Corporate Values Are Not Human Values

      

A line can be drawn quite neatly between corporate interests and human interests. You can throw in the interests of animals as well, because to corporations they have value only in so much as they have capital value. If it is cheaper to shoot an animal than feed it, there is no question what the corporate choice will be.

Same thing with humans, although a thin facade of concern for the sanctity of human life must be maintained. So rather than mercifully killing us quickly, corporations and corporate government do not actively kill human beings, but they do allow them to die slow and preventable deaths.

Corporate values and human values are two very distinct ways of looking at life. For a while now we have rationalized that corporate values could serve human values. For a time we were able to ameliorate the suffering that corporate values impose upon the majority of humans. But the choice between the two value systems is becoming increasingly stark as corporations are gaining control of society as never before. A hundred years ago corporations attempted to wrest all power, but there were other institutions and schools of thought that held the minds of the masses. The mindsets that once held back complete corporate dominance are mostly gone now.

A century ago, religion still played a major part in most people’s lives. Say what you will about religion, it has its own agenda and way of seeing the world, and many of its tenets run contrary to the corporate set of values. If you have any doubts, I invite you to read Capital And Labor by Reverand Hugo C. Koehler, an analysis of the encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. In the 80 years since that was written, it was not merely modernity and science that have been chipping away at religious institutions, it has also been corporate forces. Where the church has opposed corporate values, it has been attacked, and where the church has been amenable to corporate values, it has been corrupted. Witness now the religious right that mirrors not Christ’s teachings but the values that support corporate control of our society and the world. Religion no longer presents a significant barrier to corporate values.

As the church was still a strong influencer of people’s values a hundred years ago, so to were the values of feudalism, nationalism, and monarchy. A social compact still existed that stated that, while not everyone was equal and some were born to rule while others born to serve, everybody had a place in society. Nobody was outside, everybody was (theoretically) valued. Not so in a corporate system. While a nation had to admit that even the lowliest of us were still members of the country in which they live, corporations were able to slough off those who provided no value to the corporation without compunction. Whereas individuals in the past had a sense of belonging in even primitive feudalism, they no longer counted as anything in a corporate society. The worker who was not needed by corporations was a man without a country. His loyalty was demanded of him but no loyalty could be expected from a corporate system. Pre-corporate ways of viewing nations are no longer a barrier to corporate values.

Lastly, communism and socialism were forces to be reckoned with. Constructed from first-hand-observations of what corporations wrought upon the underclasses, such ideologies jibed with the ideas of community, fairness, kindness, and inclusion that existed within feudalistic and especially Christian values. Whereas feudalism justified the superior position of one human being over another as God’s will, corporatism stripped such justifications away. In a corporate system, money was all the proof needed of superiority. And the best way of acquiring money and therefore success was to make money for corporations.

Also, the means of indoctrinating the masses were not nearly as great as they are today. Whereas humans interacted face to face a century ago, they now mainly communicate with each other through electronic means. Instead of sitting around after work at bars, clubs, or front porches discussing ideas, many now are on social media, where billionaires who received their wealth through corporations decide what we are allowed to see, hear, and think. Post on Facebook and there is no way of knowing who will see your posting. Write an article on your blog, and you have no way of knowing where Google will place you in their search lists. More than ever before in history, corporations have placed themselves between the communication of people. Even within the sanctuary of our own homes, propaganda is constantly flowing in while our personal data is flowing out. 

Survival of a species is not a corporate value. Not even the survival of the human species. Certainly, corporations could not exist without us (at least in the present, but who knows if in the near future they could be self-sufficient. Sounds, crazy, doesn’t it? But so does destroying the planet for profit), but corporate values don’t factor the survival of the species into the equation. I assure you if you were to enter a boardroom of any of the largest corporations, nobody will be talking about the threats that face us as a species but instead will be plotting paths to increase profit.

If survival of the human species is of value to you, it is necessary to realize that your values are quite different than those of corporations. Corporate media will tell you otherwise, they will try to pretend that corporate values ARE human values.

That’s because they are lying. You see, truth is not a corporate value.