Corporate Predators: The Hunt for Mega-Profits and the Attack on Democracy

Mokhiber and Weissman provide plenty of potential fuel for the fire with their insightful discussions on corporate chartering, democracy for sale, and Constitutional abuses. Unlike many, they name names and reference credible sources. Unless the dangers of corporate dominance are addressed, we can expect books such as Corporate Predators to become very popular during the next economic downturn. Read it now and not only avoid the rush, avoid the dangers they point to so well.

The one-star, long-winded review offered below by Greg Peisert almost entirely misses the point of this rich and rewarding book. Peisert's comment cites low unemployment in the United States, but ignores the atrocious condition of overseas work for American corporations and the proliferation of unlivable-wage jobs here at home. Both of these trends are well-documented in "Corporate Predators". You may also notice that Peisert's refutation of the book is based upon cases in which one corporation succumbs to another; he forgets the subject matter of the book is the treatment of workers by corporations, not the treatment of corporations by one another. As the book documents, the treatment of many workers by their employers has become simply shameful, and much of this trend is due to the rise of de facto corporate government here and world-wide. A book well worth reading, and one that's long overdue.

For the past twenty years, after a decade and a half of populist resurgence against corporate abuses by consumer, environmental, women's rights and civil rights forces, big business has been on a rampage to control our society. Whether these business supremacies are called corporatization, commercialism, monopolies or the corporate state, the overall concentration of power and wealth in ever fewer multinational corporate centers is a matter of record. In arena after arena -- government, workplace, marketplace, media, environment, education, science, technology-- the dominant players are large corporations. What countervailing forces that our society used to depend upon for some balance are not in retreat against the aggressive expansion of corporate influence far beyond its traditional mercantile boundaries? The enlarged power that corporations deploy to further increase their revenues and socialize their costs comes from many sources -- old and new. Roughly eighty percent of the money contributed to federal candidates come from business interests. The mobility to export capital has given transnational companies major leverage against local, state and federal officials, not to mention against organized and unorganized labor. The swell of corporate welfare handouts has reached new depths. The contrived complexity of many financial and other services serves to confuse, deplete and daunt consumers who lose significant portions of their income in a manipulative marketplace. Alliances, joint ventures and other complex collaborations between should-be competitors have made a mockery of what is left of antitrust enforcement. The opportunities to control or defeat governmental attempts for corporate accountability that flow from transcending national jurisdictions into globalized strategies to escape taxation and pit countries and their workers against one another appear to be endless. The autocratic systems of governance called GATT and NAFTA reflect to the smallest detail ways that giant corporations wish to control the world. These firms are on a collision course against democratic processes, and the merging of states and businesses, to the latter's advantage, weakens relentlessly both the restraints of the law and the willingness of legislators to do anything about it. Taken together, the world is witnessing its subjugation to the large corporate model of economic development, the large corporate model of technology and the large corporate model of culture itself. These accelerating trendlines invite accelerating comprehension and response. History demonstrates that commercialism knows few boundaries that are not externally imposed. All the major religions have warned their adherents against the excesses of commercial value systems, albeit with different languages, images and metaphors. Specific descriptions of corporate misbehavior do nourish proper generalizations that in turn lead to more just movements and

While the gentleman bellow makes some good points about a balance that should be maintained in this type of work, I think that some level of extreme is needed in a counter attack against the un-emotional, profit driven pseudo-science that staunch capitalists spout as if pure Capitalism and the so-called "free market" were the only option this world has. If the previous reviewer were realy concerned about balance and fairness, then he would recognize that some level of emotion is needed to help the people of the world achieve some level of economic and social equality. The rapidly growing gap between rich and poor is an obvious result of the type of socialism for the wealthy and capitalism for the poor that exists in this country, and this book does a good job of exemplifying the extreme consequences of this situation. Besides, Capitalism is just a eco-philosophical theory espoused as science.