Is It Easier to Change Corporations, or Politicians?
If the U.S. is an oligarchy in which moneyed corporate interests control the government, does it make more sense for activists to give up on influencing the government, and attack corporations directly?
There is an entire ecosystem of political influence groups that use political fundraising and lobbying to try to move elected officials in order to influence public policy in order to bring some of the might of the government to bear on the issues they hold dear. Writing in Jacobin, Michael Schwartz and Kevin Young argue that activists who focus their efforts on political leaders are wasting their time. Or, more precisely, that their time could be more productively spent targeting corporations—institutions that may be more sensitive to direct political action.
“This approach is not focused on individual consumption practices and does not appeal to an imaginary corporate conscience, as some mainstream environmental groups seek to do,” they write. “Rather, it aims to impose costs on capitalists through organized mass action, thereby influencing the calculus of both capitalists and state officials.” There is no such thing as a corporate conscience. Ironically, that is why corporations are susceptible to activism: they are never really on the side of any issue other than their own bottom line. If you can move that, you can move a corporation. And if you can move a corporation, you can move politics.
The authors cite the current “Fight for $15” movement of low-wage workers seeking higher pay. Instead of focusing on lobbying for an increased minimum wage, they hit the streets and drew lots of press shaming the low-paying corporations in questions. Their tactics are already paying off (at least a little bit). Another reason to focus on corporations rather than politicians: everyone—Democrats and Republicans alike—can rally around anti-corporate causes, but any strictly political movement is doomed to lose support immediately from those who perceive themselves to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum.
This is not an either/ or proposition, of course. Activists always have and will continue to target elected officials, corporations, and any other institution they think they can influence. But if you believe that money drives politics and not vice versa, it does make sense to focus the efforts of a political movement on the place where all the money is. As long as we don’t get so focused on the nuts and bolts of influence that we lose sight of the fact that in the long run we need to change the money-driven nature of our political system, not just find the easiest way to use it to our own advantage.
