impossibility of soc dem in U.S.

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Sep 16 12:26:44 PDT 1999


rc-am wrote:


> >"Political Preconditions To Separating Ownership from Control:
> The Incompatibility of the American Public Firm with Social
> Democracy"<
>
>tell me there's something i've missed here, but what do they think
>they've uncovered?

I haven't read the paper yet, but it sounds like an argument I've made myself - that U.S.-style capitalism, with strong pressures coming from impatient stockholders for profit maximization, puts downward pressure on wages, makes life very difficult for unions, and disperses political responsibility for the labor-unfriendly state of affairs. Bank-centered systems, paradigmatically the German, are more stable and more amenable to political pressure to be a bit friendlier to labor. But I haven't read the paper, and abstracts are often a poor guide to what's inside.

Doug



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