The New Corporation; How “good” corporations are bad for democracy

A deeply informed and unflinching look at the way corporations have slyly rebranded themselves as socially conscious entities ready to tackle society's problems, while CEO compensation soars, income inequality is at all-time highs, and democracy sits in a precarious situation. “A very important book, an arresting study directed to a central issue of the times” (Noam Chomsky), from the author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Over the last decade and a half, business leaders have been calling for a new kind of capitalism. With income inequality soaring, wages stagnating, and a climate crisis escalating, they realized that they had to make social and environmental values the very core of their messaging. The problem is corporations are still, first and foremost, concerned with their bottom line. In lucid and engaging prose, Joel Bakan documents how increasing corporate freedom encroaches on individual liberty and democracy. Through deep research and interviews with both top executives and their sharpest critics, he exposes the inhumanity and destructive force of the current order--profit-driven privatization subverting the public good, governments neglecting duties to protect the environment, the increasing alienation we experience as every aspect of life is economized, and how the Covid-19 pandemic lays bare the unjust fault lines of our corporate-led society. Beyond diagnosing major problems, in The New Corporation Bakan narrates a hopeful path forward. He reveals how citizens around the world are fighting back and making gains in ways that bolster democracy and benefit ordinary citizens rather than the corporate elite. He does not talk about the forensics of corporate sociopathy or technical psychopaths. He seems almost apologetic after going to Davos and soaking up their do-gooder rhetoric. He seems to have dropped his guard to the greediest men alive as they find new ways to squeeze every last drop of resources and money out of their poisoned planet, create fake news, fake medicine, censor free speech, foster genocide and on and on, dehumanization on steroids. Why aren't these people in jail or on the gallows? Bernie Madoff's brothers are alive and well and sucking up more than they can carry by killing off small businesses en masse, the decimation of the middle class. Caveat lector. Corporate liberation, my foot, "a lie told once remains a lie, a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth." Funny how the richest men alive never have enough money or power. Is the cure for corporate psychopathy really the depopulation of the planet? Too many unanswered / unaddressed troubling questions.