On anarchy and business

If there is one subject on which I find myself at odds with my fellow anarchists more than any other it is business. Specifically, big business. To be blunt, anarchists have no clue what business is about. It seems anarchists are little more than spoiled children lashing out at mommy for making them clean their room.

I just read a piece authored by a gentleman who insisted the thugs smashing store windows and burning cop cars in protest are genuine anarchists fighting for our freedom. While I take no issue with attacking state troops and property, smashing store windows is not fighting for freedom.

Now the author made the standard claim as laid out in the black bloc handbook. He stated that smashing the windows of big businesses is not a violation of property rights because big businesses are just an extension of the state. Wrong. Corporations are no different than any other business. They are not inherently evil. They are not branches of govt. But they serve as a popular whipping boy for those unable to fend for themselves.

Here are some simple facts:

Corporations are just groups of people working together towards a common goal. They are no different from co-ops, small businesses, partnerships, or even communes in this respect. If you are going to claim corporations should not exist because they gang up on small businesses then you have to outlaw any form of business which involves more than one person.

Corporations do not profit from govt any more than any other group does. This is the biggest strawman argument of all. Anti-business anarchists insist corporations are illegitimate because they suckle at the state teet. Well who doesn't? Show me a single business that does not take advantage of things the state has produced. If you drive a car you "benefit" from the state by using the roads it built. And every single business, regardless the size, tries to leverage the laws to it's advantage. This argument says nothing specific about corporations.

The complaints against corporations are based in ignorance. Anarchists attack the concept of "limited liability" without even understanding what it means. Limited liability, the reason for "corporate" status in the first place, means that members of the corporation are not personally liable for the actions of the corporation. It does not mean, as people love to assume, that corporations can do whatever the hell they want without being punished. The best example of this would be the January 6th, 2005 wreck of a Norfolk Southern train in Graniteville, South Carolina. The wreck occurred because one man on the crew forgot to set a switch properly. As a result, nine people died, 250 were hospitalized, and a local textile mill was forced to close due to contamination, putting 4,000 people out of work. One man caused all this. It wasn't the CEO or some bigwig. And the only punishment that man received was losing his job. The corporation, on the other hand, was sued by the owners of the mill and settled for an undisclosed sum. They were also sued by the EPA and forced to pay $4,000,000 in fines for polluting a nearby creek. This is despite the fact that "Norfolk Southern" had done nothing wrong. The entire fault for the accident was placed on the crew which had failed to put a switch in the proper position. If some vandal had deliberately moved the switch you can be certain that individual would have been charged with a multitude of crimes. But the crewman was charged with nothing and held responsible for nothing. Why? Limited liability. As a member of a corporation he got to say "oops" and leave the corporation holding the bag for his mistake. That's how it works.

I would ask these anti-business types a question. At what point does a business go from wholesome to evil? I assume a sole-proprietorship is as wholesome and noble as a business can get. Does each new employee make the business a little more evil? Or should we do away with limited liability so that every member of a corporation can be personally sued for the actions of the other members? Show me some objective data that proves why "big" business is inherently wrong. Because right now all I see is a bunch of emotional babble.

What these anti-business types seem to forget is that without big businesses we would have none of the luxuries we enjoy today. Some things are only practical because of the economics of scale. You wouldn't have a television if some local artisan had to extract his own raw materials, produce the parts, and assemble the unit all by himself. The only way to produce goods in sufficient quantity is with a large-scale operation. And that can only happen with a lot of people working towards one goal. We will always need "big" business to produce the things we desire. The only alternative is for everybody to produce their own things. Which means we fall back to subsistence farming. Good luck with that.