Counter Punch: Corporate Power Since 1980 - by Robert Weissman

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Corporate Power Since 1980 - by Robert Weissman

Commercialism has become ubiquitous, in ways barely imaginable a quarter century ago. Corporate marketers target small children in the most devious of ways, and advertising is pervasive in schools. A new specialty known as neuro-marketing is doing brain scans to gain "unprecedented insight into the consumer mind," as one neuromarketer put it. "Buzz marketers" are employing people to hawk corporations' stuff, but not tell the friends, family and neighbors they are pitching. Results of corporate commercialism include an epidemic of marketing-related diseases such as obesity (rising now in developing countries as well as the United States), more materialistic values at the expense of civic ones, and consumption-driven challenges to the sustainability of the planet. Global environmental and public health treaties. Not every trend has seen corporate power deepened. With many problems globalized, citizen activists have managed to push successfully for some legally binding global solutions, often in issue-specific treaties, including ones to address the hazardous waste trade, pesticides and other pollutants, tobacco control, and protection of the ozone layer.

Popular movements to curtail corporate power. Beyond specific advocacy efforts around treaty-making, there have emerged robust advocacy and solidarity networks to counter corporate malfeasance, influence and demands. From winning improvements in working conditions to blocking bad trade deals, from lowering the prices of essential medicines to blocking biotech companies' efforts to experiment on humans and the environment on a planetary scale, from supporting indigenous peoples' rights to blocking destructive dam projects, these networks have scored important victories. Relatedly, a series of mass mobilizations have occurred to challenge corporate dominance, and popular movements have linked up and created growing countervailing power in national and international spheres. Note EU-Digest: "Multi-National Corporations are operating freely in open and closed societies with little or no controls. They are motivated by profit and social and environmental concerns are not on their list of priorities. Citizen's activists who have worked tirelessly to curb the powers of the corporate giants must not only be applauded but also supported in their efforts."