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It is becoming clear that corporate intrusion into civil society is one of the major ethical problems of the twenty-first century; this issue is the door through which George Orwell’s 1984 has and will enter silently and without fanfare. It includes all the relevant ingredients but, most specifically, includes the distortion of reporting on various social phenomena and the turning of light into dark on matters of the environment, technological advance, a health,,safe, and personal peace of mind.
For those who have a political background, today, when we think of authoritarianism or even fascism, we have to consider the rule of society by corporations, the retraction of social choice, and the implementation of product totalitarianism. We have to think more about corporate sciences controlling the means of production, culture, education, and the political system. The real future of the authoritarian society will not be through the fascism of the 1930’s but through the control of society by postindustrial corporations that deny individual choice in a multiplicity of areas.
Vested interests and conflict of interest in industrial science production will be at the center of the new politics; discussion of these issues at the center of the new non-democracy. Although scientists should be at the fore in resolving these questions and regulating their own disciplines, cleansing it of financial influences and conflicts of interest, they should also remember that the lay community clearly has rights – if not to be a part of discussions about detailed scientific matters, at least to discuss and determine the social uses of science and the general moral direction of research. Science as a new means of production is far too important to be left completely to scientists.
Looking to the future, it seems to me that there is little hope, as long as corporatism gains ground in the developed countries, of developing a fairness and objectivity in the research and promotion that examines industry-caused chronic illnesses. While liberal society looks to The Precautionary Principle, the disintegrated nature of commercial competition in a capitalist system means that almost inevitably the freedom to produce is followed by the freedom to market. After this point it becomes impossible to turn the clock back.
Martin J. Walker in: Corporate Ties that Bind, Skyhorse Publishing, 2017
Print ISBN : 978-1-5107-1188-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1189-1
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CORPORATE TIES THAT BIND
by Martin Walker
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