Dreams of a Livable Future
(Page 2 of 5)
May / June 2003
By Paul Hawken, Utne magazine
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I do not believe that any Fortune 500 company can be sustainable, but there are definitely things that transnational corporations can do to help society and the environment. They can:
- Get out of our schools.
- Get out of our stomachs.
- Get out of our government.
- Get out of our rivers, oceans, and forests.
- Get out of our skies and soils.
- Get out of our seeds and the human genome.
Until corporations understand that they are spearheading a kind of commercial fascism, they’re going to find that resistance will grow. It’s fascist in the sense that it is an attempt to create a meta-order for people, with the assumption that a small group of people know better than the larger group; therefore, the large group does not have to be consulted. Whether it was Marxist Leninism or Mussolini, fascism has always been informed by the vanity that a few know more than the many—for their “own good.” What is the World Trade Organization trying to bring to the table? Rules, order. What is the Free Trade Area of the Americas treaty trying to do? Rules, order. But whose rules? Whose order? What process? In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Tom Friedman, an advocate of globalization, wrote: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas. . . . And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.”
Trade is great. Trade is civilizing. Trade is not the issue. The question is who sets the rules and who enforces them. What will the shape of the relationships be among nations, regions, peoples, companies, markets, and the commons which support all life on earth?
It will come down to some very simple questions in the end. Do we want democracy and self-determination, or do we want oligarchic institutions? Do we want a world of uniformity where the road from every airport to every city center looks like every strip mall in the world? Do we want another world than the one envisioned by Monsanto, Wal-Mart, and Disney? Do we want our 9-year-old girls being lured by dolls with happy meals into McDonald’s to end up with Type II diabetes? Or do we want strong regional and native cultures proud of their heritage, devoted to their land, committed to true development and the future of their children? In short, do we want a world structured by rich, mostly white men, or a world that is an expression of the fabulous qualities of all human beings?
The corporatization of the world is creating a loss of diversity. The degree to which the corporate world order tries to enforce a one-size-fits-all formula to the planet’s media, culture, agriculture, and dietary habits is going to be seen in hindsight as just as much of a criminal act as the deracination and slaughter of the indigenous peoples of the Americas or the enslavement of Africans. We look back at those things now and feel ashamed. We will look back at what we’re doing right now, and we’ll see it for what it is: a violation of humanity. The very same companies that invoke sustainability have business models that destroy people and life. We will, I predict, in our lifetime, convict corporations of crimes against humanity.
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