America's First Anti-Globalization Protest?

Jefferson considers “freedom against monopolies” a basic right

Once the Revolutionary War was over, and the Constitution had been worked out and presented to the states for ratification, Jefferson turned his attention to what he and Madison felt was a terrible inadequacy in the new Constitution: it didn’t explicitly stipulate the “natural rights” of the new nation’s citizens, and didn’t protect against the rise of new commercial monopolies like the East India Company.

On December 20th, 1787, Jefferson wrote to James Madison about his concerns regarding the Constitution. He said, bluntly, that it was deficient in several areas. “I will now tell you what I do not like,” he wrote. “First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the laws of nations.”

Such a bill protecting natural persons from out-of-control governments or commercial monopolies shouldn’t just be limited to America, Jefferson believed. “Let me add,” he summarized, “that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”

In 1788 Jefferson wrote about his concerns to several people. In a letter to Mr. A. Donald, on February 7th, he defined the items that should be in a bill of rights: “By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil, which no honest government should decline.”

Jefferson kept pushing for a law, written into the constitution as an amendment, which would prevent companies from growing so large they could dominate entire industries or have the power to influence the people’s government.

But Federalists including John Adams and Alexander Hamilton fought Jefferson and Madison, and when Congress finally passed the Bill of Rights it no longer contained a ban on corporations owning other corporations or monopolizing industries. In response to that, hundreds of states passed laws restricting and restraining corporations, which were the law of the land until the court reporter of the U.S. Supreme Court incorrectly placed in the headnotes of the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case of 1886 that “corporations are persons” and entitled to the same rights as humans under the Bill of Rights. In a dangerous (to democracy) and growing trend, corporations have since used that error to claim human rights for themselves.

This overt theft of human rights by corporate entities paved the way for the rise of new commercial monopolies, the era of the Robber Barons, and now to NAFTA and WTO world courts run largely by corporations to which not only people but entire nations must submit. This has led to the new Tea Parties of Seattle and Genoa, and a growing concern among people the world over that American democracy has been hijacked by corporate interests.

To reverse this trend, we must examine and then roll back the bizarre idea promulgated by corporations that they are “persons” and should have full access to the Bill of Rights. Citizens across the world are working on campaigns to deny corporate personhood, hoping to restore governments to the control of “we, the people” by and for whom they were created.

This article is copyright 2002 by Thom Hartmann, and largely excerpted from Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights by Thom Hartmann, published by Rodale Books, 2002.