Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable You may remember that there was
a time when apartheid in South Africa seemed unstoppable. Sure,
there were international boycotts of South African businesses,
banks, and tourist attractions. There were heroic activists in
South Africa, who were going to prison and even dying for
freedom. But the conventional wisdom remained that these were
principled gestures with little chance of upending the
entrenched system of white rule. “Be patient,” activists were
told. “Don’t expect too much against powerful interests with a
lot of money invested in the status quo.” With hindsight,
though, apartheid’s fall appears inevitable: the legitimacy of
the system had already crumbled. It was harming too many for the
benefit of too few. South Africa’s freedom fighters would not be
silenced, and the global movement supporting them was likewise
tenacious and principled. In the same way, the legitimacy of
rule by giant corporations and Wall Street banks is crumbling.
This system of corporate rule a