R i g h t a r d i a: Democrats can be pro-business and anti-corporatist

Precursor of US corporations

The joint-stock company was the forerunner of the modern corporation. In a JOINT-STOCK VENTURE, stock was sold to investors who provided capital and assumed limited risk.
These companies had proven profitable in the past with trading companies. The risk was small, but the returns could take years.

The joint stock companies wanted to get rich quick through the discovery and mining of gold and silver and used indentured servants and slaves to operate these enterprises

But the colonists quickly discovered that the real gold in America was the land. Land was scarce in Europe.

The land that produced tobacco, rice, timber, and later cotton and other crops.

Colonial America was anti-corporatist

The Declaration of Independence freed Americans not only from Britain but also from the tyranny of British corporations.

Americans remained deeply suspicious of corporate power for the next 100 years.
Early US corporations were "artificial, invisible, intangible," mere financial tools. They were chartered by individual states, not the federal government, which meant they could be kept under close local scrutiny.
These corporations were automatically dissolved if they violated their charter.

Railroad magnate J. P. Morgan even understood that corporations must never become so big that they "inhibit freedom to the point where efficiency [is] endangered."

Only two hundred or so corporations operated in the US by the year 1800. They weren't allowed to participate in the political process. They couldn't buy stock in other corporations.

In 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed a motion to extend the charter of the corrupt and tyrannical Second Bank of the United States, and was widely applauded for doing so.

That same year the state of Pennsylvania revoked the charters of ten banks for operating contrary to the public interest.
Even the enormous industry trusts which protected member corporations from external competitors were no match for the state. By the mid-1800s, antitrust legislation was widely in place.

In the early history of America, the corporation played an important but subordinate role. The people -- not the corporations -- were in control.

Then US corporations became powerful

What happened? How did corporations gain power and eventually start exercising more control than the individuals who created them?

The shift began in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

The turning point was the Civil War. Corporations made huge profits from procurement contracts and took advantage of the disorder and corruption of the times to buy legislatures, judges and even presidents.

Corporations became the masters and keepers of business.

President Abraham Lincoln foresaw the trouble

Lincoln warned that "corporations have been enthroned . . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the republic is destroyed."

President Lincoln's warning went unheeded. Corporate power continued to increase. State charters could no longer be revoked.

Corporate profits were no longer be limited. Corporate economic activity could be restrained only by the courts, and in hundreds of cases judges gave corporations minor legal victories which empowered corporations.

Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad

Then came a legal event that would not be understood for decades and would change American history.

In Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute over a rail bed route, the US Supreme Court ruled that a private corporation was a "natural person" under the US Constitution and therefore entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights.

Suddenly, corporations enjoyed the rights and sovereignty previously enjoyed only by the people.

Corporations had the the right to free speech, but corporations are not protected by the Fifth Amendment.

This 1886 decision gave corporations many of the same powers as private citizens.

The whole intent of the American Constitution -- that all citizens have one vote, and exercise an equal voice in public debates -- had been undermined.

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas concluded of Santa Clara ruling "could not be supported by history, logic or reason" and that it was one of the great legal blunders of the nineteenth century . . .

The rise of US corporations

Post-Santa Clara America became a very different place. By 1919, corporations employed more than 80 percent of the workforce and produced most of America's wealth.

Corporate trusts had become too powerful to legally challenge and the courts consistently favored their positions.

Employees found themselves without recourse. If someone were injured on the job ,you voluntarily assumed the risk according to the courts

The US has since been governed as a corporate state ever since the Santa Clara ruling.

Liberals have historically supported capitalism and free trade

According to Wikipedia, liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but most liberals support such fundamental ideas as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, free trade, and the freedom of religion.

Although liberals are usually pro-business--certainly the Blue Dog democrats are--many may also be anti-corporatist.

Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves division of the people of society into corporate groups, Many liberals and progressives consider corporatism and fascism to be synonymous

Franklin D. Roosevelt in an April 29, 1938 message to Congress warned that the growth of private power could result in fascism:

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

The GOP wants the primacy of corporations

Rightardia suggests that many US corporations have the goal of corporate control of the US government. The end game seems to be a unified corporate government in which corporate leaders and government leaders freely move about in both the corporate and government world.

Although the corporate leaders want to control the US government, they also want their corporations to be unrestrained with US government regulation and corporate taxes.

Corporations paid 30 percent of the federal revenue in the 1950s. Today, corporations pay 6 percent of federal revenue.

The GOP has been successful in achieving many of these corporatist goals. Corpoate income tax is at a historic low and the US was deregulated under the Reagan and two Bush presidencies.

Not only does the GOP deregulate private enterprise, it also looks the other way on anti-trust, labor disputes and environmental issues when the GOP has the presidency.

The GOP is big advocate for the government and corporations working together, It suggests that only business leaders are qualified to be government leaders, although this assertion appears to be false.

Rightardia has looked at increases in GDP, job creation statistics, deficit and national debt statistics, and unemployment statistics. Democratic presidents from a variety of walks of life have consistently outperformed leaders with corporate backgrounds from the GOP.

The GOP also contends that the government should be pro-business but there is really no legal basis in the US constition for this assertion. The words capitalism, free enterprise and corporation are not mentioned in the US Constitution.

There is really no justification for the GOp assertion there should be a primacy of corporate needs in government. The primacy of the US government is truly the American people.

The preamble is probably the closest thing to the the US government's mission statement:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Glass-Steagall act was one of the last big reforms of FDR. The repeal of provisions of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act effectively removed the separation that previously existed between Wall Street investment banks and depository banks.

The repeal may have directly contributed to the severity of the Financial crisis of 2007–2010 by allowing banks to gamble with their depositor's money.

The government needs to focus on the needs of Americans, not our corporations. This is the biggest difference between the perspectives of Democrats and Republicans.

Also, Democrats are not anti-business as Republicans assert. There is a difference between a political party that supports free enterprise and one that supports corporate fascism or corporatism.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/Hx_Corporations_US.html, http://www.ushistory.org/us/2b.asp,

http://www.academicamerican.com/colonial/topics/colonialintro.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Jagger/can-obama-lose_b_843377_82854503.html