While the existing corporations may be less than exemplary, to say the least, they are so because they are run by pigs not because they are forced to wallow in shit by the 'markets.' But the complex organization espouses the idea of economic planning - and that is a very good idea from the progressive point of view. It so happened that such planning is currently done to benefit rather narrow interests - but there is nothing that would prohibit corporate planning working for the interest of general public. Achieving that seems to me a more reasonable political objective than smashing Starbuck's windows and opening tofu cooperatives.
wojtek ********
god I love the addiction to patronizing responses from the academics on this list. Is that the limits of your either/or cortical impairment?
Bureaucracy is one thing. Hierarchical proceduralism within actually existing corporations with zilch accountability to the workers who create the wealth, musical chairs with accountability when they're pressed to the wall when the workers catch them violating the law and the like, along with the utter lack of simple free speech rights needed by literally millions of workers area far cry from progressive anything except progressive barbarism. One needed goal is simply to start demanding that we as a culture achieve some sort of internally driven redesigning of corporate policies in tandem with changes in corporate law that are desperately needed as part of a "left" program of the future. New models of worker ownership are needed as are substantive changes in the financial institutions that constrain the possibility of their evolution. With trade unions fighting rear guard actions, I'll be the first to admit we're a million years from where many US workers [and workers around the world] would like to be.
Ever pee in a cup to get a job?
Ever have a racist white manager get up in your face and physically threaten you?
Ever lose your life because you were threatened with termination from a 6.50$ an hour job for refusing do something you knew in your bones was dangerous?
Ever been told to but out when you see a manager or co-worker sexually harass a woman?
We wouldn't put up with this shit from the Feds; we'd call it fascism [or worse]
Yet thanks to the laws on the books; brought to us by the Repugs. US workers can look forward to these and many other violations of their rights to autonomy and democratic self-governance for plenty of decades into the future. Yummy!!!!!!
Planning for what? The destruction of watersheds, airsheds, forests, animals etc. They're run by pigs because they were taught by the great teachers in our management and business administration and industrial organization and economics departments at our great universities that the philosophical ideas that are "the core" of democracy do not apply to the way we build machines, provide food to our fellow citizens or teach in our schools. And then we wonder why "they" are incapable of practicing those values in what little civic space we still have.
Ever study Mondragon or the Japanese co-ops or Volvo's shop floor? They've got plenty of complexity. At least those cultures with all their warts treat workers as adults rather than 13 year olds who need to be accused of crimes without any evidence in order to safeguard the great god of ever increasing output per hour and the great civilizing influence of capital/labor ratios.
The hippies never existed, Starbucks is run by a megalomaniac and practicing racist imperialist pig who attended a fine university and is running a wonderfully egregious union busting campaign as I type these words. He deserves to have his fucking windows smashed into a million fucking pieces. He's a pig taught by people just like you.
Ian