Inspired by Joel Bakan’s book, “The Corporation: The Pathologic Pursuit of Profit and Power”, The Corporation is an evoking documentary that presents the history of the corporation and the role it plays in society and our daily lives. The documentary presents the corporation as a paradox: “an institution that creates great wealth but causes enormous and often hidden harms.” Originally, corporations were gifts from people to serve the public. After the civil war, corporation lawyers gained rights of a person using the 14th Amendment. As a person, filmmakers diagnose the corporation as a psychopath. They support their arguments with case studies, vignettes, and interviews with executives and labor leaders. In contrast, Karl Marx, Robert Epstein, and Subcomandante Marcos illustrate through their articles the effects of capitalism from different perspectives. Each of Marx, Epstein, and Marcos support The Corporation’s point of view;
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The documentary presents the effect of the corporation on workers’ lives, or as an “externality”. Milton Friedman defines externality as the effect of a transaction between two parties on a third party who is not involved in the transaction. The documentary illustrates different externalities including harm to employees: use of sweatshops, layoffs and factory fires, affect human’s health: pollution, production of dangerous products, synthetic chemicals, and toxic wastes, and harm the biosphere: habitat destruction, experimentation, and farming. This means that corporations allow their workers to endure their problems that will be paid by next generations. Similarly, in his essay Estranged Labor, Karl Marx discusses the effect of
The documentary presents the effect of the corporation on workers’ lives, or as an “externality”. Milton Friedman defines externality as the effect of a transaction between two parties on a third party who is not involved in the transaction. The documentary illustrates different externalities including harm to employees: use of sweatshops, layoffs and factory fires, affect human’s health: pollution, production of dangerous products, synthetic chemicals, and toxic wastes, and harm the biosphere: habitat destruction, experimentation, and farming. This means that corporations allow their workers to endure their problems that will be paid by next generations. Similarly, in his essay Estranged Labor, Karl Marx discusses the effect of