> On Feb 15, 2016, at 9:31 PM, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
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> On Feb 15, 2016, at 9:17 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
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>> Corporations have a contradictory relationship to the state: They like state intervention which advances their interests, which is mostly the case, and oppose state spending on social needs which raises their cost of capital and taxes without offsetting net benefits to the system. They unanimously support the state’s bodies of armed men and the role played by the state’s governing parties as guarantors of the capitalist system. Wouldn’t we all agree with this?
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> Well, I for one would not. Corporations are not persons. They can neither like nor oppose anything. They are organizational structures, institutions granted a license to steal (called "limited liability") by the state, institutions through which certain specific capitalists' interests are promoted. The bigger the corporation the more likely those capitalists are to be siphoning the monopoly rents into their own pockets at the expense of their stockholders and of the rest of their class (aka taxpayers or the state).
Wordplay, Shane. Corporations aren’t persons (except in law), but there’s a corporate culture of owners and manager who understand and defend the sole purpose for which corporations are formed. They like anything which contributes to profit and oppose anything which threatens it. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.