1. law, govt and politics
2. politics
3. elections

TomDispatch’s recent investigations have,
however, revealed that the US military is indeed
pivoting to Africa. It now averages far more than a
mission a day on the continent, conducting operations with almost every African military force in
almost every African country, while building or
building up camps, compounds, and “contingency
security locations.” The US has taken an active role
in wars from Libya to the Central African Republic,
sent special ops forces into countries from Somalia
to South Sudan, conducted airstrikes and abduction
missions, even put boots on the ground in countries
where it pledged it would not.
“We have shifted from our original intent of being a more congenial combatant command to an actual war-fighting combatant command,” AFRI-
COM’s Rick Cook explained to the audience of bigmoney defense contractors. He was unequivocal: the
US has been “at war” on the continent for the last
two and half years. It remains to be seen when AFRICOM will pass this news on to the American public.
Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com
and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial
Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social
Justice Journalism. A paperback edition of his book The
Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives
(Metropolitan Books) was published earlier this year. His
website is NickTurse.com.
This article previously appeared in TomDispatch. Copyright 2014 Nick Turse.
“Right to Farm” Scam
Third Wave Corporatocracy
by Don Fitz
When Monsanto’s home state of Missouri passed the “Right to Farm” on August 5, 2014 the third noose
of corporate control tightened around the neck of the US. Unlike the first two steps of corporate domination of public life, this was a constitutional amendment that would block the state legislature or voters
from passing future laws for environmental protection, animal welfare or labeling of contaminated food.
This third wave corporatocracy could well spread across the US and globally as it becomes a new form
of mass disenfranchisement.
First wave: Corporate “personhood”
Second wave: Free trade
State constitutional amendments are the most
recent phase in a long march of corporations to extend their direct control of government. Efforts of
corporations to grab the legal rights of persons date
to the post-Civil War era. In 1886 the US Supreme
Court first applied the rights of the 14th Amendment
to corporations. That amendment had been ratified in
1868 in order to grant former slaves “equal protection under the law.” As Jane Anne Morris documents in Gaveling Down the Rabble (2008), the
court became far more interested in applying it to
“corporate persons,” granting them the rights to
“privileges and immunities, equal protection, and
due process.”
This flew in the face of the fact that corporations are created by legislative bodies and must incorporate in order to receive their powers and privileges. After the
initial rulings,
legislative and
… it becomes a new form of
judicial bodies
mass disenfranchisement.
in the US expanded laws
and rulings that
enhanced corporate power. In 1938, Justice Hugo
Black wrote of court decisions that “Less than 1/2 of
1% invoked it in protection of the Negro race, and
more than 50% asked that its benefits be extended to
corporations.”
During the decades following World War II,
corporations sought to expand their powers internationally via trade agreements. By the end of the
1980s, they conceptualized the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a prototype for granting panels of corporate bureaucrats the power to
trump national laws. Designed as an agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico, it would basically tell a poor country, “If you want to increase
trade, you must give corporations from rich countries the right to sue you for failing to change your
laws to benefit them.” But Americans balked at the
idea that other countries might do the same to them,
and George Bush could not get NAFTA through
Congress.
Bill Clinton persuaded financial backers that a
liberal could accomplish what a right winger could
not, and their money put him in the White House.
“Slick Willy” had a couple of tricks to get NAFTA
approved. One was authorization of “Fast Track,”
whereby Congress agreed not to amend the trade
deal but only vote it up or down. The other tool
was Speaker of the House Dick Gephardt from St.
Louis, who pretended to be a “friend of labor,” opposing NAFTA in the US at the same time that he
made trips to Mexico promising he would get it
passed.
Sharp differences emerged between environmental organizations. Virtually all small local
42
Green Social Thought 66: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration, Winter 2015
right of farmers and ranchers to engage in farming
groups and most big ones (notably Greenpeace and
and ranching practices shall be forever guaranteed
the Sierra Club) opposed NAFTA. But some orin this state, subject to duly authorized powers, if
ganizations such as the Natural Resources Defense
any, conferred by Article VI of the Missouri ConstiCouncil backed NAFTA to strengthen their ties to
tution.
corporate funders.
With the help of Democrats in the White House
The linchpin in this masterpiece of vagueness is
and Congress, NAFTA became a model for a series
that “farmers and ranchers” could refer not only to
of international
the 40 acres that grandpa and grandma had, but
trade deals lastalso to CAFOs cramming thousands of hogs or
ing through tochickens together, puppy mills cranking out pure…
very
little
trade
has
to
do
day. Divisions
bred animals in deplorable conditions and
between enviwith “comparative advantage.” megafarms of tens of thousands of acres growing
ronmental orgenetically contaminated crops. Please scrutinize
ganizations also
the amendment’s wording and notice that it never
remain. The deals reflect the modern reality that
says that the “farmers and ranchers” have to actually
very little trade has to do with “comparative advanlive in Missouri.
tage”—the idea that different countries are better
Third wave corporatocracy transcends (includes
suited to producing different products because of
and goes beyond) the first and second waves. The
their climate, geography and natural resources.
constitutional amendment could easily be interpreted
Nowadays, the “advantages” that countries offer inas assuming the corporate personhood of “farmers
clude cheaper labor, greater tolerance of wildlife
and ranchers.” It could also mean that such corpodestruction and more acceptance of agricultural
rate persons can be based anywhere in the world.
chemicals.
Swimming against the wave
Riding the third wave
The first wave of corporatocracy looked inward: It focused on US businesses’ power that no
author of the Constitution would recognize. The
second wave looked outward: It asked how corporations in overdeveloped countries could use international poverty to their advantage.
The third wave is so new that not even the first
chapter of its book has been written. Its origins are
rooted in corporate anger at state and local laws, especially those sparked by citizen initiative and
passed by grassroots organizing. Throughout the
US, concerns with confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), soaking crops with pesticide poisons, and genetically contaminated food has led to a
groundswell of efforts for laws to protect health and
the environment. The essence of third wave corporatocracy is to alter state
constitutions so that they
prohibit laws which limit
corporate profits by environmental and health restrictions. This is what characterized the “Right to Farm”
amendment passed by North
Dakota in 2013 and the statute approved by Indiana in
2014. The proposed “Right
to Farm” Amendment 1 to
the Missouri constitution
reads:
That agriculture which
provides food, energy,
health benefits, and security is the foundation and
stabilizing force of Missouri’s economy. To protect this vital sector of
Missouri’s economy, the
Groups which quickly picked up on ecodevastation hidden between the lines included Missouri’s Food for America, Humane Society of the
This amendment is not for the little family
farmer—it’s for the corporate farms…
United States, Gateway Green Alliance, Missouri
Green Party, GMO-Free Midwest, St. Louis Animal
Rights Team, Missouri Rural Crisis Center, Universal African Peoples Organization, EarthDance, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Progressive
Party of Missouri and, most interestingly, the Sierra
Club. By April and May 2014 the network expanded and contacted the press and their informal
networks. The message was
that everyone had to act
quickly to warn as many
people as possible by the
November, 2014 general
election, when it was expected to be on the ballot.
Wes Shoemeyer appeared on Green Time TV,
which is broadcast to four
areas of Missouri. Former
Lt. Gov. Joe Maxwell (Dem)
stumped with the Humane
Society of the United States
across the state.
The votenoon1.com
website explained:
“Amendment 1 will guarantee foreign corporations the
right to own Missouri farm
land and do as they see fit
without any check and bal-
Green Social Thought 66: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration, Winter 2015
43
ance from the people or the legislature.”
The Sullivan Journal wrote:
if Amendment 1 passes, corporate farms may actually escape regulations concerned with chemical
use, animal treatment, and waste disposal… The
amendment may also limit municipalities from
keeping noxious corporate livestock farms away
from citizens. This amendment is not for the little
family farmer—it’s for the corporate farms…
The Joplin Globe asked: “who qualifies as a
farmer in Missouri? Smithfield Foods, for example,
… for grassroots organizing based on
word-of-mouth communication, three
months is everything.
owner of Premium Standard Farms? How about Tyson Foods? Both of those are Fortune 500 companies that count their revenue in the billions.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted that supporters of “Right to Farm” amendments “hope to preempt any proposals to ban genetically modified
crops similar to ones recently passed in Oregon.”
The article documented that Missouri’s Amendment
1 was bankrolled by “five-figure checks from the
state corn and pork associations, the Farm Bureau
and businesses with strong financial stakes in rural
America…”
This directly contradicts the wording of the
amendment itself (above):
1. The ballot description uses the word “citizen,”
which means (according to Webster), individuals
“born or naturalized” in a state. Amendment 1 itself never uses the word “citizen,” instead referring
to “farmers and ranchers,” which, of course includes “corporate persons.”
2. The ballot description put the word “Missouri” immediately prior to “citizen,” stating unambiguously
that those who would benefit from the law would be
those residing in the state. The Amendment itself
says no such thing, as it refers to protecting the
“Missouri economy” and never suggests that the
“farmers and ranchers” who receive protection must
reside in the state.
As the propaganda blitz began, Yes-on-One TV
ads tunnel-visioned on the wording that voters
would see on the ballot description, claiming that
Amendment 1 would protect local farmers. TV reporters and commentators repeatedly predicted a
victory for “Right to Farm” because Missouri liked
farmers. They parroted big ag messages as if their
advertising revenue depended on it.
Betrayal 2: Democratic Party mayor
On August 4, the day before the primary election, No-on-One organizers in the City of St. Louis
were stunned to receive a robo call from Francis
Slay, Democratic Party Mayor. Throughout the
campaign, his silence on the issue led St. Louisans to
believe that he had no bone to pick. But less than 24
Betrayal 1: Democratic Party governor
hours before voting began tens of thousands of City
residents received an automated call urging them to
As Vote-No-on-One forces began to pull tovote “yes” on Amendment 1. For the large number
gether and plan how, within a few short months,
of people who were undecided on ballot issues, a last
they could explain the dangers lurking within the
minute call from the mayor could have been the dejolly sounding amendment, the first bombshell fell.
ciding factor.
Missouri’s Democratic Governor Jay Nixon anA couple of days after the election count, I announced that the vote would be moved forward from
swered
my phone to hear, “This is Mayor Slay’s ofthe November general election to the August prifice
calling
for Barbara Chicherio.” I was hardly
mary.
surprised
since
my wife Barbara was a No-on-One
The Democratic Party governor had given a
organizer for the St. Louis area and she had planned
huge advantage to Yes-on-One forces. For the big ag
to call the Mayor.
side, most of their campaign work was buying an
“She’s not available now. Could you give me
expensive series of ads to come out 2 to 3 weeks
your
name and number so she can call you back in
before the election. Shortening the campaign by
an hour?”
three months meant nothing to them. But for grass“No. I’ll call her
roots organizing based on word-ofback,”
answered the maymouth communication, three months is
oral
assistant
who refused
…
we
may
never
know
what
everything.
to identify himself.
As if a super-short campaign was
deal the Mayor made …
He also refused to
not enough of a gift to big ag, the State
tell
Barbara
who he was
of Missouri used ballot descriptive lanwhen
he
called
back. “I
guage that was so misleading as to constitute intenhave two questions,” she told him. “One, when did
tional falsification. Ballots don’t have the actual
Mayor Slay decide that he would support Amendwording of proposed laws or amendments (which
ment 1? Two, what went into his thinking that made
can be quite lengthy) and instead use an abbreviated
him wait until the last minute, and, without particidescription. For Missouri’s Amendment 1 the ballot
pating in any public discussion on the issue, make
description read: “Shall the Missouri Constitution be
robo-calls the night before the vote?”
amended to ensure that the right of Missouri citizens
His refusal to answer either question was as
to engage in agricultural production and ranching
adamant
as his refusal to identify himself. “It
practices shall not be infringed?”
44
Green Social Thought 66: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration, Winter 2015
sounds like you are accusing the Mayor of making a
deal,” he retorted.
The defensive denial let the cat out of the bag.
496,223 NO. The vote was so close that the Channel 2 website summarized the count as 50% YES
and 50% NO. The constitutional amendment enshrining corporate control of Missouri’s environment passed by one of
the narrowest margins in the state’s
… every day we talked with people, we found some history: 2228 votes, barely ¼ of 1%
cast.
eager to hear about the dangers of the amendment. of those
The two Democratic Party betrayals plus Sierra Club standoffishness snatched defeat from the jaws of
Despite abundant speculation, we may never know
victory. It is possible that any one of them by itself
what deal the Mayor made with whom for what reacould have changed the outcome. And how sweet it
son or when it was made.
would have been to have rebuffed the grab for
Sierra Club: The unexpected
megafarm supremacy in Monsanto’s home state.
Though there was no shortage of anger at DeA funny thing happened on the road to the primocratic
Party bigwhigs during the days following
mary election. The Sierra Club forgot how to identhe
election,
it is important to remember that sleazy
tify the most important issue for mobilizing cammaneuvers
are
what it takes to rise in the world of
paign workers.
professional poliSierra has a history of organizing
ticians. Should
its active members for election work
you be any more
and was one of the first groups to put
… an early poll showed 80% of
surprised that a
information about Amendment 1 on its
Missourians favoring Amendment 1 … Democrat poliweb site. So it seemed a no-brainer
tico backstabs
that Sierra would join the growing
than a rattlesnake
coalition to recruit organizers to turn
bites
or
a
scorpion
stings?
That’s
what
they do.
out poll workers on election day. But everyone’s
Stepping
on
the
faces
of
little
people
is
how
they
jaws dropped when Sierra organizers responded that
climb
their
political
ladder.
they were going to put all of
What was truly disturbing
their efforts into opposing
was
Sierra.
As a group that was
Amendment 7 and not confuse
central
to
opposing
NAFTA, has
voters by talking about Amendprotected
wilderness
areas
ment 1.
across
the
country,
and
has moAmendment 7 was very debilized
for
countless
political
serving of opposition. It would
campaigns, its aloofness toward
have imposed a ¾ cent sales tax
No-on-One in Missouri was
to pay for road improvements.
egregious. One apology is that
The tax would have let trucking
Sierra could not have garnered
companies, the chief culprits in
2300 additional votes. This is
tearing up roads, pay nothing
wrong on multiple counts.
while people too poor to own a
First, people were not only
car would foot the bill when
making
up their minds two
they bought basic necessities.
weeks
before
the election—they
But Amendment 7 defined a
were
making
up
their minds
temporary tax that would end
when
they
were
at the polls.
after a given period of time.
Handing
out
literature
urging
That’s why the Missouri Green
people
to
vote
for
a
President,
Party and other groups distribGovernor or Senator rarely acuted literature recommending a
complishes anything since peo“No-on-One” first and “No-onple know who they are going to
Seven” on the bottom of the
vote for. Not so with ballot inipage.
tiatives. Many people go to the
As voting day approached,
polls knowing only the candithe importance of person-todates while paying little or no
person contact became increasattention to amendments. Those
ingly evident. Virtually every
who worked the polls reported
day we talked with people, we
multiple interactions with voters
found some who were ignoring
who changed their mind. Many
TV ads and eager to hear what
more than 1% of voters would
we had to say about the dangers
have changed their vote on
of the amendment.
Amendment 1 if someone had
Then came the vote count
spoken to them.
nightmare: 498, 451 YES and
Green Social Thought 66: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration, Winter 2015
45
starts. Rather, each wave has developed within
the context of the previous wave while seeking to
resolve its contradictions. The first wave for
“corporate personhood” focused inward on US
law, which left unresolved US domination of the
globe. It was not until after World War II, when
the US established its economic supremacy, that it
could focus outward on trade deals. Yet, this left
open the possibility of citizens of rich countries
insisting on their ability to protect themselves and
the survival of their offspring. Rather than merely
overturning such laws, third wave corporatocracy
seeks to prevent such laws from ever being written.
Of course, rulers of every society seek to gain
more and more control over those they subjugate;
and in this sense corporatocracy is not unique.
But corporatocracy, especially its second and third
waves, is different in that it goes against the general grain of capitalism, revealing a phase of deSecond, the reason for soliciting Sierra’s active
cay.
Most typically, capitalism rules best when it
involvement was to build a movement that would
rules
indirectly via a stratum of professional politibuild enthusiasm as it got larger. This happened; but
cians
whose life work is to wheel and deal while
without the Sierra Club (which touts itself as being
convincing
those they swindle that they are their
the largest and most effective grassroots organizafriend.
But
in crisis periods of declining profits and
tion in the US) this
declining investment opmovement did not grow
portunities, the 1% benearly as large as it might
come nervous about the
… third wave corporatocracy seeks to
have. The point was not
“normal” political procjust to get more Sierra
prevent such laws from ever being written. ess and seek to rule dimembers to work the
rectly, along with their
polls but to get them to
allies in the top 2–3%.
do organizing work prior to voting day so that many,
The
early
21st
century
is
characterized
by increasing
many more people would work the polls.
economic
instability
and
an
energy
exhaustion
that
The third illustration of how Sierra involvement
allows
expanded
investment
if
and
only
if
corporamight have tipped the scales is that an early poll
tions are willing to yank fossil fuels from the bowels
showed 80% of Missourians favoring Amendment 1
of the Earth in ways that threaten the existence of
and only 20% opposing it. If a coalition boycotted
humanity.
by the largest environmental group in the state could
Corporations are unraveling the biology of Life
increase public opposition from 20% to 50% in 2–3
by
slaughtering
multitudes for the crime of living
months, there can be no doubt that if that organizaatop
fossil
fuels
that they crave, subjecting unknown
tion had actively participated, the “No” vote would
numbers
of
species
to extinction or lives of torture,
have won.
and producing chemicals and food that poison their
own children. It is in this context of the most exNext rounds
The closer an election is, the more easily computer software can introduce random changes to fix
the outcome. Be as confident that the “Right to
Farm” gang honestly won the vote as you are certain
that George W. Bush was fairly elected President
twice in a row.
“Right to Farm” barely scratches the surface of
the potential of third wave corporatocracy. Changing state constitutions to destroy environmental
rights can be extended to undoing all gains made
during the last century regarding labor, civil rights
and human welfare as well as prohibiting future progressive legislation. In Missouri, right wingers had
barely wolfed down the destruction of environmental
legislation when they began drooling at the vision of
a constitutional amendment to require that teacher
pay be based on supervisor evaluations.
Waves of corporatocracy have not been distinct
in the sense that one wave stops when the next one
46
“Right to Farm” emphasizes that the
fight against capital is international …
treme moral depravity that the world has ever seen
that corporations are demanding to rule directly, to
increase their “rights” as persons, to expand the
power of rich countries to overturn laws of poor
countries, and, now, to seek constitutional amendments which disallow citizens from protecting their
rights and health.
Just as each wave has developed its own contradictions for those who control, each has opened
new opportunities of struggle for corporate victims.
The first wave hammered home the way that corporations self-serve by purchasing politicians and
judges. The second wave expanded the link between
Green Social Thought 66: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration, Winter 2015
labor, environmental, and human rights groups in a
way that had never happened before.
The third wave occurs in the midst of declining
US economic power. As laws such as “Right to
Farm” invite non-US corporations to dominate the
well-being of those in Missouri and other states, it
dramatizes the way US business practices have
decimated the status of US workers. It emphasizes
that the fight against capital is international and that
struggles here must join hands with those across the
globe if they are to succeed. It is time to ask why we
must work overtime so that our neighbors lose their
jobs while we produce goods that fall apart sooner
and are manufactured through industrial processes
that poison our communities.
Forging a coalition that is strong enough to win
will likely require struggling within many labor,
human rights, and environmental organizations to
change their orientation from choosing the least bad
politico to one of actually confronting economic and
political powers. It may even mean Sierra Club
members dragging their local leaders kicking and
screaming into meaningful battles. If we can build
the sort of coalition we need to stop the right wing
onslaught, we will be setting the stage for that coalition to ask what sort of new society it needs to midwife.
Don Fitz is a member of the Missouri Green Party and
Sierra Club, Eastern Missouri Group. He can be reached
at [email protected]
Cricket, Literature, and Revolution
review by R. Burke
Modern Politics by C.L.R. James, Introduction by Noel Ignatiev, PM Press/Charles H. Kerr Publishing
Co., Oakland/Chicago, 2013, 167 pages, ISBN: 978-1-60486-311-6 $16.95.
In 1961 C.L.R. James, the great Left-Marxist and Pan-Africanist, gave a series of lectures before leaving
his native Trinidad. Having just won independence from Britain, Trinidad’s Prime Minister was Eric
Williams, a former student of James. However, a rift had developed between James and Williams when
the latter abandoned a crucial demand of the independence movement for a return of the US naval base
at Chaguaramas. When James’s lectures were published under the title Modern Politics, Williams had
the book suppressed, the edition kept under guard in a warehouse. When James later returned to Trinidad, he was placed under house arrest. Now PM Press, in conjunction with the legendary Charles H.
Kerr Publishing Company, has released a new edition of Modern Politics.
Today, James is probably best known for his
classic The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture
and the San Domingo Revolution. Ironically, in his
early years he was best known as a sportswriter covering the sport of cricket, for which he had a lifelong
passion. It is reported that James’s love of literature
began when his mother forbade him from watching
cricket games on Sunday, and he turned to reading
books to pass the time. As an adult he would also
become known as a literary critic and historian who
wrote about the works of Herman Melville. Involved
with the Trotskyist movement, James broke away
from the Fourth International over Trotsky’s categorization of the Soviet Union as a “degenerated workers’ state.” Along with his fellow members of the
“Johnson-Forest tendency,” James instead identified
the Soviet system as “state capitalism.” Working
with giants of the libertarian left such as Grace Lee
Boggs, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Raya Dunayevskaya, C.L.R. James would pioneer an interpretation of Marxism which rejected the Leninist
concept of the vanguard party in favor of an approach based on workers’ self-management.
Modern Politics is one of the most unusual introductions to Marxism ever written. One could in
fact describe it as almost being the Cliff Notes to
Western Civilization 101. James places Marxism
squarely within the larger development of Western
history and philosophy. Beginning with his vision of
the life of the Greek city-states, particularly Athens,
James calls attention to the direct democracy which
flourished there. Contrary to representative democracy, which in our contemporary society is identified
with democracy itself, the Athenian citizen played a
direct role in the running of the city government.
Each month a group of citizens would be chosen by
lot and would enter the government offices to govern
the state for that month.
Despite being materially poor, Athens laid the
foundations of Western Civilization, producing great
philosophers, poets, dramatists and scientists. James
sees this as being rooted in Athenian direct democracy. Turning his attention to the Revelation of St.
Modern Politics is one of the most unusual
introductions to Marxism ever written.
John, he emphasizes the vision of a harmonious society that the book projects. James reads Revelation
as an anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist text. He
then discusses the city states of the Middle Ages,
highlighting the cooperative labor practiced there
which was the foundation of their wealth.
Green Social Thought 66: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration, Winter 2015
47