The State of the Corporation: State, Ideology, Corporation

Today it has become commonplace to claim the demise of the power of the democratic nation-state due to globalization, neoliberal policies and the increasing power of transnational entities (UN, EU, IMF, WTO, World Bank) and multinational corporations. This view, however, prevalent in both public discourse and political debates, rests on a misguided conception of the state and on a sharp demarcation between the state and the corporation. This demarcation – between state and corporation and the political and the economic – is fundamental to the functioning of state power and to the existing political and economic power relations. This view is continually reinforced and perpetuated by the constant claims of the encroachment of economic interests on the political-democratic-sovereign state.
This paper argues that there is no sharp demarcation between the political and the economic and the state and the corporation, seeing that the state is itself a corporate entity, albeit one which has achieved a privileged position in our political understanding as the repository of sovereignty and the sole legitimate claimant to political authority and allegiance. The state has throughout history governed social life and achieved central governmental aims through corporations, and corporations are therefore not something distinct from the political order, but constitute its very foundation. However, by perpetuating the language of the state – and the separation of the political and the economic and the state and the corporation – it upholds the very power and existence of the existing conditions.