In a message dated 8/13/2 10:30:27 PM, you wrote:
>You've talked about this sort of thing before, Doug: the socialization of
>capital. But what I'm having trouble understanding is why this matters all
>that much.
>
>There're certainly not as many individual capitalists as there used to be
>(along the lines of J P Morgan et al., right?), and more people can and do
>get a share of the capitalist "pie" by owning shares in companies (is this
>what you mean by "socialization"?). But wouldn't the vast majority of those
>share-holders get very little out of their stocks, assuming they keep them
>for dividends? Wouldn't they have to work "9-5" to make ends meet on a
>regular basis, reinvesting their dividend money in a company or just
>treating it as some "extra income" for spending? And the vast majority of
>stocks are still held by a tiny minority of people, right (presumably also
>getting the lion's share of the money back from purchasing the stocks,
>through dividends, sale of stock, change in value, etc.)?
>
>(Forgive my ignorance about something this basic, but the few people I know
>who have stock don't really worry about it all that much (at least, not in
>front of me), and I don't know how much stock one needs to buy to be able to
>live independently. Nor do I know how much money one gets from stocks as
>dividends or whatever.)
>
>So a capitalist today could be like Morgan, but, due to socialization of
>stock ownership, a "capitalist" could also, theoretically, (and most likely
>is) be some John/Jane Average who still has to work for a living while
>owning and receiving income from stock ownership. And this fact has to be
>accounted for. Is that what you're saying?
>
>If that is the case, then I'm still puzzled why this matters all that much.
>Isn't it more or less "just" a matter of still trying to convince them
>("proletariat stockowners") of their class consciousness vis a vis the
>independantly wealthy ("capitalist") stockowners? Owning a bit of stock
>must make this job more difficult but not impossible, surely. (I'm sure I'm
>understating the matter of difficulty, but there's difficulty and then
>there's difficulty.)
>
>Todd
Well, I think part of the difficulty here is that we're trying to apply a Marxist model to a contemporary situation, and that some of that fluidity gets lost in the process. From a Marxist perspective, revolution would most likely occur in situations where the contradictions of the capitalist economic structure are slammed into one another, so that the hypocrisy becomes jarring.
When capitalism is functioning at a level of relative harmony (and I do mean "relative"), the contradictions aren't as sharp. But, Marx made his observations during periods of relative disharmony, where the divisions between "bourgeois" and "proletariat" were in fact becoming quite polarized.
We've seen situations recently, a la Enron et al., where even upper-level white collar workers are getting screwed by the top executives-- losing their savings and investments, etc. However, it would probably take more than this to create a more fundamental crisis in capitalism. For a socialist revolution to be truly successful, a mass movement of workers is required-- including some from the "upper" echelons of labor. The upper echelons would only be dragged in during a deep crisis-- maybe Enron X 10.
Best, David