The Gary Null Blog

On the Origin of Corporations

by David Korten

This is the tenth of a series of blogs based on excerpts adapted from the 2nd edition of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. I wrote Agenda to spur a national conversation on economic policy issues and options that are otherwise largely ignored. This blog series is intended to contribute to that conversation. —DK

Like many Americans, I grew up believing that conservative values were about local control and personal responsibility for family, community, and nature. It seemed curious to me that the political alliance that drove a rollback of the Roosevelt-era policies that created the American middle class called itself conservative and dismissed its liberal opponents as un-American.

Eventually, however, I discovered that the term conservative harkens back to a day when conservatives were monarchists who considered democracy a threat to social order and the seas were ruled by buccaneers and privateers. That was a clarifying moment.

Buccaneer is a colorful name for the pirates of old who pursued personal fortune with rules of their own making. They were, in their time, an iconic expression of “free market” capitalism.