Corporate Power

9 Pages 2355 Words

fferson and Franklin Roosevelt were also quoted fearing political oligopoly by the corporate leviathans. Fears lied in the concept that those gaining concentrated wealth would use that wealth to keep elite social and economic status. It is a theory that the rich will use their wealth to dominate legislation to keep themselves wealthy.
The theory is interesting, and probably better known when spelled out by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. “In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it…has been a source of struggle.”(Marx, 6). According to Marx, the bourgeoisie owns the prevalent economic resources and can therefore use their wealth as power to keep the proletariat down. By no means do I call Lincoln, Jefferson or FDR communists, but upon fearing concentrated wealth, theories of among them and the communists are the same.
Has this fear ever materialized? It has, in the years turning the 20th century. Unsanitary slaughterhouses and meat packing plants of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle displayed a keen example of the abuses of corporate power. The money flowing through the slaughterhouses of Chicago kept the unsafe conditions, abuses of child labor and food poisoning rather quiet until Sinclair’s novel was published. Countless other abuses by corporations have passed through, including adulterated foods, dangerous drugs, false advertising, and “blue sky” securities (Jacoby, 153). However, these abuses were necessary evils; they were examples to be used as case studies which formed decisions to prevent the abuses from happening again.
Because these situations were exposed by works like The Jungle, they needed to be remedied. Here again, theory comes into a major role. The general aim of a fair government is to be only powerful enough to keep the interest of corporations in check with the public interest. ...