L'entreprise est une personne
Marcel JB Tardif, MBA
CEO - PerformInfo Inc. Auteur, Conférencier, Coach de dirigeants 26 519 abonnés + 3 900 post 560 articles
Lors de la présidentielle américaine de 2016, Mitt Romney[1] s’est fait fort de rappeler à ses électeurs potentiels, et ce?avec une insistance dithyrambique : ??Corporations are people??[2]. étrangement, alors que les ??entreprises?? sont des ??personnes??, les ??personnes?? ne sont jamais des ??entreprises??. Ce qui fait que, aux états-Unis, le pays doù l’on dénote une fixation archi-chronique sur la propriété privée (physique et matérielle, comme humaine et psychologique du moins jusqu’à une époque toute récente), les ??corporations?? peuvent être ??propriétaires?? de personnes[3], sans qu’en même temps les mêmes personnes ne puissent être automatiquememnt ??propriétaires?? des mêmes ??corporations??. En d’autres mots, les ??corporations?? peuvent imposer toutes les conditions qu’elles veulent (peuvent imaginer) aux ??personnes?? qu’elles embauchent, sans que les dites ??personnes?? ne puissent en faire autant à leur endroit. Ce qui s’appellerait, sans aucun doute, dans la vulgate républicaine actuelle[4], la ??justice sociale??, où le traitement de chacun commande (en principe) que ??personne ne soit au dessus des lois[5]??. Traduit en langage courant, cela voudrait dire que le monde ordinaire, les ??personnes??, n’est pas en marge du droit des ??corporations??. Pourtant, cela ne gêne pas les défenseurs du pseudo ??droit à l’égalité de tous devant la loi?? d’exclure des ??droits?? des corporations les ??droits?? des ??personnes ordinaires??[6].
Sim de fait, on doit accepter que ??les corporations?? soient des ??personnes??, alors que les personnes puissent se déclarer être des corporations et détenir tous les pouvoirs qui sont reconnus à ces dernières, à commencer par le droit de propriété plein et entier sur leur avoir financier. En somme, faisons des (anciens) employés des actionnaires, et cessons de décliner l’entreprise en ??principal?? et ??agent??[7]. Le rendement sera supérieur sur l’activité et les affaires, en résultat d’exercice et en performance sur cycle de vie. Nul n’aura à mesurer de fa?on démesurée le produit du travail de chacun, puisque l’appropriation de l’avoir total par tous les acteurs-preneurs premiers à l’activité et aux affaires de l’entreprise aura pour effet de stimuler comme rien d’autre leur engagement au travail. Ce ne sont pas les belles paroles des dirigeants d’entreprise qui motivent les gens à la tache[8], mais le contexte du travail et les conditions générales d’exécution de la tache. Or, dans une entreprise complètement appropriée par ses travailleurs, le dit contexte et les dites conditions seront décidés, appliqués et évalués par ces mêmes travailleurs. Finie la dichotomie ??haut?? et ??bas?? de la structure d’organisation de l’entreprise, où, soi-disant, on ??pense en haut?? et on ??exécute en bas??.
Sortons enfin du régime féodal d’asservissement des employés, au profit de ??l’entreprise personne??.
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[2] Are corporations people? The U.S. Supreme Court says they are, at least for some purposes. And in the past four years, the high court has dramatically expanded corporate rights. It ruled?that corporations have the right to spend money in candidate elections,?and that some for-profit?corporations may, on religious grounds, refuse to comply with a federal mandate?to cover birth control in their employee health plans. These are personal rights accorded to corporations. To many, the concept of corporations as people seems odd, to say the least. But it is not new. The dictionary defines "corporation" as "a number of persons united in one body for a purpose." Corporate entities date back to medieval times, observes Columbia law professor John Coffee, an authority on corporate law. "You could think of the Catholic Church as probably the first entity that could buy and sell property in its own name," he says. Indeed, having an artificial legal persona was especially important to churches, says Elizabeth Pollman, an associate professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "Having a corporation would allow people to put property into a collective ownership that could be held with perpetual existence," she says. "So it wouldn't be tied to any one person's lifespan, or subject necessarily to laws regarding inheriting property." Later on, in the United States and elsewhere, the advantages of incorporation were essential to efficient and secure economic development. Unlike partnerships, the corporation continued to exist even if a partner died; there was no unanimity required to do something; shareholders could not be sued individually, only the corporation as a whole, so investors only risked as much as they put into buying shares. By the 1800s, the process of incorporating became relatively simple. But corporations aren't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, leaving the courts to determine what rights corporations have — and which corporations have them. After all, Coca-Cola is a corporation, but so are the NAACP and the National Rifle Association, and so are small churches and local nonprofits. "All these truly different types of organizations might come under the label 'corporation,' " Pollman observes. "And so the real difficulty is figuring out how to treat these different things under the Constitution." In the early years of the republic, the only right given to corporations was the right to have their contracts respected by the government, according to legal historian Eben Moglen. The great industrialization of the United States in the 1800s, however, intensified companies' need to raise money. "With the invention of the railroad, you needed a great deal of capital to exploit its purpose, " Columbia professor Coffee says, "and only the corporate form offered limited liability, easy transferability of shares, and continued, perpetual existence." In addition, the end of the Civil War and the adoption of the 14th Amendment provided an opportunity for corporations to seek further legal protection, says Moglen, also a Columbia University professor. "From the moment the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, lawyers for corporations — particularly railroad companies — wanted to use that 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection to make sure that the states didn't unequally treat corporations," Moglen says. Nobody was talking about extending to corporations the right of free speech back then. What the railroads sought was equal treatment under state tax laws and things like that. The Supreme Court extended that protection to corporations, and over time also extended some — but not all — of the rights guaranteed to individuals in the Bill of Rights. The court ruled that corporations don't have a right against self-incrimination, for instance, but are protected by the ban on warrantless search and seizure. Otherwise, as the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro puts it, "the police could storm down the doors of some company and take all their computers and their files." But for 100 years, corporations were not given any constitutional right of political speech; in fact, quite the contrary. In 1907, following a corporate corruption scandal involving prior presidential campaigns,?Congress passed a law banning corporate involvement?in federal election campaigns. That wall held firm for 70 years. The first crack came in a case that involved neither candidate elections nor federal law. In 1978 a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled for the first time that?corporations have a First Amendment right to spend money on state ballot initiatives. Still, for decades, candidate elections remained free of direct corporate influence under federal law. Only money from individuals and groups of individuals — political action committees — were permitted in federal elections.
Then came Citizens United, the Supreme Court's 5-4 First Amendment decision in 2010 that extended to corporations for the first time full rights to spend money as they wish in candidate elections — federal, state and local. The decision reversed a century of legal understanding, unleashed a flood of campaign cash and created a crescendo of controversy that continues to build today. It thrilled many in the business community, horrified campaign reformers, and provoked considerable mockery in the comedian classes.
When Did Companies Become People? Excavating The Legal Evolution
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JULY 28, 20144:57 AM ET
HEARD ON MORNING EDITION
Nina Totenberg at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 21, 2019.
?In a U.S. historical context, the phrase "corporate personhood" refers to the ongoing legal debate over the extent to which rights traditionally associated with natural persons should also be afforded to?juridical persons?including?corporations. A?headnote?issued by the?court reporter?in the 1886 Supreme Court case?Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.?claimed to state the sense of the Court regarding the?equal protection clause?of the?Fourteenth Amendment?as it applies to corporations, without the Court having actually made a decision or issued a written opinion on that point. This was the first time that the Supreme Court was reported to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations as well as to?natural persons, although numerous other cases, since?Dartmouth College v. Woodward?in 1819, had recognized that corporations were entitled to some of the protections of the Constitution. In?Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.?(2014), the Court found that the?Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993?exempted?Hobby Lobby?from aspects of the?Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?because those aspects placed a substantial burden on the company's owners' free exercise of sincerely held religious beliefs. U.S. courts have extended certain constitutional protections to corporations under various rationales. An early perspective, variously known as 'contractual', 'associate', or 'aggregate' theory, holds that owners of property have certain constitutional protections, even when the property is held via a corporation rather than directly under the owner's own name. Corporate attorney?John Norton Pomeroy?argued in the 1880s that "Statutes violating their prohibitions in dealing with corporations must necessarily infringe upon the rights of natural persons. In applying and enforcing these constitutional guaranties, corporations cannot be separated from the natural persons who compose them." Similarly, proponents might argue a juridical person can be a device for exercising shareholders' rights to free speech. Under this perspective, such constitutional rights might also extend to other associations of people, even where the association does not take on the formal legal form of a corporation. A second perspective, known as the 'real entity' or 'natural entity' view, shifts the presumption of corporate regulation against the states.? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
[3] Les personnes qu’elles emploient, en ce qu’elles dictent leurs conditions de vie active, de fa?on péremptoire. De fait, le régime capitaliste, tel que compris et appliqué aux états-Unis, n’est rien d’autre qu’une forme d’esclavagisme déguisé en ap?tre du libéralisme de marché. Le système judiciaire, depuis 1886, et sans doute plus t?t, n’a eu de cesse, en toute affaire ou presque opposant les droits de l’homme aux droits de l’entreprise, de favoriser cette dernière chaque fois ou presque… sans remord aucun. D’ailleurs, depuis une note explicative rapportant erronément le sens d’un jugement rendu par la même Cour suprême des états-Unis, on a fondé la jurisprudence nationale sur l’idée impropre et nettement immorale voulant que les ??corporations?? soient désormais des ??personnes??. Ayant tous les droits reconnus aux personnes, sans obligatoirement avoir toutes les obligations imposées aux personnes. ?
[4] Celle des méga (lire?: maga) détracqués que commande Trump à chaque rally politique qu’il organise.
[5] Sauf Trump et ses sbirs!
[6] Les corporations, les entreprises, ont le droit de ne pas aller en prison, alors que les personnes ordinaires, pour de mêmes forfaits, vont directement et rapidement en prison et pour plus longtemps qu’elles ne le méritent trop souvent. La ??justice égale pour tout le monde??, c’est très précisément celle qui n’est pas appliquée également à chaque ??personne??. Du droit américain, qui tient de l’intelligence sociale dévoyée (qui veut dire détournée) des Américains. Ceux-là même qui donnent des le?ons de choses au reste de la planète, parce qu’ils sont seuls détenteurs des principes moraux légitimes en toute affaire humaine. Le jour où ils oseront se regarder en face, dans une glace, ils auront horreur de ce qu’ils y verront, sauf à maintenir leur conscience morale et sociale parfaitement détraquée.
[7] The Modern Corporation and Private Property is a book written by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means published in 1932 regarding the foundations of United States corporate law. It explores the evolution of big business through a legal and economic lens, and argues that in the modern world those who legally have ownership over companies have been separated from their control. The second, revised edition was released in 1967. It serves as a foundational text in corporate governance, corporate law (company law), and institutional economics. ?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Modern_Corporation_and_Private_Property
[8] The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win, Jeff Haden. https://www.amazon.com/Motivation-Myth-Achievers-Really-Themselves/dp/0399563768
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