Pro or anti corporate personhood?

[KropotkinKomrade]

Do corporations deserve the same legal rights as actual people?

Are you for or against corporate personhood?

[Ostrinski]

Corporate personhood. Fuck yes.

[GPDP]

I think the obvious answer here is, as socialists, we should be against corporate personhood.

That said, I'm gonna go ahead and be a little critical of a potential movement to repeal corporate personhood. While it is indeed a ridiculous and even damaging concept, and we'd be better off without it, it is the kind of thing reformist liberals tend to go after as opposed to revolutionary socialists. We don't seek to end corporations - we aim to destroy the capitalist system altogether.

Those who primarily choose to rail on corporations then tend to go on to advocate support for "small businesses" and mere government reform and expanded welfare programs - not exactly a revolutionary outlook if you ask me. Better? Yes, but still not quite what we're after.

[Ostrinski]

I think the obvious answer here is, as socialists, we should be against corporate personhood.

That said, I'm gonna go ahead and be a little critical of a potential movement to repeal corporate personhood. While it is indeed a ridiculous and even damaging concept, and we'd be better off without it, it is the kind of thing reformist liberals tend to go after as opposed to revolutionary socialists. We don't seek to end corporations - we aim to destroy the capitalist system altogether.

Those who primarily choose to rail on corporations then tend to go on to advocate support for "small businesses" and mere government reform and expanded welfare programs - not exactly a revolutionary outlook if you ask me. Better? Yes, but still not quite what we're after.
So true.
However, corporate personhood grants the bourgeois an even more iron fisted stranglehold over the proletariat through law. It goes back to what James Madison said about "the rights of people and property." This gives the owners of the means of production more rights than people, because the people do not own property. Seeing as though capitalism is unjust not only in practice but in theory as well, I am blind to any reservation that should be made in reducing capitalism to shit.
But until the capitalist system is destroyed, removing corporate personhood would greatly improve the lives of working people here and now. Not trying to be reformist, but I don't believe we should just abandon labor interests until conditions are ripe for revolution.

[Robespierre Richard]

I... don't really care? I mean it's like asking me how I feel about taxation/banking/national debt. It's a part of capitalism that can't really be separated from the whole.

Sure it makes changes to jurispudence but it's not like I'm for the present form of jurispudence anyway.

[KropotkinKomrade]

I believe we are lacking in numbers. Why? Because corporations not only lobby government, but they lobby individuals in the form of advertising and product placement. It's not that I think reform is any sort of appropriate solution, but rather that perhaps we could weaken the ability of corporations to pull the wool over the eyes of potential comrades.

[PhoenixAsh]

No...they bloody well should not have the same rights.

[jake williams]

The original notion of "corporate personhood" referred relatively narrowly to some particular bourgeois property rights - basically, the right to own property and enter into contracts. It's sort of interesting that the real controversy comes when their owners demand bourgeois civil rights regarding speech, political participation, freedom from search and seizure, etc.

Corporate personhood in the first instance has its pros and cons. I absolutely agree with GPDP, and would in fact go further - "anti-corporatism" on its own is a bunch of reactionary petty bourgeois bullshit. Public corporations (ie. "publicly" traded, not publicly owned) are actually subject to particular public disclosure rules and taxes that other forms of business organization aren't, and pre-corporate or non-corporate capitalist businesses are definitely capable of being horrible and inhuman too. In fact, in a lot of cases they can be much worse.

I think tactically it makes sense to oppose, for example, the right of corporations to finance election campaigns, but I think "anti-corporatism" as a whole politics is a dead end.

[Gorilla]

I'm going to go out on a limb and support it, for as long as we have to have capitalism. Mom and pop capitalists are the scum of the fucking earth and the core of reaction world-wide. Why would you want to de-socialize production and multiply the ranks of the owner class? It would be a death-blow to every impetus towards socialism that presently exists and an abortion to all that are coming to be. A capitalist society without corporations would make Democratic Kampuchea look like the golden age of Athens under Pericles.

[GPDP]

I'm going to go out on a limb and support it, for as long as we have to have capitalism. Mom and pop capitalists are the scum of the fucking earth and the core of reaction world-wide. Why would you want to de-socialize production and multiply the ranks of the owner class? It would be a death-blow to every impetus towards socialism that presently exists and an abortion to all that are coming to be. A capitalist society without corporations would make Democratic Kampuchea look like the golden age of Athens under Pericles.

This is why its not sufficient to merely argue against corporations without also putting forward a better alternative. Failure to do so results in little more than achieving the petit-bourgeois wet dream.

Hell, I am indeed inclined to entirely do away with the whole "anti-corporation" narrative due to this. If you seek to end corporations but your plan is to replace them with small businesses, congratulations, you just took us back a good 150 years or so, and you are no comrade of mine. If you want to go further than that and embrace an actually progressive solution (such as, oh, I don't, public ownership of the means of production), then why even bother talking about ending corporate personhood in the first place? You might as well go all the way and end capitalism, period.

[Sasha]

only if it means we can shoot them after the revolution ;)