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From "Capitalist Realism" by Mark Fisher: “[I]t is a mistake to rush to impose the individual ethical responsibility that the corporate structure deflects. Thi
by Zarath 8y ago
From "Capitalist Realism" by Mark Fisher:
“[I]t is a mistake to rush to impose the individual ethical responsibility that the corporate structure deflects. This is the temptation of the ethical which, as Zizek has argued, the capitalist system is using in order to protect itself in the wake of the credit crisis - the blame will be put on supposedly pathological individuals, those’ abusing the system’, rather than on the system itself. But the evasion is actually a two step procedure - since structure will often be invoked (either implicitly or openly) precisely at the point when there is the possibility of individuals who belong to the corporate structure being punished. At this point, suddenly, the causes of abuse or atrocity are so systemic, so diffuse, that no individual can be held responsible… But this impasse - it is only individuals that can be held ethically responsible for actions, and yet the cause of these abuses and errors is corporate, systemic - is not only a dissimulation: it precisely indicates what is lacking in capitalism. What agencies are capable of regulating and controlling impersonal structures? How is it possible to chastise a corporate structure? Yes, corporations can legally be treated as individuals - but the problem is that corporations, whilst certainly entities, are not like individual humans, and any analogy between punishing corporations and punishing individuals will therefore necessarily be poor. And it is not as if corporations are the deep-level agents behind everything; they are themselves constrained by/expressions of the ultimate cause-that-is-not-asubject: Capital.”
Not that it proposes any answers necessarily. Your post just reminded me of this quote.
- jgtrosh 8y agoIt seems to imply the only ethical form of control is through capital directly, so through fines. Though it seems obvious that in such a case others in the company would want to punish the individual who got caught.
- jacquesm 8y agoThere is such a thing as the corporate death penalty: revoking the corporate charter. It is used extremely rarely, the main argument goes something like 'oh, but there are so many people working there who had nothing to do with this' and fines levied typically are much less than the profits gained with the lawless behavior. Another option I see is that the CEO of a company would be automatically personally held responsible for any wrongdoing. There is of course a lot of stuff you could say to shoot that down, for instance that employees might try to do a joe job on their CEO, but a CEO is also in the position to enact meaningful oversight by creating corporate structures to ensure compliance.
- yummypaint 8y agoA common argument used to support the human death penalty is that of deterence. I dont think it really deters individuals because they dont behave rationally enough, but it would absolutely deter big companies. If shareholders know their money is meaningfully on the line in the event of criminality, that will become part of their due diligence.