[lbo-talk] Fwd: S&S Call for Papers

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Sun Feb 8 11:55:56 PST 2009


Eubulides wrote:


> SA wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm not sure what your point is. These are laws providing for the
>> creation of stock companies. The actual spread of stock companies to
>> the point of dominating the economy (75% of the domestic business
>> sector today in the US) came long after Marx was dead.
>
> Well, if you'd read the pieces even slightly carefully you might have
> noticed that the so-called private/social distinction as regards to
> property was not foremost on the minds of those who wanted the laws
> regarding corporate governance changed nor was it the the overarching
> goal of the legislators per se.

I didn't say it was the purpose of the incorporation laws. It was the effect of incorporation.


> The proliferation of vertically integrated firms -and one could rather
> easily make the case that that is what KM was referring to when he
> used the term social capital and directly associated producers

No, Marx clearly isn't referring to vertical integration. He's talking about the form of ownership. By "social capital" and "associated producers" he means that the means of production are no longer owned by individuals but by a corporation made up of a collectivity of individuals. Here's the context:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27.htm

III. Formation of stock companies. Thereby:

1) An enormous expansion of the scale of production and of enterprises, that was impossible for individual capitals. At the same time, enterprises that were formerly government enterprises, become public.

2) The capital, which in itself rests on a social mode of production and presupposes a social concentration of means of production and labour-power, is here directly endowed with the form of social capital (capital of directly associated individuals) as distinct from private capital, and its undertakings assume the form of social undertakings as distinct from private undertakings. It is the abolition of capital as private property within the framework of capitalist production itself.

3) Transformation of the actually functioning capitalist into a mere manager, administrator of other people's capital, and of the owner of capital into a mere owner, a mere money-capitalist. Even if the dividends which they receive include the interest and the profit of enterprise, i.e., the total profit (for the salary of the manager is, or should be, simply the wage of a specific type of skilled labour, whose price is regulated in the labour-market like that of any other labour), this total profit is henceforth received only in the form of interest, i.e., as mere compensation for owning capital that now is entirely divorced from the function in the actual process of reproduction, just as this function in the person of the manager is divorced from ownership of capital.


> - had been transforming the nation of shopkeepers to a sufficient
> enough extent that by 1856 the transformation of liability management
> was considered an effective way of dealing with manufacturing
> competition from the former colonies across the Atlantic*.

I'm too lazy to look for a reference right now, but until the very end of the 19th century only a small minority of manufacturing firms were corporations in the US and UK. The corporate form was still limited mostly to railroads, trade, shipping, finance, etc. Vertical integration in mfg was accomplished through pools, trusts and cartels.


> If property is a form of governance, then the issue of the
> corporate/democratic problem is of greater relevance than the
> social/private issue.

What do you mean by the corporate/democratic problem?

SA



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