The Corporation is a documentary film that examines the present-day corporation. The film provides information about the advancement of the current business corporations. The film shows how corporations changed from legal entities that originated as chartered institutes by governments to commercial institutes that are entitled to legal rights of a natural person. The film concentrates on corporations in North America. The core theme of the film is the assessment of a companies as ‘personalities’ following the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394. In deciding the case, the court based its finding on the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Consequently, the court held that corporations are ‘persons’ having the equal rights as natural persons. The film examines and criticizes the contemporary corporate commercial practices.
Perceiving corporations as having rights that are similar to human beings ensures that a common ground regarding the Marxism social theory and the concept of unconscious psychological processes is hard to find. The psychological processes connote the intellectual activities and human beliefs (Anestis 149). As persons, corporations possess the personality of continuous self-interest. To assess the personality of corporations as in the film, one needs to use the standard diagnostic criteria of psychologists and psychiatrists. Such assessment reveals that corporations have considerably high anti-social tendencies.
Corporations see the world in a materialistic perspective. Marxism philosophy provides a critique of the emergence of capitalism through various perspectives. It considers the materialistic analysis of past development, social change, class relations, and struggle within society (Burczak 171). This philosophy further considers the role of class struggles during systematic economic changes. Corporations in the contemporary societies embody laissez-faire capitalism. This form of capitalism ensures that subsequent corporate behavior is ‘psychopathic’ as corporations attempt to fulfill monstrous objectives. The narration of Sir Mark Moody-Stuart regarding the altercation between himself and his wife against the motley group when he was the chairperson of the Royal Dutch Shell is proof that corporations only exist as objects of wealth creation.
In the movie, Robert D. Hare, a psychology professor, and an FBI consultant likens the profiles of contemporary profit-driven corporations to a diagnosed psychopath. The corporation tries to compare the manner in which corporations are scientifically obligated to behave with symptoms synonymous with DSM-IV that denote psychopathy (Babiak 85). For instance, the film depicts modern-day corporations as having no regard to other people’s feelings, being reckless in disregard of the welfare of others, no ability to experience guilt, failure to respect the rule of law, and constantly lying in order to deceive for profits.
The movie portrays corporations as the leading parasites in the world today. It reveals how corporations as parasites prey on the people especially the employees as their host. According to the film, no one is immune from the harm that corporations generate, not even the children. The nature of corporations is that they are autocratic thus exploit and repress their workforce. The major concern of corporate administrations is to minimize loss and maximize profits. As such, corporations are able and willing to do whatever is in their power to achieve this goal.
The psychiatric analysis of behavior of corporations is because of the abuses that companies perpetrate in their persistent pursuit of profits. As such, the main issue is not that corporations exploit workers, hurt animals, commit accounting fraud, and pollute the environment, but those activities are because of key personality traits relating to the life of corporations. Though past governments ensured that there were limits as to what corporations would engage in, current regimes allow corporations to engage in virtually all public domains. From the documentary, it is noteworthy that corporations rarely have in-built mechanisms to limit who, what, or how much they are willing to exploit as they seek to maximize profits.
As regards the perception of management, corporations are willing to spend billions of dollars to advertise in every media platform. They have managed to target young children in their advertisements. According to the film, this aspect has created a ‘nag factor’ study in relation to child psychiatry. Conversely, the study was not supposed to assist parents to deal with the nagging children but it was supposed to help corporations to design their ads in such a way that more children would be encouraged to nag for their merchandises. Such corporate behavior manipulates the consumers to an extent that they want to buy certain products.
The movie looks at the use of people as company brands and the use of considerable amount of monies to shape political and public opinions. This means that corporations today compete to manipulate and own everything. According to The Corporation, those who seek to promote public good often encounter resistance especially if such activities do not benefit corporations. The recounting of Edwin Black regarding the tactical alliance between IBM and the Nazi Germany-one before and in the course of World War II is evidence that corporations are also willing to take advantage of the absence of democratic principles to exploit the situation for their benefits.
Work Cited
Anestis, Michael, Joyce Anestis, Scott Lilienfeld. "When it comes to evaluating psychodynamic
therapy, the devil is in the details". American Psychologist 66 (2): 149–151; discussion 151–4, 2011.
Babiak, Paul and Robert D. Hare. Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to
Work. HarperCollins, 2007.
Burczak, Theodore. Socialism After Hayek. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Avilés, Luis. Ideology: A Marxist perspective. n.d. Web. 6 Feb. 2014 http://academic.uprm.edu/~laviles/id219.htm
