>It matters because it's not that easy to specify how corporations are run -
>for whom, by whom, under what principles.
Considering the fluidity of the body corporate, it's no wonder it's not that easy (after all, a university is a corporation too, I think, and it behaves at least somewhat differently from a business corporation, right?). But the corporations everyone's used to talking about are still, basically, businesses, aren't they? The scale and certain qualities of a Worldcom and a Joe's Corner Store are very different, but they share many qualities and they also share qualities with businesses of the past, too, right? There are still plenty of business that have a sole owner/capitalist, but the bigger/richer (older?) ones have a "pseudo-owner" in the shape of a CEO who is supposed to run the business as if it were his/her own (like you said, stock ownership by the CEOs was supposed to make his/her interests the same as those of the "real owners"). So the CEO theoretically makes decisions in the same manner with supposedly the same results a sole owner would, thereby making all "owners" richer. Isn't a business mainly a relationship tool for making the owner(s) money? What I'm getting at in this morass of mine is that, yes, it's not that easy to figure out all those points you mention above, but it's not all THAT hard ("hard" being a relative term, naturally) either.
>We've been through 20 years in which the stock market was the guiding star
>- linking pay to stock performance was supposed to align the interests of
>CEOs and shareholders, and free & easy M&A was supposed to impose good
>discipline. It's come into a crisis of phony accounting and generalized
>bubble thinking.
Right, but it's still a crisis, and capitalism's internally prone to them, correct?, same as a living body's internally prone to sickness and, eventually, death (by the body's own hand and/or by that of others). And are these disparate elements causally connected, or are they the visible elements of the close proximity of some kind of collapse? It seems to me that in the past twenty years, (big, American) business has been twisting and turning, practically turning itself inside out (and various countries, including your own, with it), trying to get more money funnelled to owners, "dodging bullets", as it were, that Chance and Circumstance fires at them.
>If you want to socialize corporations, how do you do it? Who are the
>owners, and how are the things run?
Sorry if I wasn't clear: I wasn't asking about socializing corporations. I was pointing out that this is what has been happening to corporations, from what you've said in the past on the subject (you know, "divorce of ownership from control", shareholders being far more numerous and more dispersed than in the past). I would imagine to socialize corporations from a Left perspective would require at least that the owners be dispensed with and corporate direction decided on a more democratic and informed basis.
>
>Of course workers own stock; for that they may get some dividends and
>capital gains, though dividends are low and capital gains mainly a memory.
Right. So is this part of what makes that "blurry line" between capitalist and worker so blurry?
>Seriously rich people tend to move assets into municipal bonds and other
>fixed-income investments; they own claims to revenue, not surplus value.
Granted, but surely they didn't make their money necessarily that way (i.e. claims to revenue instead of surplus value) at first, right? It had to come from somewhere, and I'm guessing to get lots of money to sock away into bonds, which is just another, albeit more indirect claim, to surplus value, they either, for example, made the money themselves as capitalists, or they inherited the money, possibly from capitalist ancestors.
>Does that make them capitalists? Or have they just found a way to tap into
>the surplus value on the basis of inherited congealed SV?
Does a capitalist have to "play the part" of the capitalist all of the time?
I wouldn't think so.
>They don't actively contribute to the capital-labor relation with their
>investments in New York State bonds.
See above. I doubt a person has to take part in that relation all the time in order to be a capitalist. But I would expect they would have the freedom to take up that identity when and how they pleased, since they have the money and time to do so. I doubt most people do.
>Jackie O had no influence over corporate or state policy; she acquired some
>books and went to parties and watched herself on TV. (Gore Vidal said she
>spent her final days following the coverage of her final days.)
So she might just be living off the fruits of some other capitalist(s)' labour is all in her case (I've never read Gore Vidal's stuff; what is this guy, the Gossipper of the Gods? !{)> )
>Is Henry Kissinger a capitalist? He owns a consulting firm, for sure, but
>that's not the source of his power. He has some investments, but probably
>less than many of his neighbors. He seems to have gotten promoted from
>intellctual and functionary to a member of the inner circle. He has an
>influence over state and corporate policies.
I would say that he has a certain amount of power coming from his role as owner of his firm and as investor, but he also enjoys influence as well (two seperate elements). No doubt lots of people owe him favours or agree with his positions, and he can "take advantage" of this.
>
>Maybe I'm just obsessing over terms, objecting to mixing up capitalists and
>members of a ruling class and the merely rich. But how is capitalist power
>exercised? Jackie O had nothing to do with determining the conditions of
>social labor or the deployment of US imperial power abroad. Senior
>executives, financiers, and helpful intellectuals do.
She might have had nothing directly to do with determing conditions, but what do you think she, or anyone else with her amount of wealth and method of income who gives a damn about that income, would do (or have done by an agent) should that income stream be reduced or threatened with elimination? She'd raise Hell or have someone raise it for her.
As for your question of exercising capitalist power, we all know it's a relationship, based on exploitation. This relationship is shared in a "club" of individuals who, either directly or not, exercise when it suits them that relationship. I use the term club to include an element of society and sociability among capitalists and those who simply depend upon the existence of capitalists for their social position. They use this "cameraderie" to help each other along (Peter Newman recounts lots of examples of bank CEOs and important managers having very personal and even warm ties to their wealthy clients in his trilogy about Canadian movers and shakers); they all share the same sort of society and can define themselves in extremis as people who do not want to give up what they have, whether they've worked/"worked" for it or not.
As for your obsessing . . . enh. We'll see where it takes you before we can decide if it's obsessive or not (then we can warn Liza, no? "Liza! Doug's gone round the bend, obsessing about the nomenclature of capitalists! Head for the hills!")
Todd
>
>Doug
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