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gangsofamerica.comGangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy
Corporations are the dominant force in modern life, surpassing even church and state. The largest are richer than entire nations, and courts have given these entities more rights than people. To many Americans, corporate power seems out of control. According to a Business Week/Harris poll released in September 2000, 82 percent of those surveyed agreed that “business has too much power over too many aspects of our lives.” And the recent revelations of corporate scandal and political influence have only added to such concerns.
Where did this powerful institution come from? How did it get so much power? In Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy, author Ted Nace probes the roots of corporate power, finding answers in surprising places.
A key revelation of the book is the wariness of the Founding Fathers toward corporations. That wariness was shaped by rampant abuses on the part of British corporations such as the Virginia Company, whose ill-treatment killed thousands of women and children on forced-labor tobacco plantations, and the East India Company, whose attempt to monopolize American commodities led to the merchant-led rebellion known as the Boston Tea Party.
From Street Fights to Empire The British roots of the American corporation
(1267-1773)
The year was 1267, and blood flowed in the muddy streets of London. A dispute between two guildsthe Goldsmiths and the Tailorshad escalated until it turned into armed conflict. The issues that led to the fighting are not recorded, but history does tell us that over 500 men were involved,
including members of the Clothworkers’ Guild and the Cordwainers’ Guild, and that many were injured or killed.
Such rumbles broke out from time to time among the scores of craft guilds that had arisen during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In 1340 it was the
Skinners fighting the Fishmongers in the Cheapside district of the city. In 1378, the Goldsmiths attacked the Grocers. Though bloody, those conflicts were both mere skirmishes compared to the all-out war of the 1390s in which a
grand alliance consisting of the Drapers, the Mercers, the Tailors, the Goldsmiths, the Saddlers, the Haaberdashers, and the Cordwainers went to war against the Fishmongers and the Victuallers. The issues were a complex blend of the lofty and the mundane, including fish prices and the religious teachings of John Wyclif.
What, if anything, do these quaint-sounding medieval guilds and their conflicts over obscure and long-forgotten issues have to do with today’s goliaths, with General Electric, Microsoft, Merck, WalMart, and so on? The Skinners, Fishmongers, and Haaberdashers of the late Middle Ages did not yet display the particular features that would allow us to call them corporations. They were not unified businesses, but rather umbrella groups for the members of particular crafts. But already, some seeds of the corporation can be seen.
One such seed was a tendency toward exclusion and hierarchy as organizing principles. Even by the fourteenth century, the craft guild had moved a considerable distance from its communal roots in a Saxon tribal institution known as the firth gild, an association that included both men and women and served a variety of protective, religious, and mutual-aid functions. Medieval craft guilds had originally been “commonalities” in which all members were equal, but over time a stratification occurred, with the elite members of each guild assuming uniforms known as liveries. In time, non-liveried members were shut out entirely, and eligibility for membership was determined not by competency at a craft but by ability to pay a fee of capital. Among the London guilds, a strict ranking developed.
Twelve became known as the “great livery guilds,” with the Mercers occupying the top slot, followed in order of prestige by the Grocers, the Drapers, the Fishmongers, the Goldsmiths, the Skinners, the Merchant Tailors, the Haberdashers, the Salters, the Ironmongers, the Vintonners, and the Clothworkers. Scores of other guilds were known as the “lesser livery guilds.” Membership in one of the great livery guilds required a membership fee of £1000; to belong to one of the lesser livery guilds, the fee was £500.
Guilds didn’t just fightthey also feasted. At one feast in 1516, the Drapers entertained the Mayor and the Sheriffs with “brawn and mustard, capon boiled, swan roasted, pike, venison baked and roast; jellies, pastry, quails, sturgeon, salmon, wafers and hippocras... six sheep, a calf, forty gallons of curds … swan’s puddings, a neck of mutton in pike broth, two shoulders of mutton roast, four conies, eight chickens, six pigeons, and cold meat plenty.”
Indeed, centuries after guilds such as the Skinners, Salters, and Long-bow Stringmakers had outlived their economic functionality, many of them lived on as vehicles for networking and socializing. (Lately, the guilds have been rediscovered by London’s young professionals, who have been forming new ones at a record pace, with names such as the
Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants, and the Worshipful Company of World Traders. A glance at the online social calendar for the Worshipful Company of Environmental Cleaners showed that its members were busily engaged in preparations for the annual Inter-Livery Clay Pigeon Shoot, the Inter-Livery Bridge Competition, the Installation of Masters, and the Lord Mayor’s Show, in addition to the regular practice sessions of the guild’s own Golfing Society.)
Our KSM agents research suggests that in preparation for the 'massive attacks' of WWII, Crown Agents’ Sisters hired Ian Fleming and Aleister Crowley to stage pedophile oath-taking ceremonies and issue a DEADF007 license to kill to operatives deployed by various City & Guilds livery companies including the Stationers and Newspapermakers, the Scriveners and the Fishmongers.
