Remember when Rand Paul objected to the Obama administration’s comments about wanting to hold British Petroleum (BP) accountable for its underwater oil gusher ?
“I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business.”
Remember when Congressman Joe Barton (R-Texas)apologized to BP and said he was “ashamed” of the “tragedy” of the Obama administration’s attempt to hold BP accountable for the damage its underwater oil gusher did to the lives of millions of Americans and the ecosystem of the Gulf?
(Cross-posted from my own blog.)
Well Rand, Barton and the other pro-big biz Americans are running behind, because there are some other prominent Americans who need to be slapped down for their “un-American” criticisms of a large British corporation....
I hope we shall crush in it s birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. — Thomas Jefferson, 1816
There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property for the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by… corporations. The power of corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses. — James Madison, 1817
Incorporated companies with proper limitations and guards, may in particular cases, be useful, but they are at best a necessary evil only. Monopolies and perpetuities are objects of just abhorrence. The former are unjust to the existing, the latter usurpations on the rights of future generations. It is not strange that the law which will not permit an individual to bequeath his property to the descendants of his own loins for more than a short and strictly defined term, should authorize an associated few to entail perpetual and indefeasible appropriations…? – James Madison, March 10, 1817
When will Rand Paul denounce these Founders? When will Joe Barton apologize for the tragedy of Jefferson and Madison’s attitudes toward corporations?
More importantly, when will Paul denounce and Barton apologize for the American Revolution? After all, our revolution was primarily a protest of, war against and the gaining of freedom from a giant British corporation, much like the giant British corporation Paul and Barton seem to love so much.
Although the TeaGOP seems to be either ignoring it or ignorant of it, the fact is that the American Revolution was, at its core, a case of people revolting against unrestrained corporate power. In this case, the giant British corporation against which we revolted was the East India Company.
I shall therefore conclude with a proposal that your watchmen be instructed as they go on their rounds, to call out every night, half-past twelve, “Beware of the East India Company.” – Pamphlet signed by “Rusticus” 1773
About 100 years before Betsy Ross* was born, the flag of the East India Company was made up of 13 alternating horizontal red and white stripes, with a blue field in the upper left corner with the Union Jack on it. Sound familiar? There’s a reason for that. (*Although that corporate flag was startlingly similar to the US flag, the legend is that Betsy reversed the order of the red and white bars. It’s merely legend, of course, because Betsy Ross played no role in the creation of any first flag. Her legend was invented by descendants around 1876 in an attempt to create a tourist attraction in Philadelphia.)
The East India Company had laid claim to most of North America and created the first official colony there, on company land, and called it Jamestown after its patron and stockholder King James I. Jamestown was founded in the company-owned Commonwealth of Virginia, named after Elizabeth I (the “Virgin Queen”), who had granted East India’s original charter. At the time, the corporate claim of Virginia reached from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The Pilgrims — those we venerate as our Founders’ founders — came later and actually came over on the Mayflower‘s third trip to North America on behalf of the East India Company, which owned it.
Over the next 100 years or so, East India effectively took control of North America. To secure its control of the colonies, the company asked Parliament to protect it with British military forces. As an example of the cozy relationship between the British government and the East India Company: Gen. Cornwallis, who lost the 1781 Battle of Yorktown to the American revolutionaries, went on to serve “in the company’s service in India” — losing a colony in the West but gaining one in the East. Indeed, most of the seemingly political appointments made by England to the colonies were, in fact, employees of the East India Company.
By the 1760s, the East India Company was competing worldwide with the Dutch trading companies and controlled nearly all commerce to and from North America, but it had spread itself too thin and got into debt. One of its biggest problems was that American small businessmen were both running their own ships and buying tea and other goods directly from the Dutch, thereby avoiding going through Britain and the East India Company.
East India went to the British government to help kill its competition (by 1681, most of British royalty and government held stock in the corporation). A series of laws were passed with the aim of killing off any competition and at creating ever greater power for the East India Company, even going so far as to prosecute the American entrepreneurs as pirates. That series culminated in the now infamous Tea Act that precipitated the Boston Tea Party.
Were they not so destructive, the modern Tea Party faithful’s view of the event from which they take their name would be a cute bit of silliness. The Tea Party thinks — as, I guess, most Americans do — that the original Tea Party was a protest against an increase on tea paid by the colonists. The truth is that “Tea Act” that brought on the Tea Party was meant to kill off any competition and give the East India Company’s stockholders (including the King) greater profits. The Tea Act gave the East India Company full and unlimited access to the American tea trade, exempted the company from paying any taxes on tea exported from Britain to the colonies, and refunded to the company millions of pounds in taxes it had already paid on tea it couldn’t sell. The American businessmen didn’t much care for such a deal: their small businesses still had to pay the old tax on tea; they didn’t get a voice in the matter before it was decided; and their homes, the colonies, were being used as profit centers for the enormous East India Company.
The only known first-hand account of the Boston Tea Party — Retrospect of the boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbour in 1773 – makes it clear that, with a few exceptions, the participants saw themselves as protesting the actions of both the multinational East India Company and the government that served the company’s interests over the people’s interests. The colonists had endured nearly 200 years of economic and political domination by the East India Company, and the Tea Act — enriching the corporation at the expense of the working man and small business owners — was the last and most hateful straw.
Boiled down to its core, it is the government giving tax breaks to the wealthy and the multinational corporation while sticking it to the common man. Sound vaguely familiar?
The Revolutionary “Rusticus” wrote in a newsletter called The Alarm, which circulated through the colonies, about the East India Company that shows how long and how deeply the colonists hated the company:
Their Conduct, for some Years past… has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellion, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have centered in their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions, and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants of the Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin.
In The Alarm edition for Oct. 27, 1773, Rusticus wrote:
It hath now been proved to you, That the East India Company, obtained the monopoly of that trade by bribery, and corruption. That the power thus obtained they have prostituted to extortion, and other the most cruel and horrible purposes, the Sun ever beheld.
The taste of life under the East India Company was still bitter in the mouths of many of the Founders after they had thrown off both the corporation and the Crown that had created and supported it — so much so that Jefferson repeatedly insisted that the freedom from monopoly be added to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights.
I will tell you what I do not like. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aide of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies... — Thomas Jefferson writing to James Madison in 1787 about is concerns with the Constitution.
“By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies…. These are letters against doing evil, which no honest government should decline. — Thomas Jefferson, Feb. 7, 1788.
(emphasis mine)
Jefferson tirelessly argued for an amendment that would prevent companies from growing so big that they could dominate an industry or have power to influence the government.
With respect to the new government… others may oppose it. Virginia, I think, will be of this number. Besides other objections of less moment, she (Virginia) will insist on annexing a bill of rights to the new Constitution, i.e., a bill wherein the government shall declare that, 1. Religion shall be free; 2. Printing press free; 3, Trials by jury preserved in all cases; 4. No monopolies in commerce…. — Thomas Jefferson, Feb. 12, 1788
I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new constitution by nine states. It is a good canvass, on which some strokes only want retouching…. It seems generally understood that this should go to juries, habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion, and monopolies. — Thomas Jefferson writing to James Madison, July 1, 1788
What I disapproved from the first moment also, was the want of a bill of rights… to secure freedom in religion, freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and a trial by jury, in all cases determinable by the laws of the land. — Thomas Jefferson, March 13, 1789
(emphasis mine)
Jefferson, arguing with John Adams over whether the Senate should be directly elected by the people, favored the goodness and wisdom of the “natural aristocracy” (capable people) over the corruption of the “artificial aristocracy” (rich people):
The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy…. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively. Of this, a cabal in the Senate of the United States has furnished many proofs. Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy, because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation to protect themselves… I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the fee election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the really god and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society — Thomas Jefferson, Oct. 28, 1813
The Federalists fought hard, and successfully, to keep the “freedom from monopolies” out of the Constitution, but the concern over the corrupting, destructive influence of big business and the super rich did not go away.
In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions. – President Andrew Jackson, 1833
I am more than ever convinced of the dangers to which the free and unbiased exercise of political opinion – the only sure foundation and safeguard of (our) government — would be exposed by any further increase of the already overgrown influence of corporate authorities. — President Martin Van Buren, 1837
It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless. — President Abraham Lincoln, 1864
“(There) is looming up a new and dark power… the enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economical conquests only, but for political power…. The question will arise and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine, which shall rule — wealth or man (sic); which shall lead — money or intellect; who shall fill public stations — educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital… — Edward Ryan, chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an address to the University of Wisconsin Law School’s graduating class of 1873
(emphasis mine)
There’s a good bit irony in that the same guys (Paul et al) claiming to be active in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party, which tried to hold a giant British corporation accountable for hurting America, are also the same guys who say it’s tragic, shameful and un-American to hold a giant British corporation accountable for hurting America.
I’ve given here only a tiny taste of the anti-corporate theme of the American Revolution, and I’ve given only one side of the question. There were, among the Founders, people who joined the Revolution for other reasons and some who favored large corporations and power for the wealthy over everyone else. The realization that America’s history started out as a stew of mixed, often competing, interests and remains so today, seems utterly lost in today’s political discourse. The TeaGOP wants us to believe the Founders were, among other things, uniformly in favor of unregulated free markets, small government and the accumulation of wealth. Like their belief that our nation has been, from the start, one of white Christians, having only recently been sullied by the darker and non-Christian others, the pro-big-business definition of America is laughably wrong.
We’ve always been more complex than we understood, perhaps more than we were willing to admit. We’ve always been multi-racial and multi-cultural. Our Founders fought long, nasty and sometimes violent battles among themselves over the size of government; the form of government in a host of issues, including the economy; the content of and intent for the Constitution; the amount of trust to put in the people; the desirability of an aristocracy; the correct role of government; the nature, value and roles of women and minorities; and enough other issues and sub-issues to fill several books. Just about any position you take, you can find Founders who said things that support you.
Two things are clear: 1) criticism, fear and even scorn of large corporations and vast accumulations of wealth is as American as baseball and apple pie; and 2) Paul, Barton and the TeaGOP are either inexcusably ignorant of, or insufferably dishonest about, who we are and from whence we came.
(For much more on this and related topcis, buy and read Thom Hartmann’s brilliant book Unequal Protection.)