Although he did not use the term and might be horrified to witness what it has become, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell's (1907-1998) legacy is today's powerful and ruinous copocracy. The intent of this article is to summarize Powell's role and its aftermath and then to close with a brief preview of a scheme to undo his legacy short of a Second American Revolution.

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Although he did not use the term and might be horrified to witness what it has become, Lewis F. Powell's legacy is today's copocracy, or the Devil's marriage between powerful corporate interests and all three branches of government. The intent of this article is to summarize Powell's role and its aftermath and then to close with a brief preview of a scheme necessary to undo his legacy short of a Second American Revolution.

The Tobacco Road Lawyer's Manifesto

Except for the defense industry, most industries had never recovered from FDR, whom it loathed worse than any foreign enemy, for he and the U.S. Supreme Court of his time couldn't be high jacked and his New Deal policies were put firmly in place. But the upholders of democracy were completely caught off-guard by what was to transpire.

It began with a wake-up call in 1971 to a moribund big business and to wealthy conservatives from a most unusual source. Lewis F. Powell was at the time a successful tobacco industry lawyer who specialized in securities laws and who had also been president of the American Bar Association. A staunch advocate of keeping government out of the affairs of business he had become alarmed over what he perceived to be a pervasive assault on the free enterprise system from the gamut of public institutions and the liberal elements of the public itself.   Big business, he fretted, was taking the assault lying down.

So he wrote a memorandum, eventually dubbed Powell's "manifesto," to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce dated august 28, 1971 proposing that it lead a counterattack. Business, he wrote, was "ill-equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system, seeking insidiously and constantly to sabotage it" and "have shown little stomach for hard-nose contest with their critics" (all quotations are from his memo). He went on to lay out what amounted to a battle plan, apparently to help business conduct "guerilla warfare."

He suggested numerous strategies targeting four major American institutions: education, the media, the political arena, and the courts. The strategies were all very aggressive. A few on paper at least seem militant and even paranoid and Orwellian in nature, to wit: It is "a long road and not for the fainthearted." "There should be no hesitation to attack [those] who openly seek destruction of the system." "There must be "constant surveillance of textbooks" and "monitoring of national television networks." Does that read like it's coming right out of some Orwellian pages?   

This ideologue and corporate lawyer would become just a few months after firing off his manifesto a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Just think of that, a person like Powell taking a seat on the bench of the land's highest (or is it the lowest?) court. The Senate had been derelict in vetting Powell during the confirmation hearings, and even Powell had acknowledged years later to his biographer that he did not expect to be confirmed because of his close links to business (that was certainly putting it mildly). Powell joined the Burger Court that had just a few years earlier succeeded the liberally oriented Warren Court. It had favored citizen over corporate rights and very possibly influenced Powell in criticizing the courts.

Powell's Plan to Blitz the Classroom and the Aftermath

Powell understood perfectly how shaping of the young mind could help sew the seeds for the reforms he advocated. He proposed several initiatives for blitzing classrooms even down to the secondary education level.

He believed that the college campus was the "single most dynamic source" of the attacks on free enterprise and had been for several years. He also blamed professors in the social science faculties "known to be unsympathetic to the enterprise system" who were shaping their young students' minds.

A "priority task for business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce," Powell believed, was to counter the "liberal" bias on campus with a multifaceted strategy that included these proposed initiatives: Establish prominent scholars in the social sciences who believe in the free enterprise system. Give incentives to induce these scholars to be as passionate and productive as liberal/leftist faculty members in publishing their scholarly writings. Create a "Speaker's Bureau" to deploy polished speakers who would "articulate the product of the scholars." Insist on "equal time on the college speaking circuit" for those speakers. Continuously evaluate the textbooks of social sciences in order to ensure a fair and factual balance. Correct the "most fundamental problem," that of the imbalance of many faculties." Parlay rapport with graduate schools of business into greater influence there in the "essential training of the executives of the future."

Powell didn't stop with higher education. He stooped into secondary education, although he didn't go into specifics: "Action programs, tailored to the high schools and similar to those mentioned [for higher education], should be considered." He proposed that the implementation of these programs be "a major program for local chambers of commerce," but that the "National Chamber" would retain responsibility for the "control and direction" of the programs. Ironically, the robber baron regime during their era of power had helped promote compulsory public education as a way to ensure less individualistic and more compliant workforces.

Big business and conservative intellectuals took Powell's proposal for blitzing classrooms and proceeded over the years to "incorporate" much of education. At the university level the takeover can be seen in curriculum content, in the teaching of classes, in the commercializing of faculty research, in soliciting partnerships with universities for war-related research, and even in the ownership of some universities. Ultraconservative corporate foundations alone reportedly give millions of dollars annually to influence political science, law, and economics departments at numerous universities. The corpocracy's heavy hand is greatest naturally in business schools where students are imbued with the free-enterprise spirit, myopically trained in financial management, and then graduate ready to do whatever is necessary to help corporations maximize short-term profits.

At secondary and primary levels the influence of the corpocracy and its think tanks is seen in the privatization of schools, in the profitable selling of standardized tests, in curriculum content, in sponsorships, in the piping in of sham educational broadcasts run by marketing corporations, and in school hallways lined with vending machines. To give one example of "Corporcracy High," the arch conservative and corporate funded Ayn Rand Institute uses high schools as a "major battleground" to advance the ideas of unfettered capitalism. It does so by giving hundreds of thousands of Rand's books to high school teachers and by sponsoring annual high school essay contests. I will never endorse book burning, but Rand's books tempt me! Instead of high school students being given a dose of Rand, democracy would be better served if they were given a heavier antidote of civics. Most flunk a miniature version of the test immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship must pass.

Powell's Plan to Blitz the Media and the Aftermath

Powell believed strongly in free enterprise, but apparently not for a free press, and he wanted the media used as a megaphone with big business as the mouth piece for free enterprise. While he considered "reaching the campus and the secondary school as vital for the long run" in reviving free enterprise, he saw reaching the public as "generally more important for the shorter term."   

His answer to his rhetorical question, "What can be done about the public?" was a very general proposal that the USCC orchestrate a media blitz that would include not just television but also radio, the press, the newsstands, and, of course, a "sustained campaign of paid advertisements to inform and enlighten the American people." To gear up for this blitz, he recommended as the "first essential establishing the staffs of eminent scholars, writers and speakers, who will do the thinking, the analysis, the writing and the speaking," and as the second essential having "staff personnel who are thoroughly familiar with the media and how most effectively to communicate with the public."  

Corporations and the blossoming conservative think tanks took his proposal and ran with it. And they have succeeded immensely. Muckrakers who had exposed corporate fraud and inspired progressive-era reforms are muzzled by the mainstream media today. What we get now instead is propaganda, half truths, and zero truths. Most of the mainstream networks' viewers, for example, believed the administration's explanation for the Iraqi war while only about 20% of the public networks' (PBS/NPR) audience were fooled. What we have today, author Robert McChesney says is "rich media, poor Democracy."

Powell's Plan for the Political Arena and the Aftermath

In his memorandum under the section heading "the neglected political arena" Powell began with what might be a Freudian slip of the tongue, writing that "in the final analysis, the payoff -- short-of revolution -- is what government does." Make of it what you will, but to me government payoffs are synonymous with bribery.

Political power, he advised, "must be constantly cultivated, even used aggressively, determinedly, and without embarrassment." He didn't give any specifics and concluded this section of his manifesto by telling the USCC that while it may be reluctant to do so it needed to "consider assuming a broader and more vigorous role in the political arena."

The "neglected' political arena he fretted about is probably the one where Powell had the greatest impact, aided immensely by the USCCs's campaign financing and lobbying activities. Since he wasn't a politician, Powell probably succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. I'm sure he never envisioned spawning a Devil's marriage that was anything but a shotgun wedding. Both the private and the public partner got unending dowries. Corporations (most but not all are U.S. corporations) get almost on a daily basis "power and profit gifts" in the form of favorable legislation, favorable regulations and deregulations, favorable judicial verdicts, welfare handouts, impunity from lawlessness, military help in global exploitation, and laissez-faire capitalism. And what do the politicians get? The Capital Hill bunch (aka "Corporate Hill") gets career employment in plush offices. And the oval office puppets get brief prestige and mostly posturing power. The first dowry far overshadows the second but neither partner can afford a divorce. They will stick together through thick and thin.  

Powell's Plan for the Judicial Arena and the Aftermath

Powell also noted that there was a "neglected opportunity in the courts" and that given our constitutional system "especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court (emphasis mine) the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, and political change." He then noted that "American business has been much less astute in exploiting (emphasis mine again) the judiciary. That alone was such a chilling and ominous statement that it ought to have caused Congress, had it not been derelict, to reject Powell's nomination.

Powell was perfectly situated to make sure there would be no more "neglected opportunities in the judicial arena. Here was a former corporate lawyer who, once on the U.S. Supreme Court, continued as a Justice authoring or siding with rulings consistently in favor of corporate interests, especially their "right" to free speech. And since his time, verdicts of the corporatized Court have loosened antitrust restrictions; severely limited punitive damages; made it harder for workers to sue employers; made it easier to seize private land; made it harder for shareholders to sue for corporate securities-related fraud; and made it harder to obtain patents, and made corporate campaign financing legal. Corporations owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.

The POW! Plan and its Implementation

Powell planted the seed, but it took an amazing amount of money, mobilization, organization, strategy, careful execution, and time to grow the corpocracy into what it is today, the most powerful, domestically ruinous, and globally dangerous entity on the globe. Because of the corpocracy America among advanced nations has the worst socioeconomic conditions (e.g., highest poverty and unemployment rates) and is also the most imperialistic, warring nation on the globe.

What kind of a counteroffensive will it take short of a Second American Revolution, which would be a disastrous mistake, to undo Powell's legacy and reclaim America's democracy and rebuild for her future, one that keeps the Constitution's promise of providing for the general welfare? The odds for doing so seem so remote as to make the question almost laughable. Simply look around. Where is the opposition? Some people are counting on the Occupy movement, but it's scattered, financially poor, basically disconnected from numerous segments of the public that could be prospective allies (e.g., environmentalists, consumer advocates, the many peace and antiwar groups, etc., etc.), and is strategically unguided. Neither can we depend on hundreds of NGOs if they keep on waging their own separate skirmishes with the corpocracy. They have been doing that for years and the corpocracy keeps getting stronger and more ruinous.   

In reading Powell's memo while doing the research for my new book, The Devil's Marriage, I decided the answer to my question might be staring me in the face. If Powell's plan was so successful, why couldn't we start with a counteroffensive plan, sort of a mirror image of his but far more detailed and comprehensive? So I wrote what I called the POW! plan. It's obviously a homophone of "Powell" and a metaphor for knocking out the corpocracy. The POW! plan calls for achieving a broad array of strategic reform goals and objectives like those listed below. They target all four of Powell's targeted arenas plus the economic arena:

Orchestrate a blitz in the classroom and in the media about the corpocracy and its woeful opposition.

Mobilize political pressure behind the reform initiatives.

End the political/judicial surrender to powerful corporate interests.

   Reform the political party system (e.g. require ranked choice voting).

   Oust the lifers and vote peddlers (i.e. career, corporatized politicians).

   Cut the Oval Office puppets' corporate strings.

   Out the touts (i.e. corporate lobbyists).

   Plug the burrower's holes (i.e. giving political appointees civil service jobs).

   Lock the revolving doors (i.e. politicians to industry and vice versa).

   Knock down voting hurdles (e.g. spurious voting restrictions).

   Shrink the Big Beast (i.e. reduce size of government to optimum size).

   Restore justice to the corporatized courts.

   Uproot the legal roots of the corpocracy.

       Uproot sham State charters for corporations.

       Uproot corporate personhood (that gives Constitutional rights to corporations).

       Uproot limited liability (that helps shield corporations and their owners).

   End government's hands off corporate crooks.

       Unleash the watch dogs (e.g. the SEC, OSHA, etc.).

        Seal the escape hatches (e.g. legal loopholes).

       Stop pampering, start punishing (e.g. costly fines and imprisonment).

       End reckless deregulation.

   Cut "ordinary" corporate welfare.

      End warfare welfare and war.

End undemocratic capitalism.

   End free market ballyhoo.

   End fear mongering over national debt.

   End privatization.

   End economic disparities and poverty (e.g. require living wages).

   End shut-out capitalists (e.g. expand employee stock ownership).

   End financial speculation (e.g. bar the trading of derivatives).  

   End exploitative globalization (i.e. bar corporations from unfair foreign practices).

   End unsustainable development (e.g. reward smart growth).

   End elitist pay without performance (i.e. end unconscionable and undeserved pay).

In my book I propose many specific initiatives, some mine, some others, for achieving those goals and objectives. But where does all of that leave us? A plan is just paper until put into action. Taking my cue again from Powell, I proposed as a starter a counterpart to the USCC, namely, the U.S. Chamber of Democracy, an entity that does not yet exist.  

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, perhaps the corpocracy's staunchest ally, has a large office building in where else but the Nation's capital near the White House. The U.S. Chamber of Democracy need not have a street address because it could be a "virtual" organization of NGOs relying primarily on the Internet for communicating to each other. It should never become a hierarchical organization, the worst kind of undemocratic organizational structure ever designed.

A steering council, formed by charter members, would establish the USCD, state its mission and vision, develop a comprehensive plan of strategic reform goals and priorities, and insure that sufficient resources are available for pursuing the most important goals first.

Alliances within the USCD would be formed by grouping together NGOs according to what they are already doing. There might be, say, a legal and regulatory reform alliance, a think tank alliance, an oversight/strike force alliance, and an outreach alliance. Each would have one or more roles in pursuing the strategic objectives of the USCD and would be represented on the council. One of the outreach alliance's roles would be to help mobilize and organize a "Democracy Coalition" that fuses together the various segments of the populace like those already mentioned that might be willing to be represented in such a super coalition and that would then apply political pressure behind the USCD's reform efforts. In this way, public pressure would be strategically guided, not dissipated helter-skelter and often on narrowly focused issues.

Two important conclusions from all the foregoing need to be noted. First, ending corporate personhood to take money out of politics is not the total answer as its proponents seem to say. It is a one-dimensional attack on a multidimensional problem as the long list of strategic goals and objectives clearly indicate. Second, given the power and organization of the corpocracy, and given that long list, there is absolutely no way in several lifetimes that any NGO singlehandedly or in clusters of small partnerships or that any grass roots movements grown to tall weeds could ever end the corpocracy. That conclusion is why I have started to drum up support for the establishment of a real USCD, a real POW! plan, and a real Democracy Coalition (see www.uschamberofdemocracy.com). It's a daunting and tiring task. But the alternative is unthinkable; a corpocracy that through some future excess, self destructs and in the process destroys America for good. The excess that worries me the most is the corpocracy's penchant for imperialism and militarism that some day might spark a horrific blowback in contrast to what has been so far mostly horrific consequences to those suffering America's remote wars. If the USCD and the POW! plan ever materialize the very first priority therefore ought to be to end the corpocracy's warfare welfare. I have proposed in my book many specific initiatives aimed at doing just that.

What is also unthinkable is to do nothing, and in that respect I am totally sympathetic to all the Occupy protestors. For my part I will continue my efforts until at least the first anniversary year (April, 2012 ) of my having started soliciting citizen petitions in support of creating a real USCD. By that time I will also have been able to contact over 100 NGOs and to seek funding from a host of foundations and benefactors. I will then return with hopefully a promising progress report.

Authors Website: http://www.911rescueamerica.com

Authors Bio:

Retired organizational psychologist.

Author of "911!", The Devil's Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lur ch; America's Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying; and Corporate Reckoning Ahead.

I may be aged but I am still an indefatigable foe of America's power elite who are ruining our nation and the world. If they wrongdoing and evildoing are not stopped there will be no humanity later this century. My newest book, "911!" explains why America needs rescued from the death grip of the power elite and proposes a detail plan for rescuing America and creating a new People's America.