Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

250 What To Make of Itthat some trade-off between the systems is required, the defectsof democracy accepted in the trade-off are, however,more than skin deep. They imply a substantial wrenchingof the political process to meet the needs of market elites,either by overriding or manipulating popular political demands.An example of both appears to be the many new advisorycouncils that the British Labour Party has installedin British government since 1998. They bring corporate executivesinto closer relations with the ministries, withsome loss of power, it seems probable, by the establishedappointed officials. A society has to pay heavily for its marketsystem in some loss of democracy.For all the obstructions to democracy attributable to enterprises,especially corporations, few people propose to dispensewith them. Most of us can hardly imagine a worldwithout something very much like a corporation. Despiteits obstructions to democracy, the corporation has been andcontinues to be a productive institution; and each societywill perhaps shape an appropriate future with some form ofit. Frankenstein created a crazy monster, but it was an insignificantaccomplishment, even as allegory, when comparedto mankind’s collective creation of the corporation.For the corporation is sane enough to survive and flourish,as the monster was not. It is also immortal, as the monsterwas not. And it is capable of bestowing benefits or wreakinghavoc the world over, as the monster was not. One canimagine a better democratic harness for the corporation.But how well it can be harnessed depends heavily on thecorporation itself, for to escape the democratic harness itwill run on its strong legs as freely as it dares.