#stockholders

1. Worldview: In the worldview of corporate financial statements, the aim is to pay stockholders as much as possible, and employees as little as possible.

2. Privilege: Stockholders claim wealth they do little to create, much as nobles claimed privilege they did not earn.

3. Property: Like a feudal estate, a corporation is considered a piece of property — not a human community — so it can be owned and sold by the propertied class.

4. Governance: Corporations function with an aristocratic governance structure, where members of the propertied class alone may vote.

5. Liberty: Corporate capitalism embraces a predemocratic concept of liberty reserved for property holders, which thrives by restricting the liberty of employees and the community.

6. Sovereignty: Corporations assert that they are private and the free market will self-regulate, much as feudal barons asserted a sovereignty independent of the Crown."

On repeat.

A Michigan municipal pension fund alleges that executives at First Solar, which is owned by Biden megadonor and Walmart heir Lukas Walton, made "false and misleading statements" to investors and failed to disclose that its solar module was "grossly underperforming and was unable to hit its wattage targets." Those claims and omissions, the fund alleges, artificially inflated the company's stock price in 2019 and led to investor losses.

1. Enlightenment: Because all persons are created equal, the economic rights of employees and the community are equal to those of capital owners.

2. Equality: Under market principles, wealth does not legitimately belong only to stockholders. Corporate wealth belongs to those who create it, and community wealth belongs to all.

3. Public good: As semipublic governments, public corporations are more than pieces of private property or private contracts. They have a responsibility to the public good.

4. Democracy: The corporation is a human community, and like the larger community of which it is a part, it is best governed democratically.

5. Justice: In keeping with equal treatment of persons before the law, the wealthy may not claim greater rights than others, and corporations may not claim the rights of persons.

6. (r)Evolution: As it is the right of the people to alter or abolish government, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the corporations that now govern the world.

Intellectual principles like these may seem to be mere abstractions, airy things with little relevance to the real world. But as Michel Foucault observed, ideas are mechanisms of power. 'A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains,' he wrote, 'but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas.' Ideas are the foundation of the social order. If we are to build a new order, we must build on the base of ideas."

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