Corporate power exists only at the will of the state.
I am increasingly afraid that this is a problematic assumption. In an age where transnational corporations can and often do sport advertising budgets that rival or surpass the total revenue of several Central African governments, it is far from clear that such organisations could not simply acquire their own militias if the police and official militaries ceased to support their existence.
East India Company, anyone?
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
This is not an argument about probability - there is absolutely zero probability of the US government dissolving Exxon Mobil in the current environment. I'm just saying that in a serious showdown of actual coercive and legal authority between the two forces Exxon Mobil would not win. An easily forgotten fact behind the current corporate capture of our government is that it's most important aim is to prevent such a thing from ever occurring.
But if you simply dismantle the state without doing anything about corporate power first, then the state won't have the power to bring the corporate power structure to heel.
