"But the Japanese see [personal ownership] as wasteful, so their system is designed so that corporations, in essence, largely own themselves."
I would say that this in itself does not represent progress, or at best only a virtual progress. The progress is contained within its overcoming, mentioned by Grant and Jon: socialization, not uber corporatization.
Keiretsu in Japan also seem to be weighted down by the need to accumulate dead labor through the "rapacious, brutal and ecologically toxic" exploitation of everything living, even if their novel institutional arrangements (that is, their ensemble of spatial and temporal 'fixes') allow them to undertake more a 'rational' (from the standpoint of capital) symphony of Production with a big P. But if this is the future that is awaiting us after Mordor falls, please show me another path.
cheers,
jonathan
At 03:32 AM 1/8/2004, you wrote:
>Quoting Grant Lee <grantlee at iinet.net.au>:
>
> > All of the things you have mentioned above involve _private_ accumulation
>
>But how private is that accumulation nowadays? Mitsubishi is a quasi-public
>entity with the credit rating and financial might of a European nation-state;
>the capital it controls is objectively socialized, i.e. shielded from the
>market
>forces, by layers and layers of cross-ownership links, long-term financial
>structures, supplier-contractor relationships, and the discreet hand of the
>Japanese government (the postal savings bank). Historically, Mitsubishi has
>acted less like a private capitalist and more like a set of public networks.
>
>This isn't to say that East Asian capitalism isn't the rapacious, brutal and
>ecologically toxic system it indeed is. It's just that Marx's point, about how
>joint-stock corporations represent a limited kind of progress over the
>Smithian
>entrepreneur, might also apply to the keiretsu of today.
>
>-- DRR
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