LIFE INC.

Reviewed 6/14/2010

Life Inc., by Douglas Rushkoff

LIFE INC.
How the World Became a Corporation and How To Take It Back
Douglas Rushkoff
New York: Random House, 2009

Rating:

5.0

High
ISBN-13 978-1-4000-6689-6
ISBN-10 1-4000-6689-1 274pp. HC $26.00

Douglas Rushkoff, in the course of turning history on its head, paints a grim picture. His version of the Middle Ages posits that the period began with widespread prosperity among local communities with discrete currency systems. (There were global currencies too. They supported long-distance transactions that required larger capital outlays, like the voyages that brought pepper from the Spice Islands of Indonesia.) Here's how he describes it:

"The coexistence of these two kinds of currencies with very different purposes and biases led to an economic expansion unlike any we have seen since. Sometimes called the 'first Renaissance,' the late Middle Ages offered an enviable quality of life for ordinary people. The working class enjoyed four meals a day, usually of three or four courses. They worked six hours a day, and just four or five days a week—unless they were celebrating one of about one hundred fifty annual holidays. Medievalists from Francois Icher to D. Damaschke almost unanimously agree that between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, the quality of life of Europeans was better than at any other period of history, including today."

– Page 166

Then, around 1400 A.D., the various monarchs began issuing corporate charters which outlawed local currencies and rather quickly centralized wealth in the hands of one or a few favored corporate entities.1

"History books gloss over or omit entirely the process through which monarchs outlawed certain currencies while promoting others. Contemporary economists, meanwhile, seem oblivious of the concept that other kinds of money with very different biases ever existed. The system they call 'the economy' is not a set of natural laws, but a series of observations and strategies based on a very particular game with a carefully developed set of rules. It has simply been in place so long that our business and finance professionals have forgotten there were ever any alternatives. Over the course of my research, I interviewed fiscal strategists at Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and Smith Barney about the biases of the money we use, and not one of them understood what I was talking about. 'I'm not an economics historian,' one chief economist explained. 'There's other kinds of money?' the head of one currency desk asked."

Yes, there are. Or at least there were. The kind of money we use—centralized currency—is just one of them. Moneys are not neutral media any more than guns, televisions, or pillows are neutral technologies. They each favor certain kinds of behaviors and discourage others."

– Page 162

The main idea is that each of these local currencies served its community as a medium of exchange for day-by-day commerce, whereas the centralized medium of exchange mandated by monarchy fostered hoarding or concentration of wealth. But Rushkoff's main concern is with the present. His extensive research has disclosed that the concentration of wealth is perpetuated by today's financial elite, who have become adept at manipulating the centrifugal forces of the current system.

It is not only by lobbying or other political influence that they do this. Big-business rules reward short-term profit even when that results in financial disaster later on. Increasingly, this profit comes not from innovation, better customer service, or superior productivity, but from financial manipulations including including the minimization of payrolls. Nor do the interests of the community figure into these rules, either on a short-term or long-term basis. If gentrification of a neighborhood turns it into a gated enclave of high-class dormitories for executives who commute to the city, displacing the vibrant community that formerly thrived there, that seldom troubles the elites who benefit from the neighborhood's transformation.

Selected Books by Douglas Rushkoff

  1. Free Rides September 1991(with Patrick Wells) ASIN B01NAOGROC
  2. Cyberia March 1994 ISBN 978-0062510105
  3. GenX Reader April 1994 ISBN 978-0345390462
  4. Media Virus September 1994 ISBN 978-0345382764
  5. Stoned Free 1995(rewrite of Free Rides) ISBN 978-1559501262
  6. Playing the Future June 1996ISBN 978-0060173104
  7. Ecstasy Club May 1997 (fiction) ISBN 978-0060173098
  8. Coercion August 1999 ISBN 978-1573221153
  9. Playing the Future (Reprint edition) September 1999ISBN 978-1573227643
  10. Bull June 2001 ISBN 978-0340718704
  11. Exit Strategy June 2002 ISBN 978-1887128902
  12. Nothing Sacred April 2003 ISBN 978-0609610947
  13. Open Source Democracy 2003 ISBN 978-1841801131
  14. Club Zero-G May 2004 (fiction) ISBN 978-0972952934
  15. Get Back in the Box December 2005 ISBN 978-0060758691
  16. Screenagers April 2006 ISBN 978-1572736245
  17. Testament: Exodus 2008 ISBN ?
  18. Life Inc. June 2009 ISBN 978-1400066896
  19. Life Inc. January 2011 ISBN 978-0812978506
  20. Program or Be Programmed September 2011 ISBN 978-1593764265
  21. Present Shock March 2013 ISBN 978-1591844761
  22. Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus March 2016 ISBN 978-1617230172
  23. Aleister & Adolf (and Michael Avon Oeming)November 2016 ISBN 978-1506701042
  24. Team Human January 2019 ISBN 0-0393651690

But influencing the legislative process is an important arrow in the elites' quiver. This Rushkoff documents with great thoroughness in this book. The legal fiction of corporate personhood is a key factor. Rushkoff reveals how assiduously American corporations have pursued this privilege (see sidebar.) Funding educational reformers is another arrow.4 The art of public relations, as developed by Bernays and his ilk, is yet another (see pp. 16-20.)

The situation today is dire, and Rushkoff is one of the leading lights in a movement to improve the lot of real persons. He has written fourteen books including this one, teaches media studies at the New School, hosts The Media Squat on radio station WFMU, and serves on the board of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics as well as boards of other organizations. He has produced award-winning documentaries for Frontline and maintains a Web site. The book provides an extensive set of endnotes, referenced both by number and by text fragment. Its index is one of the best I have seen. You can find it at your local library. You should do so soonest. It is a must read and a keeper.

UPDATE 4 November 2011: Life, Inc. is out in a revised edition: a paperback from Random House Trade Paperbacks (January, 2011).
See the list at right.

1 I find it curious that Jeremy Rifkin mentions none of this in his book The European Dream. Indeed, his description of medieval Europe almost rules out such commerce.
2 It was a Supreme Court clerk known to favor corporate interests who facilitated this victory. Incorrectly summarizing an opinion in the headnotes of the decision on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, he wrote, "The defendant corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution . . . which forbids a state to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Rushkoff reports, "Over the next twenty-five years, 307 Fourteenth Amendment cases went before the Supreme Court. Two hundred eighty-eight of them were brought by corporations claiming their rights as natural persons." (See pp. 13-14.)
3 Basically, citing the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the Supreme Court held that corporations may spend whatever they wish on political advertising during a campaign. See Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In essence, this grants corporations the right of free speech — another step toward personhood.
4 Leading industrialists funded public schools—at once gifts to the working class and powerful tools for growing a more docile labor force. They hired education reformers, like Stanford's Ellwood P. Cubberley, to design a public school system based on a Prussian method that sought to produce what he called "mediocre intellects . . . and ensure docile citizens." (See p. 15.)
Errata for Life Inc.
Valid CSS! Valid HTML 4.01 Strict To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.
Copyright © 2010-2025 Christopher P. Winter. All rights reserved.
This page was last modified on 19 January 2025.