. <v Charles Reich>And when I say fight, I mean fight, because I think that it's <v Charles Reich>really an enemy of freedom and an enemy of diversity and an <v Charles Reich>enemy of the inclusion of all of us

<v Charles Reich>in the American project. <v Michael Toms>You know, you were- you were an a- you're an attorney. <v Michael Toms>And you worked with Justice Hugo Black when he was on the Supreme Court, and <v Michael Toms>you taught at Yale University. And out of that came your own perspective <v Michael Toms>and your own experience of what was taking place because you were a lawyer in the early <v Michael Toms>day in- in Washington, in the days when there seemed to <v Michael Toms>be a difference, a different perspective of what was happening. <v Michael Toms>And at the same time, it kind of went another way. <v Michael Toms>I mean, when you were in Washington, I think was during the Kennedy years. <v Michael Toms>Right. And before that, [Other speaker: Well the Eisenhower] Eisenhower years, yeah, and <v Michael Toms>there was a very different view of America then than we have now, <v Michael Toms>because- obviously in the meantime, many things have happened and transpired. <v Michael Toms>And going back to that where- where your own roots come from. <v Michael Toms>How do you see that you got to your own perspective now? <v Michael Toms>Where did that- talk about that- <v Charles Reich>Well, that I watched the process of exclusion. <v Charles Reich>I watched people being driven out of the government.

<v Charles Reich>I watched the McCarthy years. <v Charles Reich>I watched the years when people who had new ideas, who were creative, <v Charles Reich>who had new energies, were all put on a blacklist, who were <v Charles Reich>all censored, were all called disloyal. <v Charles Reich>And I began to see that what was coming was going to be <v Charles Reich>a system of elitism, a system of <v Charles Reich>we know best, a system that treats people like children. <v Charles Reich>That, in effect, is a parental <v Charles Reich>kind of control in which just a very tiny <v Charles Reich>minority. It's really inconceivable to think of it. <v Charles Reich>But just 50 corporations form the <v Charles Reich>vast center of this control system that we have now. <v Charles Reich>And I began to see that the government, rather than being a counter force, <v Charles Reich>rather than representing the people, had really been bought out by the corporations.

<v Charles Reich>So they were working together. It was most evident to me as a lawyer that <v Charles Reich>the government and the corporations were the same thing. <v Charles Reich>And then I realized that there was really no counter force, at <v Charles Reich>least none that the Constitution could have imagined. <v Michael Toms>What about the Supreme Court? And you had- you had a very deep involvement there and <v Michael Toms>working with Hugo Black. What influence did that have on your vision? <v Charles Reich>Well, what I saw was that the Supreme Court was a important bastion <v Charles Reich>of individual liberty. <v Charles Reich>And I saw that it was a threat to the corporate state and it was recognized <v Charles Reich>as a threat. And over the years, very systematically, it was <v Charles Reich>taken over by the corporate state. <v Charles Reich>One by one, the new appointments to the court have been people <v Charles Reich>who are ready to go along with the ideas of the corporate state. <v Charles Reich>The Nixon appointees, some of the Kennedy appointees

<v Charles Reich>and now a majority of the court are anti-libertarian. <v Charles Reich>They are anti-minorities. <v Charles Reich>They are anti-human rights and they're for bigness. <v Charles Reich>They're in favor of bigness wherever they can support it. <v Charles Reich>So the court has changed from a defender of the people which Justice <v Charles Reich>Black wanted to see it be into really another <v Charles Reich>hurdle for the people. Another obstacle to human rights and the <v Charles Reich>decisions of the last few years have been so repressive that I really cannot <v Charles Reich>imagine how they can be squared with the Bill of Rights or with the vision of the <v Charles Reich>Constitution. <v Michael Toms>Like what would be some examples of some of those decisions? <v Charles Reich>Well, in the area of privacy, in the area of search and seizure, in <v Charles Reich>the area of when you can be arrested. <v Charles Reich>The court has more and more lean toward a wide ranging police <v Charles Reich>power toward saying that the police can survey,

<v Charles Reich>can eavesdrop, can listen in, can exercise thought control, <v Charles Reich>that all of this- <v Michael Toms>Ostensibly for the good of the people- <v Charles Reich>For the protection of the state. <v Charles Reich>And the court has really gone <v Charles Reich>to incredible lengths. Justice Black, if he were alive, wouldn't even believe the <v Charles Reich>decisions that have come down in the last few years. <v Charles Reich>And at the same time, the court has excluded people <v Charles Reich>like environmentalists and consumers from the judicial process. <v Charles Reich>Over and over again it is ruled that groups like that have no right <v Charles Reich>to bring their cases, have no standing in court. <v Charles Reich>It is said that these people have no economic interest in <v Charles Reich>the development of the country. So it's- it's sort of fashion a legal system <v Charles Reich>of privilege. <v Michael Toms>Do you think there's some kind of a conscious conspiracy behind the corporate state? <v Michael Toms>I mean, the very terminology implies that there's some- some manipulations <v Michael Toms>going on behind the scenes by hidden secret powers.

<v Michael Toms>Is that- Is that the case? <v Charles Reich>The only word I'd quarrel with would be the word conscious. <v Charles Reich>I think that there is indeed a malevolent force at work, <v Charles Reich>and I think it has a life of its own. <v Charles Reich>And I think that it grows. <v Charles Reich>I think it responds to challenge. <v Charles Reich>I think that it actively changes itself when it's challenged and <v Charles Reich>becomes even more repressive. <v Charles Reich>But I don't think that behind it there's a human consciousness. <v Charles Reich>I think behind it-. <v Michael Toms>There isn't like a Goldfinger at the top. <v Michael Toms>[Laughter] <v Charles Reich>No, no, I never saw anything like that. <v Charles Reich>I don't believe in anything like that. <v Charles Reich>What I do think is that there are a set of values, <v Charles Reich>values that believe that the bigger the better, <v Charles Reich>the more material, the better. <v Charles Reich>The more we exploit our resources, the better values <v Charles Reich>that are limited to profits, to bureaucracy, to authority, <v Charles Reich>to corporate control.

<v Charles Reich>And all you need is to have those values and no others. <v Charles Reich>And you'll get this result. <v Michael Toms>I'm thinking about the impenetrability of the corporate state of the corporation. <v Michael Toms>I mean, they seem- When you look at a large corporation, it seems so <v Michael Toms>huge, so massive, so impenetrable, so powerful. <v Michael Toms>And I'm just one person in this in this situation. <v Michael Toms>What is there? Is there- there a- are there bridges through other places <v Michael Toms>that- that that can be found to get in and work <v Michael Toms>from within? Or how- how can that process unfold that we can- that this can change? <v Charles Reich>I think the corporate state is very vulnerable. <v Charles Reich>And I think that we have a lot of power to change it. <v Charles Reich>The primary power we have is as consumers. <v Charles Reich>Because we are really controlled not <v Charles Reich>by the kind of repression that you see in Nicaragua, or <v Charles Reich>you know, Iran or that you formerly saw in those countries. <v Charles Reich>We're not controlled by an army that controls the population.

<v Charles Reich>We're the subjects of thought control, of mind control and <v Charles Reich>buying control. And if we ever could learn to think <v Charles Reich>about what we really wanted and needed in an independent and autonomous <v Charles Reich>way, we could crack the whip and the corporations would have to follow because <v Charles Reich>the consumer really is king in this country and it's simply that the consumer <v Charles Reich>is manipulated. So it's really our ignorance that makes <v Charles Reich>us powerless. We are not powerless. <v Charles Reich>The moment that we see this as an alien, as something that we need to <v Charles Reich>fight. <v Michael Toms>You know, we see situ- I think examples of that exist where- where the power <v Michael Toms>the consumer has been felt with- If we look at things like the grape fields and lettuce <v Michael Toms>and things like that, where- where a massive boycott of particular products <v Michael Toms>has actually resulted in some- some bottom line decisions being made and changes being <v Michael Toms>made. <v Charles Reich>Well, that's absolutely right. And that could be far more of that. <v Charles Reich>Now, how does the corporate state respond to that?

<v Charles Reich>Well, by trying to create dependency, what the corporate state <v Charles Reich>tries to do is make you dependent on its products the way they are <v Charles Reich>now, so that you are hooked so that you can't get off of gasoline, <v Charles Reich>you can't get off of a car, you can't get off of all the things that they <v Charles Reich>want you to pay higher and higher prices for. <v Charles Reich>And they try to trick you into living <v Charles Reich>a life so dependent upon the things that the corporate state <v Charles Reich>wants you to do that you will not <v Charles Reich>exercise your own judgment, that you will just have to go along. <v Charles Reich>So one of the important things for the people as a whole to regain <v Charles Reich>power is simply to see how dependent we are and try and <v Charles Reich>put a stop to that. <v Michael Toms>Also to some extent, I mean, I don't want to- I think we're setting <v Michael Toms>up some kind of us and them kind of situation, too, and-. <v Charles Reich>Us and it.

<v Michael Toms>Us and it. So it's an us and it. [Other speaker: Yes] Because most of us, I think, count- <v Michael Toms>include among their friends, people who are- I mean, we may have an attorney who works <v Michael Toms>for a large law firm. <v Michael Toms>We may have someone working in a bank. <v Michael Toms>We may have a friend who works for even an oil company, for that matter. <v Michael Toms>And so many of us are actually involved in making <v Michael Toms>a living within what might be, you know, in the- encompass the corporate state. <v Michael Toms>How do we relate to that? <v Charles Reich>Well, I- I don't feel that we should personalize the corporate state or <v Charles Reich>the people who work in it. The state is an it. <v Charles Reich>It's an alien. It has no human qualities, really. <v Charles Reich>It is anti-life. <v Michael Toms>So it's taken on an energy of its own that separate and appart [Charles Reich: That's <v Michael Toms>right] from- from human energy. <v Charles Reich>That's right. And at the same time, it is also true <v Charles Reich>that there are the ins and outs, and there are the <v Charles Reich>few who are in the system, and there are the many who are excluded. <v Charles Reich>And that the many who are excluded is a growing number today,

<v Charles Reich>because today we are beginning to see a artificially <v Charles Reich>created depression, an artificially created unemployment and <v Charles Reich>artificially created scarcity. <v Charles Reich>We're beginning to see the state actually force us into <v Charles Reich>a depression. <v Michael Toms>When you say artificially created, could you go deeper with that? <v Michael Toms>Because, I mean, many of us are experiencing some of these things. <v Charles Reich>What I mean is that, um, when we talk, let's <v Charles Reich>say, about the limits that natural <v Charles Reich>resources impose on us. <v Charles Reich>Those are real limits. <v Charles Reich>There is only so much fossil fuel. <v Charles Reich>I'm talking about something exactly the opposite of that. <v Charles Reich>I'm talking about a depression and scarcity and exclusion <v Charles Reich>and unemployment. That is a unnecessary <v Charles Reich>artificial creation which has as its purpose the <v Charles Reich>maintenance of control and the repression of too much

<v Charles Reich>cultural growth, too much cultural variety. <v Charles Reich>The hungrier people are, the more people there are who have to <v Charles Reich>really work hard or struggle to make it, <v Charles Reich>the less we're going to have a cultural flowering, the less we're going to have <v Charles Reich>a democratic growth in this country. <v Charles Reich>So I think this is I think we are now entering something that they <v Charles Reich>call a recession, but I call a depression. <v Charles Reich>And I think it's been brought on deliberately because <v Charles Reich>it really prevents the growth of all the kinds of of <v Charles Reich>new thinking that we really need. <v Michael Toms>I'm talking with Charles Reich. <v Speaker>[Song: Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell]

<v Michael Toms>Little Joni Mitchell giggle there at the end, Big Yellow Taxi.

<v Michael Toms>You're listening to New Dimensions, and I'm talking with Charles Rank and Charles, we <v Michael Toms>were talking about the artificially created depression, <v Michael Toms>in your words. We've heard that we're seeing the term severe recession <v Michael Toms>in recent weeks in the newspaper. <v Michael Toms>You know if- I've have always been a student of history myself. <v Michael Toms>And if we look at history, we see many of the occurrences <v Michael Toms>and the things that are happening now in history, don't we? <v Charles Reich>Well, I have a quotation that <v Charles Reich>was written in 1933 at the time of the last Great Depression, <v Charles Reich>was written by Mr. Justice Lewis D. <v Charles Reich>Brandeis. And he was speaking of the great unemployment <v Charles Reich>then. He said, 'There is a widespread belief that the existing <v Charles Reich>unemployment is the result in large part of the great inequality <v Charles Reich>in the distribution of wealth and income which giant corporations have fostered. <v Charles Reich>That, by the control which the few have exerted through giant corporations,

<v Charles Reich>individual initiative and effort are being paralyzed, creative power <v Charles Reich>impaired and human happiness lessened. <v Charles Reich>That the true prosperity of our past came not from big business, but <v Charles Reich>through the courage, the energy and the resourcefulness of small men. <v Charles Reich>That only by releasing from corporate control the faculties of the unknown <v Charles Reich>many, only by reopening to them the opportunities for <v Charles Reich>leadership, can confidence in our future be reshaped <v Charles Reich>and the existing misery be overcome, and that only through participation <v Charles Reich>by the many and the responsibilities and determinations of business can Americans <v Charles Reich>secure the moral and intellectual development which is essential to the maintenance <v Charles Reich>of liberty.' So 50 years ago we were facing <v Charles Reich>the same kind of problem, and one of our greatest legal thinkers was <v Charles Reich>saying the same thing that the- that the corporation is <v Charles Reich>a foreign element in the American scheme, and that

<v Charles Reich>it takes away from America its greatest strength, which is the creativity <v Charles Reich>and the energy of all the people. <v Charles Reich>And it limits us to the decision making of a very few. <v Charles Reich>And that as a result, we become poor, we become poorer, and we <v Charles Reich>enlist only 5 percent of our people in the creative effort. <v Charles Reich>You know that there was a time when Democratic <v Charles Reich>thinkers didn't even want to have corporations at all. <v Charles Reich>The corporation is not a necessary thing in a democracy. <v Charles Reich>You could have just small businesses, just small enterprises. <v Charles Reich>And there was a lot of doubt at the beginning about whether corporations should be <v Charles Reich>permitted. Still later, there was a general agreement that if they were permitted, <v Charles Reich>they should not be allowed to grow large. <v Charles Reich>They should not be giants. They should not have monopolies. <v Charles Reich>They should not own vertically. <v Charles Reich>And oil companies shouldn't own service stations. <v Charles Reich>It shouldn't own pipelines that shouldn't conspire with other oil

<v Charles Reich>companies. And so what we're seeing now is something that was <v Charles Reich>feared by many of those who cared most about liberty <v Charles Reich>and the America that we used to know. <v Michael Toms>The fact of the matter is there- there was anti-trust legislation created for these- <v Michael Toms>for the very reasons that you mentioned in the very fierce you expressed. <v Michael Toms>But the fact of the matter is, is that isn't it the bureaucratic red tape has become so <v Michael Toms>enormous that even when a corporation is called on the carpet, it takes <v Michael Toms>years to get to the final result. <v Michael Toms>And even when that happens, there's seemingly a small slap on the wrist, as it were, <v Michael Toms>a few hundred thousand dollar fine for a corporation that may be generating billions in <v Michael Toms>profits. And that really doesn't change anything, does it? <v Charles Reich>Well, antitrust is something that we really ought to talk about a minute. <v Charles Reich>It's an incredible story. <v Charles Reich>In 1887, the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed. <v Charles Reich>And if that act were still being enforced, <v Charles Reich>it would prevent the great monopolies that would- we have today.

<v Charles Reich>It would prevent the immense oil monopoly and other great corporations. <v Charles Reich>They're clearly in violation of the spirit. <v Charles Reich>And I think in the letter of the Sherman Antitrust Act which is still on the books. <v Charles Reich>What's happened is that the law has simply been ignored. <v Charles Reich>It has been gutted. It has been left to molder. <v Charles Reich>And people don't even know about it. <v Charles Reich>Most citizens don't know that the Sherman Antitrust law is a bill <v Charles Reich>of rights second only to the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. <v Charles Reich>That's a bill of rights for the for the ordinary business person. <v Charles Reich>It's the bill of rights for the workers. <v Charles Reich>The Bill of Rights are people who want to start up their own enterprise. <v Charles Reich>And here it's been on the books. <v Charles Reich>It's part of our American law, and it's totally ignored and people <v Charles Reich>never heard of it. So in a way, we've simply forgotten our own <v Charles Reich>traditions. And that's the way that this alien has come <v Charles Reich>to see so much power.

<v Michael Toms>What is the relationship of profits to this whole process? <v Michael Toms>When you're talking about free enterprise, you're talking about an enterprise becoming <v Michael Toms>smaller, and that's still supports the idea of of individual profit and <v Michael Toms>profit- I don't think you're attacking profits, but what is the relationship of- of <v Michael Toms>profits, which seem to be one of the goals- is one of the goals of the large corporation <v Michael Toms>to give to this creation of this humanless energy <v Michael Toms>form that exists called the corporate state? <v Charles Reich>Well, you know, there are two ways to make a profit. <v Charles Reich>And one way is to restrict the amount of goods <v Charles Reich>and to jack up the price. <v Charles Reich>And the other way is to have a great abundance and to make <v Charles Reich>your profit out of your creativity, out of your inventiveness, out of the variety <v Charles Reich>of what you create. And then you essentially are profiting from the <v Charles Reich>labor that you put in.