One answer is found in a booklet written by Richard Grossman and Frank Adams titled Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation. The preface of the book opens with these words: "Corporations cause harm every day. Why do their harms go unchecked? How can they dictate what we produce, how we work, what we eat, drink and breathe? How did a self-governing people let this come to pass?
Corporations were not supposed to reign in the United States."
The book goes on to discuss how the early Americans had the utmost distrust of the concept of corporations. The first Americans believed, and for good reason, that corporations needed to be strictly curtailed and carefully regulated by the citizenry. Otherwise, they feared that corporations could amass such economic and political clout that the people's sovereign right to govern themselves would be rivaled, and even usurped.
"The colonists did not make a revolution over a tax on tea. They fought for many reasons, but chiefly to create a nation where citizens were the government and ruled corporations." The lord proprietors of England's colonial trading corporations, who claimed their authority came from God, were a large part of what the American colonists rebelled against. "So, even as Americans were routing the king's armies, they vowed to put corporations under democratic command."
The book goes on to briefly describe how, through the years, Americans forgot their fear and relaxed their control of corporations. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly evident today that what the early Americans feared has materialized. It has materialized, furthermore, under the weight of years of case law and judge-made law that may prove difficult to overcome.
Nonetheless, it is time for Americans to once again explore their ability to bring corporations under democratic command by focusing, as in days of old, upon the corporate charter. Individual states have been empowered to grant charters of incorporation since the days of the early Americans. Originally, charters were rarely granted and when they were, they carried numerous restrictions with them. Gone now are the days when citizens could restrict a corporation with respect to: how many owners it can have, how long it can last, how many stockholders it can have, how much profit it is allowed, how much and what kind of public benefit it must provide, and whether its directors can also be directors of other corporations; to list only a few possibilities.
Even so, corporations have not yet taken away all of our Constitutional sovereignty. "Every state still has legal authority to grant and to revoke corporate charters. Corporations, large or small, still must obey all laws, serve the common good, and cause no harm." Cause no harm?! When was the last time you heard of a corporate charter being revoked? Perhaps it is our sacred duty as citizens, not only of America but of the planet, to first learn and then to perfect the art of revoking corporate charters.
[To obtain a copy of Taking Care of Business, send $4.00 payable to Charter, Ink./CSPP, plus a self-addressed, stamped (64¢ postage) #10 envelope to: Charter, Ink./CSPP, P.O. Box 806, Cambridge, MA 02140. Discounts are available for orders of five or more books - write for details. Allow 3-6 weeks for delivery.]
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1995