>OK, I'll bite.
>
>On 13/8/02, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>It matters because it's not that easy to specify how corporations
>>are run - for whom, by whom, under what principles.
>
>These questions are elementary. Corporations are run in the
>interests of their shareholders, they are managed by the managers
>and their Boards. The principle is profit.
Having written a 400-page book on these matters, maybe I'm biased in thinking that it's not all so simple or self-evident. Managers and shareholders don't always see eye-to-eye. They fight over control and distribution. Boards are made up of outsiders and insiders; sometimes they do the shareholders' bidding (e.g., when they're firing a CEO), and sometimes they do management's (e.g. Enron). Profit maximization is a simple-sounding principle, but over what time period? Maximizing this quarter's profits, next quarter's, next year's - or, in Mitsubishi's case, over 250 years? At what ratio of risk and reward, using what capital structure, and what operational strategy? If you think you know the answer, tell the bourgeoisie - they're still trying to figure it out.
>As for this idea that there is some class difference between sole
>proprietors and other large shareholders, this is nonsense.
Really? They often take opposing positions on political issues - on trade agreements and regulation, for example. What sole proprietor can get a Senator or cabinet secretary on the phone?
>But isn't that just semantics? The revenue is derived from surplus
>value one way or the other.
The economic functions are different, and so are the social roles.
>They contribute capital to the capital-labour relationship, what are
>you talking about?
Really? By buying already-existing shares of stock? Do tell how.
>She owned the capital. She didn't have to "influence" corporate
>policy, by which I take you to mean actively work as a manager in
>the corporation.
Not necessarily. Institutional shareholders have gotten quite active in corporate governance over the last 20 years. Jackie O probably didn't.
> As a capitalist she didn't have to work and her best interests were
>served by hiring people who were better qualified to manage the
>business.
Oh, like Jeff Skilling?
>You almost seem to be suggesting that only active managers of
>capital are true capitalists? This is a very odd conception.
I'm saying there's a big difference in the economic and political function, and the consciousness as well, among small businesspeople, the middle managers and senior managers of large corporations (further subdivided into regional, national, and multinational enterprises), institutional investors, and pure rentiers like Jackie O. If you don't agree, welcome to the 19th century.
>As explained before, capitalist power is exercised by requiring non
>capitalists to sell their labour power to capitalists, or in some
>other way to hand over a proportion of the value of their labour, to
>those who own the capital which is socially necessary for production
>of goods and services.
This reminds me of my childhood experiences with the Baltimore catechism.
> It isn't complicated, capitalists are, via their control of the
>capital necessary for production, in a position to exploit a forced
>relationship with those who create wealth, to further enrich
>themselves. Capitalists don't need to exercise petty power, they
>exercise power ECONOMICALLY.
Which can never be far from state or cultural power. And different capitalists have different access and interests when it comes to those articulations.
>The object of exercising political power is merely to preserve that
>economic power.
You have a gift for making the most complicated things sound a lot simpler than they are.
>Jacki O required a dividend on her capital, to permit her to
>continue living in the style to which she had become accustomed.
>This dividend of unearned income must be earned by someone. In this
>way she determined the conditions of labour in society, she didn't
>have to manage the business personally, her hired managers knew
>perfectly well what was expected of them. It probably wouldn't even
>have occurred to them to try to run the business without generating
>a profit, so that its employees could retain the full value of their
>labour.
In all likelihood, Jackie owned government bonds, so she wasn't consuming SV directly. A minor point perhaps, but the institutional and political relations are very different.
>It seems you are confusing this issue of economic power. It is
>almost as if you don't acknowledge its existence. Do you acknowledge
>its existence?
God made me to know him, love Him, and serve Him in this life and the next.
> Do you recognise that economic, rather than political coercion is
>the basic element of the capitalist system, be basic difference
>between the class society of capitalism and other class societies
>such as feudalism and slavery?
>
>It is necessary to grasp that before you can understand much else.
Gosh, I don't know how I got this far in life without this basic understanding. A thousand expressions of gratitude!
> Many people don't, many anarchists are totally fixated on political
>power for example and they can never get it through their heads that
>political power derives from economic power, rather than vice versa.
As Noam Chomsky put it to me once, most of the time the IMF will do, but sometimes you have to send in the Marines.
Doug