Review
In his bestselling 1995 call to arms, When Corporations Rule the World, David C. Korten first attempted to raise public consciousness about the potentially disastrous consequences of economic globalization and the expansion of corporate power. Now, in his provocative new work, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, he goes further by defining these dual ills as a collective cancer that will ultimately destroy the larger society upon which they actually …
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Many people have winced at Korton’s now ecological turn. They would rather he simply kept to pure economics, facts and theories, and dump the New Age spin he picked up from biologist Mae-Wan Ho. They were hoping that “The Post-Corporate World” would simply be Part II of his last sizzler, “When Corporations Ruled the World.” They see the soft-headed ecological metaphor as a meaningless distraction that will only serve the interests of the enemy — i.e., number-crunching CEOs, who have no time (after all, time is money) for ecological quackery.
In my opinion, “When Corporations Ruled the World” does not need a sequel. It did the job perfectly. Nor will taking a simply factual stand against the global corporate juggernaut fundamentally alter things. This is what Korten is driving at in his book. He believees we need to understand the world on radically different terms. We need to approach reality with a new story and a new bag of metaphors — because the old ones have not been doing the job. If you simply want a truckload of facts disavowing capitalism’s ability to meet human needs (and by that, I mean all humans — not just 1 percent of the population), read his first book. It will not only alarm you, but it will arm you to the hilt with anti-corporate firepower for the next time you enter a debate on capitalism’s merits. If you want a richer analysis of the inherent paradoxes of capitalism, and a more thorough understanding of what is necessary to remedy the current situation, read this book. The books serve two different functions: The last book was by and large descriptive, whereas this book is heavy on prescription.
Despite what our hard-headed, number-crunching economists might tell you, capitalism is indeed a lot like a cancer. “Cancer occurs when genetic damage causes a cell to forget that it is part of a larger body, the healthy function of which is essential to its own survival. The cell begins to seek its own growth without regard to the consequences for the whole, and ultimately destroys the body that feeds it. As I came to learn more about the course of cancer’s development within the body, I cam to realize that the reference to capitalism as a cancer is less a metaphor than a clinical diagnosis of a pathology to which market economic are prone in the absence of adequate citizen and governmental oversight.”
In her ground-breaking book, “If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth,” the now-famous physicist Helen Caldicott wrote, “as a physician I examine the dying planet as do a dying patient. The earth has a natural system of interacting homeostatic mechanisms similar to the human body’s. If one system is diseased, like the ozone layer, then other systems develop abnormalities in function-the crops will die, the plankton will be damaged, and the eyes of all creatures on the planet will become diseased and vision impaired.
“We must have the tenacity and courage to examine the various disease processes afflicting our planetary home. But an accurate and meticulous diagnosis is not enough. We never cure patients by announcing that they are suffering from meningococcal meningitis or cancer of the bladder. Unless we are prepared to look further for the cause, or etiology, of the disease process, the patient will not be cured. Once we have elucidated the etiology, we can prescribe appropriate treatments.” (Caldicott, 1991)
As you can see, Korton was not the first person to understand our world as a network of interrelated systems that function much like the human body and other ecological systems. But with this book Korton successfully assays the disease of our capitalist system, elucidates its causes (or etiology) and prescribes an appropriate treatment. In the truest sense of the word, Korten is here acting as a Ph.D (read, doctor) of economics, and capitalism — as well as your mind and its metaphors — are the patient.
True, the book does have a more “holistic” flavor, as one reviewer put it, but don’t let that scare you away. The book has received unanimously high marks form all reveiwers. From consumers to CEOs, everyone profits from reading this book.