Quote:
Originally Posted by Botnst
Do people love the corporation or look to the corporation for guidance in their lives? Does anybody keep-up with past heroes of the bureaucracy? I don't think so. If people think of the corporation at all it is usually in slightly to strongly negative terms. Except for maybe the upper priesthood ... uh management. Some proportion of them probably see the corporation as an entity that is a force for good. Most people think of the corporation as a job and would prefer not to think about it when they don't have to.
My candidate for replacing deities in the modern world is government. It is the source of power in our lives, we are taught to revere the pantheon of national demigods, we sing songs to it's glorification, and we want it's beneficence to smile upon us always.
|
Dammit, I typed out a long reply and lost it.
I agree that the corporation cannot command loyalty and nationalism is essential for this. I think Hitler saw this very clearly.
However, I still think the corporation is the dominant institution in the modern world, and the nation is its adjunct. I see the question of secularization as the question of whether a society with an amoral (immoral?) central institution can survive in the long term. Will it's lack of a moral center push the world towards fascism or religious fascism because the lack of a moral commitment in the center of our productive lives produces too much alienation? Can privatized and individualized religion suffice to meet the problem?
I think this issue is partly why I am in favor of modifying the capitalist corporation along the lines of the Mondragon cooperative model. It introduces a level of commitment and moral life to the corporation, thereby reducing alienation without losing the advantages that capitalism and a market economy have provided and without resorting to traditional religion or fascism.