----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
When I talk to the OWS kids, I'm going to try to do some version of Marx's argument about how the joint-stock company represents the partial undoing of capitalism within capitalism. (I.e., shareholders serve no useful function - so if they can hire managers to run "their" companies, why can't workers?) But we need some institution like the corporation to organize production - what do they think would replace it? Small proprietorships? ---------
Well, corporations were initially funded and allowed to establish themselves (sometimes as monopolies) with the proviso that they provide a socially useful function. Their "existence" was predicated on having redeeming social value. Their current claim to persenhood runs counter to that, claiming a kind of "right to self-defense" and eternal life despite anything they might do that actually harms the social body.
So, if "corporation" relates to size -- yes we need some big things: utilities, some manufacturing. But it also relates to serving social ends, and that means a different that they have a diff political role than they do now.
???
Joanna