Corpocracy

'Corpocracy' literally means 'Body's Government'; but refers in particular to a system of rule by which discrete sub-societies, called corporations, govern the larger society. In the Course Books, the Gudersnipe Foundation might be thought a corpocracy; but its principal use identifies the government of planet Altronis in the late Fourth Age.

Structure

A 'corporation' was an organization of businesses-people, originally to take control of all wealth and all resources (human and otherwise) within a particular trade, but later expanded to control the whole economy, and thence the whole society. Where multiple corporations existed, they assumed a fiction of competing amongst themselves, but co-operated secretly. Though they professed to 'generate wealth' and 'protect individual rights', their practices left more people out of work than they put in, and the 'rights' they professed were not named.

Emergence

The Altronis Corpocracy had most or all the features listed here (some apparently of Marcon origin), during its emergence:

-- Industrialism (by which various corporations attempted control of all natural resources, and of all means of using the same)

-- Racism (by which certain ethnicities were denied respect and social status; lacked upward social mobility; overworked; treated as criminals by default; or otherwise abused);

-- Misogyny (by which women were refused privileges; often raped; denied respect; and portrayed in fiction as weak or sentimental where men were not);

-- Pollution (by which natural resources were exhausted; ecosystems weakened or broken; water-supplies polluted; food unwholesome; air filthy; cancers endemic; landscapes destroyed; poisons ubiquitous; etc.);

-- Inattention (to national borders; emergent corporations strengthened nationalism in the public, but ignored borders, treaties, sovereignties, geographic barriers, and laws of every kind)

-- Needless Wars (often begun for profit's sake, or on bogus ideological grounds, and continued long after cessation of need);

-- Individualism (by which the majority of people were misinformed that individual rights took precedence over improvement of social/environmental/psychic conditions, and all correction was portrayed as a 'slippery slope' toward mass enslavement of the population);

-- Profit Motive (by which all worth was defined by wealth; all wealth by status within corporations; all status by the amount of money retained; money's worth by use in the most-powerful corporations; power by the extent of resource-control; etc.);

-- Corruption (by which various corporations bought; bribed; blackmailed; lied; cheated; tricked; scared; and otherwise deceptively put themselves in control of the elected government, so that their desires came first in every discourse);

-- Deception (of the public, to keep its attention on fictitious 'threats' to its least-important freedoms while the more important were graduated out of practice, and to have them believe it within their power to become corporate officials, even when they could not);

-- Privacy (invoked by the corpocrats themselves during the 'cracy's emergence, to prevent their obedience to any law);

-- Anti-Intellectualism (very useful where analytical thought would probably prostrate the corpocracy, and where enforcement of real needs would keep money from its control); and

-- Ambiguity (by which 'rights' and 'traditional values' were invoked as excuses of their behavior, but never identified).

Establishment

Corporations gradually replaced the standing government's functions (safety; medical care; response to disaster; publication of books; etc.) with departments of their own, and ultimately became synonymous with the government. Once there, they could be removed only by force.

Destruction

At present, the Course Books know only of Gudersnipe Foundation and the Corpocracy of Altronis; and destruction is recorded only of the latter, by Ransom's Crew. See related articles.