Reading 08: Corporate Personhood

Corporate Personhood is the idea that corporations have the same rights and protections granted to individuals through the Constitution. The legal ramifications of this are that companies can refuse to do things such as provide birth control on religious grounds, as well as cannot be searched without a warrant and many other rights. Socially, this is a big issue within politics. Given corporations’ personhood, they are allowed to spend money on political candidate elections. This causes some problems in that it seems to give corporations an inordinate amount of political sway as they have more money and resources than most individual citizens. The primary ethical ramification of this idea is how to hold the corporations responsible for any crimes or wrongdoings. The corporations can’t be arrested or tried in court as a person, so how do they remain morally culpable for their actions?

In the case of IBM and the Holocaust, IBM supplied and maintained the machines which were crucial to the Nazi war effort. The machines allowed the Nazis to find, track and catalogue Jews and other enemies of the state, which helped streamline the extermination effort. The CEO of IBM, Thomas Watson, appeared to have been completely knowledgeable and in support of the IBM’s involvement as he visited Nazi Germany multiple times. Today, IBM claims that the Nazi’s seized control of their German branches and that the leadership in America had no control over what happened there. This seems at odds with the fact that Watson visited Germany. I think IBM was unethical for doing business with Nazi Germany, whether their main offices were complicit or not, some contingent of the company chose to work with the Nazis. While it makes business sense in the fact the Germany was shaping to conquer Europe and was thus a huge opportunity to make money, it is distinctly immoral. IBM’s involvement is particularly bad as it assisted with the biggest atrocity committed by the Nazis. While it may be argued that they could have done it without IBM’s help, the fact remains that IBM did help in the effort to exterminate Jews. And not only did they supply the Nazis with the machines, they helped maintain and run these machines. Despite this, I do not believe corporations should be held responsible for the unethical use of their products. For example, a gun manufacturer is not responsible if someone uses their product to commit a crime. Where corporations are responsible, is when they willingly supply their product where they know it will be used unethically. This was true in the case of IBM. And they even helped with the operations of the machines while they were being used.

I do believe in the idea of Corporate Personhood, however, I also think they should be held to the same ethical and moral standards. It is inexcusable that corporations should be able to get away with doing things that a person could go to jail for doing. In the case of IBM in their involvement with the Holocaust, had a single person been responsible for creating and running the machines, they may have likely been tried as a Nazi collaborator and appropriately punished. IBM seems to have escaped unpunished from their involvement with the Nazis, which I believe is a mistake. They should be held responsible in some way for their involvement in such an unethical undertaking.