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Richard Grossman 1943-2011: A Long Fight Against Minority-Rule Governance
Last month, Richard Grossman sent me an e-mail.
He wanted to let me know of legislation he helped draft that would criminalize the corporate form.
It was classic Richard Grossman.
“If people want to go into business, fine,” Grossman told Corporate Crime Reporter. “But this law would strip away 500 years of constitutional protections and privileges. No more limited liability for shareholders. No more perpetual life. No more constitutional protections.”
In a footnote to the draft law, Grossman writes that “in a corporate state, law, culture, contrived celebration and tradition illegitimately clothe directors and executive officers of chartered incorporated businesses in governing authority.”
“This is usurpation,” he writes. “A corporate state nurtures, enables and expedites such illegitimate governing authority by violence enforced by courts, jails, police and military force and by historians. Less-overtly ferocious institutions – for profit and non profit – routinely reinforce that reality.”
This was typical Grossman.
When others inspired by him had launched campaigns to ban corporate personhood, he moved on.
Last month, he objected to being called the father of the movement to challenge corporate personhood – what he dismissively calls the “corporate personhood fetish.”
“I never focused on personhood,” Grossman said last month. “I helped to explain Supreme Court cases starting with Dartmouth College in 1819 that turned business corporation directors into usurpers.”
“My focus was on the Constitution as a minority-rule plan of governance, and on usurpations galore.”
“And so this move to amend the Constitution that sprung up after the Citizens United decision – I don’t understand it as strategy, as an educational process, as an organizing process, as a goal.”
“Why validate the idea that amending the Constitution offers a remedy for two hundred years of minority rule? For today's corporate state? Corporate ‘speech’ is such a minuscule aspect of the nation's private governance and mass denials that have been in place since the nation was founded.”
He kept moving to root causes.
He challenged the Occupy Wall Street movement to move beyond talk of corruption and greed.
“There's no shortage of corruption and greed going all around,” Grossman said. “But corruption and greed are not the problem. They are diversions.”
“The essence of the power arrayed against the 99 percent are structures of minority-rule governance deeply rooted, honored and celebrated, even by, I suspect, many of the people who are occupying Wall Street today.”
“I'm referring to the great myths of this nation's founding and founders, of the U.S. Constitution and constitutional jurisprudence, the nonsense about limited governance, the sanctification of ‘the rule of law’ when lawmaking and interpreting and enforcing have been the special preserve in every generation of a small minority.”
“I'm talking about the private ordering of economic decision making, the sweeping constitutional privileges wielded by directors of the ‘creatures of law’ we call chartered, incorporated businesses camouflaged as ‘free enterprise’ and ‘the invisible hand.’”
“I hope that teach-ins about such realities in Wall Street and Washington and other places are going on. So far, I've not seen evidence.”
When I interviewed him last month, Grossman was in Sweden visiting his daughter. I asked him how he was doing. He said that he had been diagnosed earlier in the year with melanoma. He asked me not to mention it to anyone. He said he was being treated and he would be fine.
It was not to be.
I was saddened to hear today that the cancer caught up with him.
He passed away in New York City on Tuesday November 22, 2011.
Thank you Richard, friend.
Thank you for pushing, and challenging, and opening our eyes.
(The last interview Richard Grossman gave was with Corporate Crime Reporter last month. See the complete Interview at 25 Corporate Crime Reporter 40(11), October 17, 2011.)
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25 Comments so far
Show AllUnlike most all other progressives, Richard Grossman always pointed to (and provided voluminous evidence) that "minority rule" aka, the 1% or the capitalist class, was embedded in the Constitution. The Constitution was written to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" in the words of James Madison. When progressives talk of taking back, or bringing back America they are describing a mythology. You can't take back something you never had; you can't return the USA to its real democratic roots - because it never had any. With the exception of working class struggle (against 1% domination) democracy in the USA is and always has been a well cultivated illusion. A capitalist democracy is nothing more than democracy for the capitalists.
They myriad problems we face today, are systemic to capitalist (i.e. 1% minority) rule. They always have been. What is different today is that more and more of the 99% are beginning to recognize it.
It is sad that Richard Grossman has died, for today the American people are becoming far more ready to hear his message than ever before during his lifetime.
Can you name some of Grossman's works? Constitutional criticism is something of a longstanding interest for me, and I'd like to hear some new perspectives.
He was mostly a lecturer and activist (and lawyer). He was one of the founders of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD). He wrote "When Corporations Wield the Constitution" (with Ward Morehouse).
But see:
Grossman interview with David Barsamian:
http://www.zcommunications.org/challenging-corporate-power-by-david-barsamian
An excellent Richard Grossman lecture called "Challenging Corporate Law and Lore" on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTpGzdc3ZFI
Thank you. I see a lot of his points and I'll have a longer response in a bit.
Tom, a very good brief summary and tribute to Richard -- who I only met once at a POCLAD event several decades ago.
I'm currently reading Glenn Greenwald's excellent "With Liberty and Justice for Some", and can feel the influence of Richard in this as well as Nader's "No Contest".
Empathetic lawyers are somewhat rare but very important longer term educators of popular thought.
Best,
Alan
Tom: Great posts throughout this thread! Richard Grossman will be missed!
Thanks, too, for the links you provide.
Although not Grossman's work, another excellent and well-referenced work is found at:
http://cyberjournal.org/authors/fresia/
It's a free-access online book titled 'Toward an American Revolution' that is extremely enlightening and has a flavor much like Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States' but with perhaps better detail and background information. It's primary subject is the creation of the Constitution, and it shatters all the illusions we were taught in our history classes.
Thank you for bringing it up. I had forgotten about it until you mentioned it, but I've read it also and thought it was very good as well.
(rebookmarked...since when I lost my last hard drive I lost the reference).
"...you can't return the USA to its real democratic roots - because it never had any."
That's just as untrue as the myths about the Founders we learn in school.
The U.S. HAS "real democratic roots". It is just that the Constitution and the Famous Founders are not those roots.
"With the exception of working class struggle (against 1% domination) democracy in the USA is and always has been a well cultivated illusion."
Two things:
1. There were democratic struggles and democratic political spaces in the Colonies 100 years before anyone even made up the label "working class".
2. "Working class struggle" has only been directed "against 1% domination" for about 3 months -even if we grant OWS the role of directing such a struggle. This isn't exposing false myths, this is a counter-mythos.
I respect Grossman -as I respect Zinn- but he -like Zinn- was overly prone to focus on the failures of the Revolution (Constitution, slavery, imperialism, etc.), the "failure" of democrats in the 18th century to be Social Democrats of the 20th century, and the "snapshot history" of the long Revolution (Boston 1763-65, Declaration, Constitution, important battles, etc.) that is a cage put around our minds by the institutional histories and cultural mythos.
The Revolution never begins with us, and it never ends with us.
It is just that the further we get away from our time and our cultures the stranger and stranger the Revolution looks to us. Until, when it is far enough away, we can squint our eyes if someone tells us to and not be able to recognize it at all. ;)
I wonder if Grossman's words and ideas will perhaps spread the better now that others will be doing the spreading for him?
That would be nice.
"End Corporate Personhood" is like, "Stop the War", a noble, but shallow, solution.
I don't really think you are adding much to the discussion. Were democratic struggles occurring before (and after) the formation of the USA? Of course. The slave revolt led by Spartacus was a democratic struggle, did that make Rome more democratic? No. The key point point that Grossman makes is that the government of USA, its laws and institutions were DESIGNED to be undemocratic and entrench the hegemony of the minority - and they have continued to do so.
RE: "Working class struggle" has only been directed "against 1% domination" for about 3 months -even if we grant OWS the role of directing such a struggle. This isn't exposing false myths, this is a counter-mythos.
Working class struggle has only been going on for 3 months? Hello?
1% vs 99% is simply a new way to address the issue of class. You don't think that those that struggled for the 8 hour day or to end child labor in the 19th century, the labor struggles of the 1930's DID NOT KNOW that a tiny minority, aka, the ruling (capitalist) class, were running the political economy for their exclusive benefit? The radical tradition was certainly aware of that. (That is also why that rich tradition, of anarchists, communists and socialists had to be demonized and crushed.) That is why the US working class organized their collective power to fight back. It is because of working class struggles that we ever had the minor (though important) reforms that are fading away so quickly today.
"I don't really think you are adding much to the discussion."
And I don't really think this kind of B.S. adds much to the discussion either, yet we both carry on somehow, don't we? ;)
"Were democratic struggles occurring before (and after) the formation of the USA? Of course. "
Rumsfieldian self-questioning, eh? How fun! I'll try an honest version:
Is that what I wrote? No. Was I responding to something you wrote that meant that? No. Was I responding rather to your rhetorical assertion that the U.S. "has no deomocratic roots"? Yes. Does that assertion remain unproven? Yes. Is it IMHO still untrue even after you change the subject? Yes. Is this an annoying way to conduct discourse? Obviously. ;)
"The key point point that Grossman makes is that the government of USA, its laws and institutions were DESIGNED to be undemocratic and entrench the hegemony of the minority - and they have continued to do so."
Oh, I am very aware of it. Though I wouldn't say it was his "key point", I would say it was practically his ONLY point.
But the Revolution was not just the Constitution, and the institutions are not the whole of society.
This is the problem with this "critique the failures" approach.
One can get locked in and forget that the fight for the Bill of Rights (especially the 9th and 10th Amendments) shows the democratic current fighting Grossman's designers of laws right there at (what he wrongly sees as) the very beginning.
We are all looking at history.
You and Grossman are looking at Papal and Royal Edicts and finding them wanting, I am looking at Peasant Rebellions and Poachers' Executions and finding them encouraging.
The rest of your post is basically down to miscommunication in re the two sentences of mine you "quote".
I suspect I know almost as much Labor history as you, and that we could recount nearly all of it for the poor readers here.
But that wouldn't make "the 99% versus the 1%" meme older than OWS or the OWS the directors of "working class struggle" would it? And that was my point.
Counter-mythologize away!
Just be aware that you are doing so. ;)
comment deleted
"The U.S. HAS "real democratic roots". It is just that the Constitution and the Famous Founders are not those roots."
Sure, for as long as you're not a Native or black, the US has always been a bastion of democracy, particularly, in its roots.
A demos isn't always all of the people that live in a place.
The expansion of the demos to include more than just propertied European Males is an example of my point about the perpetual nature of the Revolution.
Hell, some "Native" groups -like the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois League)- are themselves the roots I was talking about!
This is the thing that always drives me nuts about the approach that Grossman and Zinn (and too many others) seem to always want us to take in reading U.S., Americas, Colonial, and especially "American Revolution" history. The constant critique of the failures of the people in the past to be as good as us leads to negation in our minds of the good they actually did (in both our eyes AND their own).
Many of history's greatest democrats would not have considered other culture groups or slaves to be a legitimate part of the demos in their wildest dreams.
The fact that we have now included the former and prohibited the very existence of the latter makes us more complete democrats than they were.
It doesn't make them not democrats.
That's just not what the word means. ;)
Thank you Matti for reminding CDers of some of the crucial, but invariably ignored, historic roots of our democracy; the Iroquois Nation, with which at least two of our "founding fathers" (Jefferson and Franklin) were very well studied.
The Iroquois were a confederation of tribes, six and they adopted another that was savaged by europeans. You might say some of the concepts represented in the constitution are based on that confederacy but the process was not democratic and was never actually practiced honestly. The senate was formed to represent landowners and the wealthy merchant class, the House was to represent the masses. All were indentured with the exception of many thousands of native americans who were driven out or exterminated. A process that Thomas Jefferson would later agree with.
Richard Grossman was right. The worshippers of constitutional rhetoric which was ALWAYS intended to apply to an elite and not the masses forget that, despite the best intentions of the founders for a dignified, moral and responsible elite that would "guide" the rest of us and thereby ensure the common welfare, our current situation is THIS:
"The open criminality of the corporate state is founded upon such a cunningly complex system of dodges, tricks, traps, loopholes and tax shelters that any good corporate lawyer can be hired to convince us that this system is not criminal at all. No, the financial system is a marvelous Gothic cathedral of legalism, complete with gargoyles gazing down on the peasants. Even the Genius of the Market may be found ensconced in a sunlit rose window."
Scott Tucker
Any fool could see that a system of privilege for the few would devolve into the tyranny of the 1%. Grossman realized this. He helped craft some legislation before he died. I hope it gets traction.
http://corporatecrimereporter.com/richardgrossman11252011.htm
I like POCLAD and Richard Grossman's work, of which I've read a little. However, Grossman's dismissal of the anti-corporate personhood campaign is kind of baffling. Most progressive ideas will be killed by this system. Sure, that's true. It's nice to launch a good idea at the right time, but good ideas will persist anyway. People can be strategic to a point, especially when the deck is stacked against us. So why be fussy about it.
Why shouldn't we take time to attack the fictional basis for corporate rule? Do we have to rewrite the Constitution first? Corporate personhood was largely an illegal creation of the U.S. Supreme Court. Why not show it up for what it is? If Grossman had something specific in mind, it would have been nice to have heard it. But I just don't know what he wants.
Yes, of course the U.S. Constitution was written by and for "men of substance," and they were very much engaged in a land grab from sea to shining sea. Slavery went on, with Blacks counted as three-fifths of a person for representational purposes. The decimation of the Native American population was the greatest holocaust in world history. You have barbarism, greed and extreme violence coming together. Today, it's like feudalism all over again, except the lords have a corporate visage. We get petrodollars and endless wars using taxpayer money. I'd add that the whole thing is enabled, in part, through corporate personhood.
Sure, there are lots of fundamentals to address. I'd argue that corporate personhood is one of them in our present milieu, along with a Constitution that made representational democracy deliberately difficult and controlled by the interests that could pay for a plutocracy instead. Of course, we can't forget that it is still possible to take power via a third party, even with the system as gamed as it is. Would that Grossman had proposed that idea. As it is, his comments in this article just seem unhelpful. People have to take stands somewhere. It just happens that people right now can see that corporations aren't people. Fixing that may be simpler than rewriting the Constitution, if that's what Grossman is proposing. I'm sorry he's gone.
Thoughts_I_A --
Very reasonable points. It's difficult enough just challenging the immense economic interests behind 'corporate personhood'. However, it has a very peculiar legal history that is rooted in sand and obfuscation.
The Constitution may be written in the interests of the propertied classes but we can see that it is amenable to extension of rights to former slaves (14th Amendment) and women (19th). {The 14th was also twisted into granting rights to corporations.}
You can make that clear to people when you describe the evolution of U.S. citizenship and its usurpation by corporations.
Americans are schooled in the myths of one person/one vote, individual freedom and responsibility, etc. Even the myths of personal salvation and the human soul exist in great tension with the legal fiction of 'corporate personhood' and its seizure of rights.
Even conservatives and instinctive reactionaries suffer anxiety when lured into the topic of corporate personhood. Often perplexed and uncomfortable defending it, the brazen nature of the legal claim often sticks even in their craw.
While it is illuminating to understand that the Constitution was written in the interests of propertied classes -- that it created a Republic of wealth (an oligarchy) not a Democracy -- what then?
Demand the abolition of the entire U.S. Constitution? That will certainly gain a lot of traction. If the demands become so immensely broad and grandiose that almost no one will support them then the only thing you are offering is paralysis.
Challenging corporate personhood is a very specific and reasonable goal. (And even that may be impossible in this country but worthy of an attempt.)
Other specific challenges to the Amerikan political oligarchy that could catch on:
Major campaign finance reform.
Banning of professional lobbyists.
Popular election of the President (eliminating the electoral college). The current arrangement is vestigial, absurd, and anti-democratic.
Reform the Senate system -- which is inherently anti-democratic (as was intended when it was created). Wyoming has the same power as California and New York in the Senate, which clearly undermines the democratic rights of people living in more populous states.
Creation of a more parliamentary system of representation -- as opposed to winner take all elections.
Option such as "none of the candidates" on a ballot.
Any and all efforts to make it easier for multiparty elections that can challenge the duopoly of the corporate state.
Challenging the legal standing of corporations as persons and citizens seems like a very good start.
The oligarchy is already abolishing the Constitution starting with the Bill of Rights.
Restoration of the Bill of Rights so that it applies to people -- not corporations -- would be a reasonable start, too. Otherwise, we are rapidly headed toward an oligarchic police state (may already be there).
Randy G,
You make some excellent points. This article may interest you.
http://thenewworldreporter.com/2011/11/12/the-former-united-states-of-america/
Also this:
http://justanothercoverup.com/politics/occupy-wall-street-for-president/
Thanks for the heads up about Grossman dying. i've always loved his work.
So sad to lose Richard. Richard Grossman taught me more about American history in one weekend in an early POCLAD retreat than I had learned in years of formal education.
Last summer I read a book more than a hundred years old, Social Forces in American History by Algie Simons (you can find it on-line), and thought of Richard and the others involved in POCLAD as I read it. Simons' book tells our history scrubbed free of all our illusions and myths. That's what Richard did too.
Ending Corporate Personhood is an excellent objective, but before doing that we have an opportunity presented by the personhood concept that enables us to advocate that these "persons" cannot be slaves. I am suggesting that before we take personhood away from the corporations that we emancipate them, that is we take away their ability to own other corporations. That we recognize that only "real persons" can own stock in corporations. Part of being a person is that a person cannot be owned by another person. The practice of corporations owning other corporations is a tool used by the elites that enables them to hide assets, avoid taxes, and to leverage their power far beyond their ownership of assets. Emancipate the corporations because slavery is intolerable and we will reduce the power of the elites. After that we will take away their personhood.
To agelbert @ 11:13, 26, Nov:
Re. "The open criminality of the corporate state ... ". The corporate
state is not "in" the Constitution. It was, rather, inferred by an essentially
illegitimate and tortuous "reasoning" by the Supreme Court, which
stretched over more than 100 years. R. Mokhiber refers to this when
he quotes R. Grossman regarding the Dartmouth College case [1819].
It is nevertheless TRUE ENOUGH that the Constitution as written was
composed in favor certain classes of people, and biased against other
classes of people. But it NEVER went so far as to establish a class of
artificial persons (corporations-as-people), nor did it prescribe laws in
favor of such artificial persons. As of 1787 such a notion would have
been ludicrous. [So too today; but that's what we've got by way of
"legislation from the bench".]
Re. the post by Thoughts_Into_Action:
"Do we have to rewrite the constitution first?" We no not have to
extensively rewrite the Constitution, although some ammendment of it
is distinctly needed. We DO need to reconstitute the Supreme Court,
which -- in and of itself -- is the progenitor and defender of the corporate
state. The Supreme Court is NOW the crux of offenses against the
people, and their " ... right to alter or abolish ... " a detrimental power
structure. As you said: " ... the whole thing is enabled, in part, through
corporate personhood." I would only go further to say -- it is LARGELY
IMPOSED via corporations-with-a-personality.
As to constitutional changes to be made. The idea of APPOINTMENT
of Supreme Court justices -- by president with concurrence by senate --
is an idea whose time has been, AND NOW IS GONE. It really hasn't
been working (for benefit of the people and the nation) for 20 years or
more. Similarly, any notion of justices-for-life is an anachronism today.
The founders could not have envisioned justices' remaining on the court
into their 70's or 80's. People in 1787 in almost all cases did not live
to such advanced ages. Seeing as how justices on the Supreme Court
are now much inclined to consider themselves to be a super-legislature
(despite what they may say), a mere nine justices are not a large enough
"court". Out of nine justices, some gang of four can bend the laws to
whatever orientation they may wish [or whatever result MAY BE wished].
A court of 13 or 15 justices would more conduce negotiations' leading
to decisions of JUSTICE, rather than of justices' pre-judgment. The
Constitution does not prescribe any certain number of justices to be on
the Supreme court.
To those who will say: That's all just playing around with details; it will
not accomplish any reforms for real, and furthermore the SYSTEM is
too entrenched to be changed by some rule changes; I must thus reply
that our cause, as a nation of laws that are deliberated upon by citizens
-- and not of dictator(s) -- may be lost. Still I say we must try.
I should have said a gang of five. Any way, what we have
now is a gang of four (Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas)
who most often vote together, and they may persuade
Kennedy to vote with them. So, in effect, a gang of four
CAN prevail to change the law. With a court of 13 or 15
justices, it would be a whole lot more difficult for a gang
of 6 or a gang of 7 to (i) form themselves into a gang, and
(ii) persuade one other justice to vote with them.