The status quo is the socialist mode of production

[Tahuti]

The collapse of the Soviet Union discredited the idea of Marxian Communism, right?

But what if it isn't? Ownership of the biggest Fortune 500 corporations is so fragmented, that shareholders have little effective control over their own property. Instead, power over corporations is vested in CEO's and executives. And strictly speaking, corporate executives that do not own shares are - in Marxian terms - proletarians, since they are paid in salary and not from renting on Capital. And who gain their position by internally arranged promotions shareholders (=capitalists) have little power over. Effectively, a typical Fortune 500 corporation is managed by a form of worker self-management, albeit an hierarchical one. So while capitalism exists, it has been driven to the margins, by large proletarian hierarchies known as corporations.

Maybe Marx and Schumpeter weren't that far off.

EDIT: This thread is perhaps more suitable for the tavern

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't think that a correct reading of Marx would produce the conclusion that capital needs to be individually owned to constitute capitalism. In Capital vol. 1, Marx deals with individual capitals owned by individual capitalists, but this is an abstraction for purposes of argument, and is not intended to be empirically accurate. The individualistic Mr. Moneybags is an ideal of bourgeois ideology (remember the sub-heading: "A Critique of Political Economy"!) rather than an actually-existing archetype; what is important about him for Marx is the practice he embodies, and that isn't necessarily a practice that needs to be carried out by one man, or someone with legal ownership of the capital he operates.

I think part of the problem is the popular understanding of Marx's theory of class as "relationship to the means of production", which is in fact a product of Second International Orthodoxy. Marx himself rejects the whole notion of social class as a durable category, or of social classes as externally related, instead laying out a conception of class as something that is continuously reproduced, and which is defined in relationship to other classes. Capital and labour are not simply monolithic class-blocs, constituted prior to their engagements, but relations within a single process of social reproduction. There are no workers without bosses, and no bosses without workers.

This means that class can't simply be understood as a static relationship, a category in which you are passively included by your legal relationship with capital, but as a form of social practice. It's a question not of who formally "owns" what, but of who practically possesses what, and above all of who practically possess who. The "waged bourgeoisie" of the corporate executive still exercise practical possession of both constant and variable capital, that is, of the means of production and of the working class, and so still constitute the embodiment of capital just as much as when their functions were performed by a single man in a tall hat.

 

[Tahuti]

I don't think that a correct reading of Marx would produce the conclusion that capital needs to be individually owned to constitute capitalism.

It isn't. But in order for any economic system to constitute capitalism, capital needs to have clearly identifiable owners that are able to decide to what to do with it. In the current status quo, no one has significantly more leverage over capital than anyone else and the boundaries between labor and capital are very vague.

It is perhaps not necessarily a bad thing, but it isn't really capitalistic when the means of productions are de-facto publicly controlled self-sustaining bureaucratic entities rather than indentifiable owners.

 

[Borachio]

It isn't. But in order for any economic system to constitute capitalism, capital needs to have clearly identifiable owners that are able to decide to what to do with it. In the current status quo, no one has significantly more leverage over capital than anyone else and the boundaries between labor and capital are very vague.

It is perhaps not necessarily a bad thing, but it isn't really capitalistic when the means of productions are de-facto publicly controlled self-sustaining bureaucratic entities rather than indentifiable owners.

On the bolded - you're not serious, surely?

 

[Tahuti]

On the bolded - you're not serious, surely?

If you do not consider executives to be capitalists, but rather, to be proletarians, control over capital is primarily bureaucratic. Some "bureaucrats" may hold significantly more sway, but in the end, no one will still be able to wield as it if it were his own property.

 

[Cutlass]

I think you're off target. Top management is in no sense labor. Ownership is in fact in discrete and knowable hands. There is a divorce between ownership and management in many cases. But those managers are as divorced from being hired hands as it's possible to be.

Socialism also implies that the firms are being run for the good of someone else other than the owner. And to the extent that that is true in some cases, the beneficiaries are Wall St speculators and top managers, not labor or society.

 

[Tahuti]

I think you're off target. Top management is in no sense labor. Ownership is in fact in discrete and knowable hands. There is a divorce between ownership and management in many cases. But those managers are as divorced from being hired hands as it's possible to be.

But they aren't capital either. With the exception of actual capitalists such as Warren Buffett (in the sense they have meaningful control over what they formally own, by virtue of possessing large amounts of shares), Shareholders are effectively salesman, effectively employed by a corporate bureaucracy, and no longer owners. And the simple fact Top managers make much more money than average employees does not mean they cannot be labor either.

Socialism also implies that the firms are being run for the good of someone else other than the owner. And to the extent that that is true in some cases, the beneficiaries are Wall St speculators and top managers, not labor or society.

In the financial sector, capital ownership is no more. Top managers and Wall street speculators were for most part insulated from the effects of the economics crisis precisely because they didn't own the banks and firms they led to catastrophe.

 

[Traitorfish]

It isn't. But in order for any economic system to constitute capitalism, capital needs to have clearly identifiable owners that are able to decide to what to do with it. In the current status quo, no one has significantly more leverage over capital than anyone else and the boundaries between labor and capital are very vague.

I don't see why that's the case.

 

[Cutlass]

But they aren't capital either. With the exception of actual capitalists such as Warren Buffett (in the sense they have meaningful control over what they formally own, by virtue of possessing large amounts of shares), Shareholders are effectively salesman, effectively employed by a corporate bureaucracy, and no longer owners. And the simple fact Top managers make much more money than average employees does not mean they cannot be labor either.

I don't see that. CEOs often have stock options in their company. In fact, that's often their primary pay. And they have considerable equity elsewhere. The workers frequently have little to none. Shareholders often do not have the position in reality that they do in theory. However that is very different from saying that they are not owners.

In the financial sector, capital ownership is no more. Top managers and Wall street speculators were for most part insulated from the effects of the economics crisis precisely because they didn't own the banks and firms they led to catastrophe.

In finance the managers were the owners. The people who took no effect were the non-managers and those who cashed out first.



Honestly, I think you are really off on the wrong track here.