Corporations

[David B. Shemano]

Michael Perelman writes:

>> I wish you well with your liberty.  You are a real person.  I do not feel that E-M 
>> is
>> a real person, but an illigitate creation of state.

You wish me well with my liberty, but what about my liberty to enter into a series of 
contracts with other real persons, and calling those interlocking series of contracts 
a "corporation?"  What is a corporation, but an interlocking series of contracts 
between real persons?

David B. Shemano

Re: Corporations

[Devine, James]

My mailbox has been flooded in recent weeks. It's hard to reply to all those ads for 
vi*gra and ci*lis! But it delayed my response to the following. my comments are 
interspersed.


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine


> -Original Message-
> From: David B. Shemano [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> So many things to say.
> 
> The only argument offered why the corporation is more than a 
> sum of contracts is limited tort liability.  But as I said, 
> that assumes that there is some inherent "LAW" that says the 
> principal employer should be strictly liable for the torts of 
> the agent, and that is simply not the case.  Respondeat 
> superior is a state imposed liability imposed for policy 
> reasons.  I am very surprised that members of this list would 
> act as if there is an objective Platonic law and limited 
> liability is a deviation from that law.

I don't think anyone on pen-l invoked inherent or objective or Platonic law to argue 
that the corporation is more than a sum of contracts. (That would be an idealist 
argument, no? That's a no-no among us materialist dialecticians.)  

Rather, in practice, a corporation is more than the sum of contracts because this 
situation is _imposed_ by the state on society -- in the corporations' name. We've got 
government of, by, and for the corporations (the most organized form of capital). 

> Second, I think the argument that limited liability is the 
> primary benefit of the corporation is simply incorrect.  

I thought that it was a massive benefit for the shareholders more than the corporation 
itself. (This benefit, by the way, is the major argument against the view that the 
corporate income tax is "double taxation." The shareholders are paying (incompletely) 
for the benefits of limited liability.) 

>If  limited liability were removed from corporations, there would 
> be a massive shift from equity financing to debt financing.  

Of course, the shift would be "massive" only if limited liability were removed 
quickly. 

> In other words, investors will call themselves creditors and 
> not shareholders.  The line between equity and subordinated 
> debt is very close, but the courts have no problem calling 
> one equity and one debt.  Are you going to take the position 
> that creditors should be strictly responsible for the 
> tortious acts of their borrowers (assuming they do not 
> control the acts of the borrower)?  However, corporations 
> would continue because of transaction cost advantages over 
> partnerships and joint ventures.

it's likely that corps would continue to operate. BTW, leftists would prefer to 
subordinate corporations to democratic control of one sort or another, rather than 
shifting the locus of control and the burden of liability from shareholders to 
creditors. Among other things, the taxpayers already receive a lot of the burden of 
corporate liability (since that's what's meant by limited liability) and so should be 
able to participate in the decisions of the corporations. 
 
> Jim Devine's insistence [!] that limited liability permits 
> shareholders to ignore external costs is simply not 
> realistic.  It ignores that the corporation remains liability 
> for its tortious conduct, and shareholders care about their 
> investments.  To the extent that the corporation itself is 
> not responsible for externalities, that is a different issue 
> entirely unrelated to limited liability.

I don't quite understand what this says. But it's interesting what limited liability 
can and does mean. A big stockholder can benefit mightily from some corporate crime -- 
but then sell the stock and thus not suffer the consequences when the corporation is 
caught killing the people of Bhopal, running a chain of houses of prostitution, or 
whatever.

(correction: the case of a corporation owning houses of prostitution that I know of 
wasn't a shareholder-owned corporation. It was a mutual insurance corp that was 
legally owned by its policy-holders. According to the son of an executive at the 
company, it was the Equitable Life Assurance corp.) 

> I have been accused of being "reductionist."  According to 
> dictionary.com, reductionsist means:
> 
> "An attempt or tendency to explain a complex set of facts, 
> entities, phenomena, or structures by another, simpler set: 
> 'for the last 400 years science has advanced by 
> reductionism... The idea is that you could understand the 
> world, all of nature, by examining smaller and smaller pieces 
> of it. When assembled, the small pieces would explain the 
> whole'  (John Holland)."
> 
> Based upon that definition, I accept the label.  It is better 
> than being "

Re: Corporations

[Devine, James]

Dave Shemano writes: >What is a corporation, but an interlocking series of contracts 
between real persons? <
 
Is this a different David Shemano, who I thought was a lawyer of some sort? 
Corporations have _limited liability_ which means that that after a certain point (the 
amount of capital "invested" by the stock-holders) the state has declared that the 
costs of corporate malfeasance, accidents, etc. shall be absorbed by the taxpayers.
Jim

 

Re: Corporations

[Bill Lear]

On Thursday, March 11, 2004 at 16:06:17 (-0800) David B. Shemano writes:
>Michael Perelman writes:
>
>>> I wish you well with your liberty.  You are a real person.  I do not feel that E-M 
>>> is
>>> a real person, but an illigitate creation of state.
>
>You wish me well with my liberty, but what about my liberty to enter into a series of 
>contracts with other real persons, and calling those interlocking series of contracts 
>a "corporation?"  What is a corporation, but an interlocking series of contracts 
>between real persons?

Something that is created and safeguarded by the state --- the
elephant in the corner you neglect to mention.


Bill

Re: Corporations

[Eubulides]

- Original Message -
From: "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


You wish me well with my liberty, but what about my liberty to enter into
a series of contracts with other real persons, and calling those
interlocking series of contracts a "corporation?"  What is a corporation,
but an interlocking series of contracts between real persons?

David B. Shemano

===

An institution where state sanctioned authoritarian behavior is allowed to
flourish and undermine democratic norms.

Ian

Re: Corporations

[Doug Henwood]

David B. Shemano wrote:

You wish me well with my liberty, but what about my liberty to enter
into a series of contracts with other real persons, and calling
those interlocking series of contracts a "corporation?"  What is a
corporation, but an interlocking series of contracts between real
persons?
An institution with legal rights and substantial economic and
political power, far larger than the sum of your "contracts." How
many Wal-Mart workers, for example, appreciate the firm's extensive
DC lobbying operation, which tries to beat down wage and hour
legislation, or its relentless cheapening of labor in its Chinese
suppliers, or its rampant sex discrimination?
Doug

Re: Corporations

[David B. Shemano]

James Devine writes:

>> Is this a different David Shemano, who I thought was a lawyer of some sort?
>> Corporations have _limited liability_ which means that that after a certain point 
>> (the
>> amount of capital "invested" by the stock-holders) the state has declared that the
>> costs of corporate malfeasance, accidents, etc. shall be absorbed by the taxpayers.
>> Jim

Let's be clear about this.  The corporate form provides no unfair protection against 
contractual liability, because the other party is aware of the corporate form and can 
either bargain for a personal guarantee or not enter into the contract.

With respect to tortious liability, the corporate form provides no protection for 
individuals who commit torts.  The only protection the corporate form provides is a 
modification to the doctrine of respondeat superior (the employer is liable for the 
acts of the employee who commits an act in the scope of the employment).  In other 
words, while the corporation's assets are liable for the acts of the employee, the 
shareholder's personal assets are not responsible for the torts committed by an 
employee, unless the shareholder himsef committed a tort or the shareholder did not 
respect the corporate form (alter-ego).

As a practical matter, the limited liability is only an issue if the corporation is 
rendered insolvent and insurance is exhausted.

Philosophically, the issue is the appropriateness of applying the doctrine of 
respondeat superior to shareholders.  You can characterize limited liability as state 
imposed, but you also characterize respondeat superior as state imposed as well.  
There is no inherent reason why a shareholder who owns 10 shares of Exxon should lose 
his house because Joseph Hazelwood got drunk.  Ultimately, the decision is a policy 
choice over which reasonable minds can differ.

David Shemano

Re: Corporations

[Eugene Coyle]

This interlocking series of contracts has the right of free speech?

I think the series of responses Shemano gives in this thread is sillier
than neo-classical micro.  He describes a total phantasy world, just as
the micro theorists do.  But the world both try to hide is terribly
real. 

 This stuff is much worse than people have been asked to leave the list
over.  Disgusting stuff.  I'd say beneath contempt, but I don't know
what is lower.  

Gene Coyle

  
  
  

  I wish you well with your liberty.  You are a real person.  I do not feel that E-M is
a real person, but an illigitate creation of state.
  

  
  
You wish me well with my liberty, but what about my liberty to enter into a series of contracts with other real persons, and calling those interlocking series of contracts a "corporation?"  What is a corporation, but an interlocking series of contracts between real persons?

David B. Shemano

  

Re: Corporations

[Eubulides]

- Original Message -
From: "Eugene Coyle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



This interlocking series of contracts has the right of free speech?

I think the series of responses Shemano gives in this thread is sillier
than neo-classical micro.  He describes a total phantasy world, just as
the micro theorists do.  But the world both try to hide is terribly real.

 This stuff is much worse than people have been asked to leave the list
over.  Disgusting stuff.  I'd say beneath contempt, but I don't know
what is lower.

Gene Coyle


===

I'd say the legal world he describes is all too real and we must learn to
think about it a lot harder than we've done. Contractarianism is very
powerful ideology; contract law is the performative core of capitalism.

Legal fiction is an oxymoron.

Ian

Re: Corporations

[David B. Shemano]

Eugene Coyle writes:
 
<< <I have never seen a corporation speak.  I have seen real people speak on behalf of corporations.  Why do you believe that those people do not have a right to speak?
 
What is that word Marxists like to use to describe unreal objects that people think are real?  Fetish?  You see a bogeyman called a "corporation."  You are fetishing the corporation.  I see tens, hundreds, thousands of contracts between real people intended to actualize a real end.  The entity is an acknowledged legal fiction that minimizes transaction costs.  That is all.  "Exxon" is simply a shorthand way to describe thousands of real people acting in a united way, and the corporate form provides an expedient way of organizing those real people.
 
What disgusts you?  What is beneath contempt?  What is the fantasy?
 
David Shemano
 
 

Re: Corporations

[Eubulides]

- Original Message -
From: "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

What is that word Marxists like to use to describe unreal objects that
people think are real?  Fetish?  You see a bogeyman called a
"corporation."  You are fetishing the corporation.  I see tens, hundreds,
thousands of contracts between real people intended to actualize a real
end.  The entity is an acknowledged legal fiction that minimizes
transaction costs.  That is all.  "Exxon" is simply a shorthand way to
describe thousands of real people acting in a united way, and the
corporate form provides an expedient way of organizing those real people.

...What is the fantasy?

David Shemano

=

Ontological-methodological individualism...


Ian

Re: Corporations

[k hanly]

But then with respect to coporations contracts are themselves often  between
what are persons only qua legal fictions,  or between them and individuals
rather than anything that could be explained in terms of contracts between
individual persons. I have no idea what you mean when you say that a legal
fiction is an oxymoron. Surely the point of the term is that corporations
are not persons as you and I are persons. Even Bush would not consider a
union of Mary Kay and Revlon cosmetics some sort of lesbian marriage. Well I
cant be sure of that!
 I took Eugene to be concerned about the extent to which David was
identifying the essential nature of the corporation with some set of
interlocking contracts between individuals. But surely over and above any
such set of interlocking contracts there are also sets of contracts between
individuals and the corporation and between the corporation and other
corporate entities that are essential to understanding the nature of the
corporation and its obligations and rights.


Cheers, Ken Hanly

- Original Message -
From: "Eubulides" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 7:37 PM
Subject: Re: Corporations


> - Original Message -
> From: "Eugene Coyle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>
> This interlocking series of contracts has the right of free speech?
>
> I think the series of responses Shemano gives in this thread is sillier
> than neo-classical micro.  He describes a total phantasy world, just as
> the micro theorists do.  But the world both try to hide is terribly real.
>
>  This stuff is much worse than people have been asked to leave the list
> over.  Disgusting stuff.  I'd say beneath contempt, but I don't know
> what is lower.
>
> Gene Coyle
>
>
> ===
>
> I'd say the legal world he describes is all too real and we must learn to
> think about it a lot harder than we've done. Contractarianism is very
> powerful ideology; contract law is the performative core of capitalism.
>
> Legal fiction is an oxymoron.
>
> Ian

Re: Corporations

[Eubulides]

- Original Message -
From: "k hanly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



But then with respect to coporations contracts are themselves often
between
what are persons only qua legal fictions,  or between them and individuals
rather than anything that could be explained in terms of contracts between
individual persons. I have no idea what you mean when you say that a legal
fiction is an oxymoron.

===

I mean the law *makes* it -the corporation- real, with real causal powers
in the political economy. The law is not a representation of a set of
contractual relations prior to it, that is, it's not primarily a
descriptive endeavor, but a performative one. John Austin [the 20th cent.
guy "How to do Things with Words] and John Searle are great on that issue.


Ian

Re: Corporations

[k hanly]

Corporations don't speak but that does not mean 
they don't have the right of free speech. Officials (i.e.) real persons sign 
contracts on behalf of corporations too . Does that mean corporations cannot 
sign contracts or have rights and obligations flowing from having signed 
contracts. Note too that a person cannot speak on behalf of a corporation qua an 
individual but only qua individual authorised to do so by the corporation. It is 
not in the persons capacity as a "real" individual that the person can sign a 
contract for a corporation only as a real individual authorised to do so by the 
structures of the legal fiction. There is no way that you can reduce this to 
some sort of shorthand for talking about contracts between individuals. Why 
anyone would even want to try I find truly baffling. Maybe they have some sort 
of fear of mulitiplying entities beyond necessity. I dont expect to kick any 
corporate shins, or use DNA testing to absolve them when accused of horrendous 
crimes but there is nothing unreal about corporations as entities. To consider 
corporations as something over and above sets of contracts between individuals 
is not fetishism. Unless you are committed to some weird form of reductive 
individualism it would seem to be common sense realism.
 
CHeers, Ken Hanly

  - Original Message - 
  From: 
  David B. 
  Shemano 
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 7:58 
  PM
  Subject: Re: Corporations
  
  Eugene Coyle writes:
   
  << <I have never seen a corporation speak.  I have seen 
  real people speak on behalf of corporations.  Why do you believe that 
  those people do not have a right to speak?
   
  What is that word Marxists like to use to describe unreal objects that 
  people think are real?  Fetish?  You see a bogeyman called a 
  "corporation."  You are fetishing the corporation.  I see tens, 
  hundreds, thousands of contracts between real people intended to actualize a 
  real end.  The entity is an acknowledged legal fiction that minimizes 
  transaction costs.  That is all.  "Exxon" is simply a shorthand way 
  to describe thousands of real people acting in a united way, and the corporate 
  form provides an expedient way of organizing those real people.
   
  What disgusts you?  What is beneath contempt?  What is the 
  fantasy?
   
  David Shemano
   
   

Re: Corporations

[joanna bujes]

David B. Shemano wrote:

You see a bogeyman called a "corporation."  You are fetishing the
corporation.  I see tens, hundreds, thousands of contracts between
real people intended to actualize a real end.
So, when I, avoiding immiseration, get a job to work in a corporation, I
am entering in a contract over which I have any control? I can bargain
for my wage? I can bargain for my vacation? I can bargain for the
conditions under which I work? I can decide what I'm going to work on
and what the result of my work is going to be used for?
The entity is an acknowledged legal fiction that minimizes transaction
costs.  That is all.  "Exxon" is simply a shorthand way to describe
thousands of real people acting in a united way, and the corporate
form provides an expedient way of organizing those real people.
Yes, an expedient way of organizing real people for the benfit of whom?

What disgusts you?  What is beneath contempt?  What is the fantasy?
The fantasy is yours. The disgust is mine.

Joanna

Re: Corporations

[andie nachgeborenen]

This discussion is getting a bit off the rails.
Corporations are not "legal fictions" -- they are
legally created entities, no more or less real than
contracts.  It is a strange species of "methodological
individualism" to deny that they "really" exist merely
because they are constituted out of indiviuals and
their relations. What in the social world isn't? They
are as real as nations and classes and races and
governments and courts, etc.

But at the same time they are not evil per se. It is
secondary to describe them as an arrangement that
minimizes transaction costs. They do that, but that
does not disctinguish them from partnerships or
companies or any sort of enterprise that arranges its
activities outside the market world of contarcts.
(Which is part of the reason, actually, why it is an
error to reduce corporations to sets of contracts!)

Primarily corporations are an arrangement for limiting
liability, so that the creditors can't reach the
shareholders' assets beyond their investment in the
corporation. That is an OK purpose, granting the
Okayness of a market economy and a legal sytem that
creates creates like "creditors." Some here will deny
that that is OK, of course, but I don't.

What Gene and others object to is two things, I think:
not the legal device for limiting liability, but the
fact that some corporations have vast wealth and power
that distorts democracy and gives too much influence
to a small number of people, and a legal system that
treats these entities as if they were individual
persons due the legal rights (like free speech) that
are properaly accorded to individuals.  In most
societies, even market societies, the latter is not
true -- corporations are not "persons," as far as I
knwo, under British law (any Brits out there who can
correct me?), and anyway the Brits don't have a First
Amendment.

Moreover one could imagibe a market society where, for
eaxmple, the corporations did not have undemocratic
power and wealth, and where the workers managed them
themselves. Such corporations would be far less
problematic than the largest ones we have -- including
some of my clients.

jks

--- "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Eugene Coyle writes:
>
> < right of free speech?
> < this thread is sillier than neo-classical micro.  He
> describes a total < micro theorists do.  But the world both try to hide
> is terribly real.
>  < asked to leave the list over.  Disgusting stuff.
> I'd say beneath < lower.
>
> I have never seen a corporation speak.  I have seen
> real people speak on behalf of corporations.  Why do
> you believe that those people do not have a right to
> speak?
>
> What is that word Marxists like to use to describe
> unreal objects that people think are real?  Fetish?
> You see a bogeyman called a "corporation."  You are
> fetishing the corporation.  I see tens, hundreds,
> thousands of contracts between real people intended
> to actualize a real end.  The entity is an
> acknowledged legal fiction that minimizes
> transaction costs.  That is all.  "Exxon" is simply
> a shorthand way to describe thousands of real people
> acting in a united way, and the corporate form
> provides an expedient way of organizing those real
> people.
>
> What disgusts you?  What is beneath contempt?  What
> is the fantasy?
>
> David Shemano


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Re: Corporations

[Michael Perelman]

Gene, I don't think you need to be rude to David.  I think that David has
participated for some time -- always with good humor.  I disagree with him but I
still enjoy what he writes from time to time.

As for contempt -- I have contempt for Exxon-Mobil.  I hardly believe that some grunt
working for minimum wage at the corp. has the same interpretation of his/her role as
David suggests.


On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 05:35:10PM -0800, Eugene Coyle wrote:
> This interlocking series of contracts has the right of free speech?
>
> I think the series of responses Shemano gives in this thread is sillier
> than neo-classical micro.  He describes a total phantasy world, just as
> the micro theorists do.  But the world both try to hide is terribly real.
>
>  This stuff is much worse than people have been asked to leave the list
> over.  Disgusting stuff.  I'd say beneath contempt, but I don't know
> what is lower.
>
> Gene Coyle
>
> >
> >
> >>>I wish you well with your liberty.  You are a real person.  I do not feel that 
> >>>E-M is
> >>>a real person, but an illigitate creation of state.
> >>>
> >>>
> >
> >You wish me well with my liberty, but what about my liberty to enter into a series 
> >of contracts with other real persons, and calling those interlocking series of 
> >contracts a "corporation?"  What is a corporation, but an interlocking series of 
> >contracts between real persons?
> >
> >David B. Shemano
> >
> >
> >

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: corporations

[Sabri Oncu]

Justin:

> Moreover one could imagine a market society
> where, for example, the corporations did not
> have undemocratic power and wealth, and where
> the workers managed them themselves.

This is an interesting point.

I have never been against optimizing objective
functions, assuming that objectives can reasonably be
mathematized.

Here is a question Justin:

What may be some objectives of workers managed
corporations in the market society you imagine?

Put differently, what kind of "contracts" such
corporations and the persons that embody them will
have to "sign" in this market society?

Of course, before such a society is constructed we may
never know what these contracts will exactly look like
but what do you expect them to look like,
approximately, that is?

Best,

Sabri

Re: Corporations

[Mike Ballard]

--- andie nachgeborenen
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Moreover one could imagibe a market society where,
> for
> eaxmple, the corporations did not have undemocratic
> power and wealth, and where the workers managed them
> themselves. Such corporations would be far less
> problematic than the largest ones we have --
> including
> some of my clients.
>
> jks

I agree, it would be much better, if workers ran and
managed the the firms in which they exploited
themselves for surplus value.  Honestly though,
hasn't the history of creating such entities, like say
Mondragon or the Amana Colony or the kibbutz movement
and all the utopian socialist movements of the past--
co:operatives included--proven that they always morph
into the undemocratic, totalitarian corporate
structures which we see ruling us today?

In other words, hasn't wage-labour always resulted in
the developement of capitalist social relations?

Sincerely,
Mike B)


=

Beers fall into two broad categories:
Those that are produced by
top-fermenting yeasts (ales)
and those that are made with
bottom-fermenting yeasts (lagers).

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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Re: Corporations

[Mike Ballard]

--- joanna bujes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> David B. Shemano wrote:

> So, when I, avoiding immiseration, get a job to work
> in a corporation, I
> am entering in a contract over which I have any
> control? I can bargain
> for my wage? I can bargain for my vacation? I can
> bargain for the
> conditions under which I work? I can decide what I'm
> going to work on
> and what the result of my work is going to be used
> for?
>
> > The entity is an acknowledged legal fiction that
> minimizes transaction
> > costs.  That is all.  "Exxon" is simply a
> shorthand way to describe
> > thousands of real people acting in a united way,
> and the corporate
> > form provides an expedient way of organizing those
> real people.
>
> Yes, an expedient way of organizing real people for
> the benfit of whom?

Exactly Joanna...cui bono?  The ever perplexing
question in class society.

Solid,
Mike B)

=

Beers fall into two broad categories:
Those that are produced by
top-fermenting yeasts (ales)
and those that are made with
bottom-fermenting yeasts (lagers).

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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Re: Corporations

[Julio Huato]

You guys are too quick.  I'll be repeating points others made while I was
typing or sleeping.  Here it is anyway.
*  *  *

David B. Shemano wrote:

What is that word Marxists like to use to describe unreal objects that
people think are real?  Fetish?  You see a bogeyman called a "corporation."
 You are fetishing the corporation.  I see tens, hundreds, thousands of
contracts between real people intended to actualize a real end.  The entity
is an acknowledged legal fiction that minimizes transaction costs.  That is
all.  "Exxon" is simply a shorthand way to describe thousands of real
people acting in a united way, and the corporate form provides an expedient
way of organizing those real people.
In my reading of Marx, when people produce things that take an objective
existence separate from them (the producers), that's objectification. When
the objects take an autonomous life of their own, get out of the control of
their individual producers, and even turn against them, that's fetishization
or -- more generally -- alienation.  Objectification can't be avoided,
because we humans live through our engagement with the objective world.  But
alienation can be undone if individuals change the social conditions in
which they produce and live.  Since these conditions are social, they need
to change them collectively.
There are different levels of alienation, depending on how hardened the
underlying level of objectification is.  For example, we collectively create
fashions.  We may ignore them at a cost.  But it's relatively harmless for
individuals to ignore fashions.  Michael does it all the time.  :-)  But
money or the state are forms of alienation on steroids.  We ignore them at
our peril.
The fetishization of corporations is not an optical illusion, the mere
result of our inability to see the legal contracts that underlie it.  They
are a hardened objective reality because they are backed up by laws, i.e.,
by the power of the state, which is to say the power of individuals out of
their immediate control.  (Similarly, marriages -- even without children --
often spin out of the control of the partners, and yet people are trying to
extend marriages rather than ban them.)  These contracts are binding for
individuals.  We cannot close our eyes and dispel them, but -- if we were to
marshal enough power against them -- we could certainly change the law that
makes them possible.
With corporations, there are several layers of alienation overlapping.
Under certain social conditions (Engels: class divisions), people produce
and reproduce a state.  Again, the power of the state is the productive
force of the individuals, but alienated from them.  The state enacts and
enforces a law that allows for individuals to form corporations, where these
are legal entities invested with certain rights above and beyond those
recognized to their individual stockholders (e.g., limited liability).
In Marx, ownership is effective control over the utilization of an object.
That's the content of the legal fiction.  To the extent creditors, workers,
communities, consumers, etc. have some influence on a corporation behavior,
then they are in a small way co-owners of the corporation.  Individuals or
the citizens of a state (particularly workers) have an infinitesimally small
amount of control over a corporation, unless they are organized and
militant.
Jim Devine says that, if corporate liabilities are limited, then the rest of
the liability is imposed on others.  David's reply, that those who could be
harmed by the legal re-distribution of liabilities can choose not to enter a
contract with the corporation, ignores the fact that it all depends on the
underlying social conditions.  Entering a legal transaction (e.g., trading
in a market, which entails the enforcement of an implicit contract) with the
parties having roughly equal power ab initio cannot fall far from a win-win
outcome.  However, if the initial power is unequally distributed between the
parties, the transaction will tend to be a thinly disguised mechanism for
the strong to abuse the weak.  Perhaps a big bank can deal with a big
corporation on a fair basis, but workers are not equally poised as the
corporation to walk away from an employment contract.  Workers are at a
disadvantage because they need their jobs.
The rights of corporations impinge upon the rights of individuals.
Individuals can try to shape laws encroaching on private ownership (on whose
basis corporations exist) and/or directly on the laws that regulate the
existence and life of the corporation.  But individual stockholders
(somewhat in proportion to their stock) are in much better position to undo
or alter their corporation.  The corporation is alienated from them (the
individual stockholders) as well, but they are in a much better --
privileged -- position to control it than regular citizens or workers.  We
need to change the law, they just need to vote their dir

Re: Corporations

[Louis Proyect]

Mike Ballard wrote:
In other words, hasn't wage-labour always resulted in
the developement of capitalist social relations?
Not really. Cuba has paid workers in pesos since 1960 but if capitalism
is restored there, it will be a result of other factors. Until an
socialist economy has such an enormous surplus that makes cash
unnecessary, there will be a need for some kind of rationing. Pesos, in
effect, become a voucher. When pesos become concentrated among a
minority of society that has a monopoly on political power, and when
that minority begins to act to open up the door to wholesale foreign
investment and privatization, then we can speak of capitalist social
relations. This, of course, is what has transpired in China and Russia.
--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Corporations

[Devine, James]

I wrote: 
>> Corporations have _limited liability_ which means that that after a certain point 
>> (the
>> amount of capital "invested" by the stock-holders) the state has declared that the
>> costs of corporate malfeasance, accidents, etc. shall be absorbed by the taxpayers.

Somehow my point was missed below, so I'll restate it: the limited liability law means 
that a corporation is much more than a bunch of voluntary contracts amongst 
individuals. The power of the state means that the whole is more than the sum of its 
parts, so that the corporation is a "legal person." (A legal person that's like an 
actual person in many ways, with the obvious exception with respect to the right to 
vote.  But I doubt that corporations -- especially the bigger ones -- need the power 
to vote. They dominate government anyway.) 

David S writes: 
>...  The corporate form provides no unfair protection against contractual liability, 
>because the other party is aware of the corporate form and can either bargain for a 
>personal guarantee or not enter into the contract.<

I didn't say anything about "unfair" or "fair." My thoughts -- not expressed in type 
-- were about fraud (Enron, etc.) and criminal pollution (Union Carbide in Bhopal, the 
power company at Three Mile Island, etc.) I'll ignore the "etc." in my original 
comment.

On the latter -- what economists call "external costs" and light-weight economists 
call "neighborhood effects" -- people were affected by the "accidents" were never 
involved with voluntary contracts. Union Carbide killed a lot of people who didn't 
consent to taking that kind of risk. 

(If anything, the market forces worshiped by self-styled libertarians drive people to 
take those risks: the poorest people will live where property values are least, which 
is often near the stinky (and potentially dangerous) factory. So it's the poorest who 
are most likely to die. (A true libertarian might say that poor people's lives aren't 
worth as much (on the market) so that it's appropriate in some way.)  BTW, not only 
are external costs a matter of a corporation violating individual freedom, but 
according to standard economics, it's inefficient.) 

On the former, if corporate insiders are cooking the books (working with their tame 
accountants), it may _look_ as if there was some sort of voluntary contract between 
consenting adults, but one side (or both) is conning the other. Of course, as with the 
first case, when the matter goes to court (if it ever does), the corporation usually 
has more resources to hire lawyers, along with friends in high places (as Ken Lay has 
Dubya and Halliburton's Dick Cheney has Antonin Scalia). 


>With respect to tortious[*] liability, the corporate form provides no protection for 
>individuals who commit torts.  The only protection the corporate form provides is a 
>modification to the doctrine of respondeat superior (the employer is liable for the 
>acts of the employee who commits an act in the scope of the employment).<

[*] tort (n.) from French for "wrong," a civil wrong or wrongful act, whether 
intentional or accidental, from which injury occurs to another. Torts include all 
negligence cases as well as intentional wrongs which result in harm. Therefore tort 
law is one of the major areas of law (along with contract, real property and criminal 
law) and results in more civil litigation than any other category. Some intentional 
torts may also be crimes, such as assault, battery, wrongful death, fraud, conversion 
(a euphemism for theft) and trespass on property and form the basis for a lawsuit for 
damages by the injured party. ... [source: law.com's legal dictionary at 
http://dictionary.law.com/.]

Since the corporation has power over the employee (because of the cost of job loss and 
the ability to deny promotions, etc.), it's only logical that the corporation take 
responsibility for the actions of the employee. (This is what David calls "respondeat 
superior" below.) The company says "damn the torpedoes! maximize profits!" and the 
employees try to impress their "superiors" by cutting costs (or dumping them on 
others) or by grabbing benefits for the company. It's a bit like the Nuremberg law, in 
which the officers in the armed forces are responsible for the actions of the enlisted 
troops, since they give the orders. 

(NB: I am not an expert on law in any way, so I am willing -- and able -- to be 
corrected on this and any other legal issue.)


> In other words, while the corporation's assets are liable for the acts of the 
> employee, the shareholder's personal assets are not responsible for the torts 
> committed by an employee, unless the shareholder himsef committed a tort or the 
> s

Re: Corporations

[Michael Perelman]

Coke, Sir Edward. 1612. The Case of Sutton's Hospital, 10 English
Reports, Vol. 77 (Edinburgh: William Green & Sons): pp. 937-76.
  973: "a corporation ... is invisible, immortal, and rests only in
intendment and consideration of the law   They cannot commit
treason, nor be outlawed, not excommunicate (sic), for they have no
souls, neither can they appear in person, but only by attorney   A
corporation ... is not subject to ... death."


--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Corporations

[andie nachgeborenen]

the limited liability law means that a
> corporation is much more than a bunch of voluntary
> contracts amongst individuals. The power of the
> state means that the whole is more than the sum of
> its parts, so that the corporation is a "legal
> person." (A legal person that's like an actual
> person in many ways, with the obvious exception with
> respect to the right to vote.  But I doubt that
> corporations -- especially the bigger ones -- need
> the power to vote. They dominate government anyway.)

I agree that "metaphysically" a corp. is more than a
series or collection of contracts among individuals --
it has to be. Individuals could not contract to limit
their liability to the parties. The state has to allow
them to do that. The corporation's existence depends
on the sufferance of the law.

However, the while the corp is collective entity, like
a state or a union or any group that is more than the
sum of its parts, t make a corp. a person within the
meaning of the law required a specific _further_ legal
act by a body (in the US the S.Ct.) with the power to
say, as the S.Ct did, that a corp. is a "person"
within the meaning of the 14the Amendment. I don't
think is thsi is true in other countries. If its is,
it requiresa  specific legal act by a competent
authority.


> >With respect to tortious[*] liability, the
> corporate form provides no protection for
> individuals who commit torts.

That is correct.

 The only protection
> the corporate form provides is a modification to the
> doctrine of respondeat superior (the employer is
> liable for the acts of the employee who commits an
> act in the scope of the employment).<

I don't understand this. Protection for whom?



> > In other words, while the corporation's assets are
> liable for the acts of the employee, the
> shareholder's personal assets are not responsible
> for the torts committed by an employee,

Yes

unless the
> shareholder himsef committed a tort

But that is irrelevant to his being a shareholder ot
to the existence of the corporation.

 or the
> shareholder did not respect the corporate form
> (alter-ego).<

Well, the last is a bit confused. It is possible to
"pierce the corporate veil" in certain cases and id
certain conditions are met, reaching the assets of a
shareholder (who may or may not be an individual). The
conditions under which thsi is possible vary by state,
but most states include the conditions of failing to
respect corporate formailities, commingling funds, and
importantly, using the corporate form to commit a
fraud or injustice.

>
> it's the share-holder's greed -- as organized by
> stock markets -- that drives the company to
> accumulate power in order to maximize profit, which
> in turn puts people outside the company at risk in
> this situation. Why should the taxpayers pay for the
> clean-up? why should the neighbors of the company
> pay for the medical costs of the company's
> malfeasance? According to limited liability laws,
> they should (after a point). Even though they never
> made the decision to act in the way that caused the
> damage.

But first, is not a specific problem with
corporations. All capitalist enterprize externalize
costs, whether or not they are corporations.

Second, the short answer to your question is that the
corporate form is permitted to limit liability because
that's been determined by the legislature or the
competent authorities to encourage investment, promote
economic growth, and generally have benefits that
exceed their social costs. The following is therefore
false:

> The limited liability law is a free benefit given to
> corporations (at their own behest, basically, since
> they have influenced the courts in their favor since
> the 19th century), allowing them to shift risk to
> others. In theory, there is some compensation in
> that corporations are supposed to pay the corporate
> income tax. But in practice, that tax is very low
> and rapidly going away.

Unless you think that the consequences for economic
growth involved in abolsihing the corporate form, and
requiring all investors to expose themselves and all
their assets to potentially runious liability would
not be as serious as many suppose.

> which is true in the case of big disasters. But the
> limited liability law is always in the background,
> allowing the stockholders to ignore the morality or
> immortality and the non-financial risk of their
> financial holdings. The taxpayers are acting as the
> cost-payers of the last resort, so that corporations
> don't have do act "without a net."
> why? shouldn't those people who hired him -- the
> stockholders, through their agent, the Exxon
> corporation -- pay attention to who they hire?

Uh, that

Re: Corporations

[ravi]

Eugene Coyle wrote:
>
>  This stuff is much worse than people have been asked to leave the list
> over
>

i caution against this reaction, if at all this list is to be of use to
non-technical (in this case non-eco) users of the list and the web.

as one such person, i have non-technical reasons for believing that
"corporations" (as implemented, not as theoretical entities) are a bad
thing for various causes i consider important. however, it would be
difficult for me to find the technical flaw in david shemano's reductive
definition.

i discovered this list through a web search which led me to the
archives. the archives (if they are still public) are an internet
resource that people will consult. the information content of the
messages will affect the ranking of the archives in the search results.
keeping these discussions productive will give us, on the left, a way to
gain the attention of those looking for answers on the net, and present
to them a different viewpoint or logic than is drummed into their head
by popular media and mainstream literature.

of course rehashing econ 101 may be a waste of time for the bulk of list
members. in that case, i suggest that we compile a FAQ (as was the norm
for both newsgroups and mailing lists) with such questions. the FAQ
would serve not only as a repository that david and others can be
pointed to, but also as a document on the web that would serve the
purpose i outline above.

my 2 cents,

--ravi

Re: Corporations

[Michael Hoover]

first - and least illuminating - way to examine incorporated business
enterprises is as legal entity (joint stock ownership, identification as
person under law, continuous legal personality, limited liability)...

as rule, potential corporation only needs to specify structure,
procedures for stock issuance, principal officer's location, directors'
names in order to be granted charter...

modern incorporation laws - dating to late 19th century when delaware
and new jersey wrote lenient/permissive measures (i think) - preserve
considerable business advantages of earlier era when corporations were
chartered for specific purposes, specified time periods, and public
purpose (renewal dependent upon last item) while eliminating any
promised public purpose as condition of existence...

above begins to move examination of corporations from legal definition
to
focus on size, reach, and impact as economic institutions - 1)
corporations are small percentage of total number of businesses but
account for vast majority of sales
and profits; 2) two-tirered structure within corporate sector with
handful responsible for bulk of economic activity...

above offers means to examine corporate influence on education,
government, laws, politics, public opinion, etc, etc., in other words,
their power in public affairs
(not to mention dependence of economy on them)...   michael hoover

Re: Corporations

[Devine, James]

I wrote:
> > the limited liability law means that a
> > corporation is much more than a bunch of voluntary
> > contracts amongst individuals. The power of the
> > state means that the whole is more than the sum of
> > its parts, so that the corporation is a "legal
> > person." (A legal person that's like an actual
> > person in many ways, with the obvious exception with
> > respect to the right to vote.  But I doubt that
> > corporations -- especially the bigger ones -- need
> > the power to vote. They dominate government anyway.)

JKS wrote:  
> I agree that "metaphysically" a corp. is more than a
> series or collection of contracts among individuals --
> it has to be. Individuals could not contract to limit
> their liability to the parties. The state has to allow
> them to do that. The corporation's existence depends
> on the sufferance of the law.

exactly. 

> However, the while the corp is collective entity, like
> a state or a union or any group that is more than the
> sum of its parts, t make a corp. a person within the
> meaning of the law required a specific _further_ legal
> act by a body (in the US the S.Ct.) with the power to
> say, as the S.Ct did, that a corp. is a "person"
> within the meaning of the 14the Amendment. I don't
> think is thsi is true in other countries. If its is,
> it requiresa  specific legal act by a competent
> authority.

yes.

...

I wrote: 
> > it's the share-holder's greed -- as organized by
> > stock markets -- that drives the company to
> > accumulate power in order to maximize profit, which
> > in turn puts people outside the company at risk in
> > this situation. Why should the taxpayers pay for the
> > clean-up? why should the neighbors of the company
> > pay for the medical costs of the company's
> > malfeasance? According to limited liability laws,
> > they should (after a point). Even though they never
> > made the decision to act in the way that caused the
> > damage.

JKS: 
> But first, is not a specific problem with
> corporations. All capitalist enterprize externalize
> costs, whether or not they are corporations.

true, but the financial set-up of a corporation encourages them to maximize profits to 
satisfy external stockholders who don't care about environmental destruction and the 
like. So financial markets reinforce the normal behavior of any decentralized bodies 
(unions, worker-owned co-ops, etc.), encouraging corporations to embrace aggressive 
accumulation of external benefits and dumping of external costs. 

JKS:
> Second, the short answer to your question is that the
> corporate form is permitted to limit liability because
> that's been determined by the legislature or the
> competent authorities to encourage investment, promote
> economic growth, and generally have benefits that
> exceed their social costs. 

The legislature that set up the corporate laws -- along with the 19th century Supreme 
Court ("competent authorities"?) -- was bought and paid for by the up-and-coming 
corporation-owners (the "Robber Barons") and similar rich groups. How can we assume 
that these people made the right decision? The Laborites, Populists, Socialists, 
Wobblies, etc., of the time were very critical of the way that the US government was 
dominated by the rich. How did you miss this fact? 

Similarly, the current legislators and "competent authorities" who determine corporate 
law are dominated by capitalist interests, especially in light of the shrinking power 
of labor and other countervailing powers. Why should we trust the legislature and 
authorities to do our thinking for us?

The cost/benefit decision of the granting of limited liability (and other corporate 
rights) is not something that can be made objectively, since every individual and 
class would put different weights on the different costs and benefits that are added 
up, while interpreting as benefits what others see as costs, etc. It's not some 
apolitical decision that can be made by "technocrats."

JKS:
>The following is therefore
> false:
> 
> > The limited liability law is a free benefit given to
> > corporations (at their own behest, basically, since
> > they have influenced the courts in their favor since
> > the 19th century), allowing them to shift risk to
> > others. In theory, there is some compensation in
> > that corporations are supposed to pay the corporate
> > income tax. But in practice, that tax is very low
> > and rapidly going away.

JKS: 
> Unless you think that the consequences for economic
> growth involved in abolsihing the corporate form, and
> requiring all investors to expose themselves and 

Re: Corporations

[David B. Shemano]

So many things to say.

The only argument offered why the corporation is more than a sum of contracts is 
limited tort liability.  But as I said, that assumes that there is some inherent "LAW" 
that says the principal employer should be strictly liable for the torts of the agent, 
and that is simply not the case.  Respondeat superior is a state imposed liability 
imposed for policy reasons.  I am very surprised that members of this list would act 
as if there is an objective Platonic law and limited liability is a deviation from 
that law.

Second, I think the argument that limited liability is the primary benefit of the 
corporation is simply incorrect.  If limited liability were removed from corporations, 
there would be a massive shift from equity financing to debt financing.  In other 
words, investors will call themselves creditors and not shareholders.  The line 
between equity and subordinated debt is very close, but the courts have no problem 
calling one equity and one debt.  Are you going to take the position that creditors 
should be strictly responsible for the tortious acts of their borrowers (assuming they 
do not control the acts of the borrower)?  However, corporations would continue 
because of transaction cost advantages over partnerships and joint ventures.

Jim Devine's insistence that limited liability permits shareholders to ignore external 
costs is simply not realistic.  It ignores that the corporation remains liability for 
its tortious conduct, and shareholders care about their investments.  To the extent 
that the corporation itself is not responsible for externalities, that is a different 
issue entirely unrelated to limited liability.

I have been accused of being "reductionist."  According to dictionary.com, 
reductionsist means:

"An attempt or tendency to explain a complex set of facts, entities, phenomena, or 
structures by another, simpler set: 'for the last 400 years science has advanced by 
reductionism... The idea is that you could understand the world, all of nature, by 
examining smaller and smaller pieces of it. When assembled, the small pieces would 
explain the whole'  (John Holland)."

Based upon that definition, I accept the label.  It is better than being "wrong."

What really are we fighting about?

David Shemano

Re: Corporations

[k hanly]

Justin writes:


> This discussion is getting a bit off the rails.
> Corporations are not "legal fictions" -- they are
> legally created entities, no more or less real than
> contracts.  It is a strange species of "methodological
> individualism" to deny that they "really" exist merely
> because they are constituted out of indiviuals and
> their relations. What in the social world isn't? They
> are as real as nations and classes and races and
> governments and courts, etc.

I always thought that corporations were legal fictions. Legal fictions are
legally created entities aren't they? They may be more than this but they
certainly are not less. The problem is not claiming that corporations are
legal fictions but in claiming that as such they are not some separate
entity but a shorthand way of referring to interlocking contracts between
individuals the very point that you seem to be making. However your point
has nothing to do with corporations not being legal fictions.
>
>
> What Gene and others object to is two things, I think:
> not the legal device for limiting liability, but the
> fact that some corporations have vast wealth and power
> that distorts democracy and gives too much influence
> to a small number of people, and a legal system that
> treats these entities as if they were individual
> persons due the legal rights (like free speech) that
> are properaly accorded to individuals.  In most
> societies, even market societies, the latter is not
> true -- corporations are not "persons," as far as I
> knwo, under British law (any Brits out there who can
> correct me?), and anyway the Brits don't have a First
> Amendment.

>
But surely it is essential to treat corporations as having at least some of
the rights of individuals. Are you going to deny corporations the right to
own property, sign contracts, pay taxes, sue and be sued, all capacities of
individuals? Whether or not there is some special legal recognition of
corporations as persons any legal system will surely want to give
corporations rights such as these..

And whether or not there is some separate legal definition of corporate
personhood, ordinary people are going to talk of corporations on analogy
with individuals and rightly so because there are definite similarities. The
analogy may be pushed too far and be inappropriate but that is another
issue.
   Of course for corporations to be persons under the law, the law must  say
that they are. But this is true of individuals too. There was a time when
women werent  persons and slaves were not either as far as their legal
status was concerned. To be an individual person does not entail being a
legal person.

Cheers, Ken Hanly

Re: Corporations

[andie nachgeborenen]

David:

Who said limited liability was limited to torts? The
corporate forms protects its investors against all
liabilities -- contractual, tort, property, civil
rights and other statutory -- even criminal to a
point, bankruptcy, etc.

Moreover it is not treue that the only argument has
been reference to limited liability vs. torts or
anything else. A number of folks, Ian and myself
include, have emphasized that the corporation is a
creature of law that has real social efficacy like any
other social groups. The contract is also a creature
of law, and like the corporate form depends on that
social entity the state, which not reducible to the
behavior of the individuals in it.

The corporate form, created by operation of law, is a
different thing from the contract: It depends on the
forbearance of the state in going after the
shareholderholders for the debts of the corporation,
something that the law does not permit the parties to
contract around. ("OK, you and I agree that we are not
liable for debts to anyone else." Good luck making
that one stick, fella!)

I don't know why you bring up strict liability --
liability without fault. That exists in some cases as
a matter of operation of the law. But it is sort of
anomalous. Anyway, there is nothing inherent about any
law -- positive law, enacted, common, constitutional,
administrative whatever. It's all a social product of
the state imposed of policy reasons or because of
political influence or corruption or whatever.

You may be right about the effect of abolishing the
corporate form -- a big shift to debt-based financing.
However, there are presumably reasons based in part on
efficiency and lowerted transactions costs for equity
based financing. There is no point in pretending these
are the same or equivalent.

I am not a defender come what may of the corporate
form, but I am not an uncritical enemy of it either.
It really depends on how it plays out. Big capitalist
corporations mainly suvk, but I suspect thay is
because they are capitalist rather than because they
are corporate. Pro-planning Marxists used to cite the
predominance of the corporate form as evidence that
there was no necessary connection between ownership
and good management -- an argument I still think is
valid. Maybe the recent problems with corporate
governance have undermined their confidence. . . .

jks


--- "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So many things to say.
>
> The only argument offered why the corporation is
> more than a sum of contracts is limited tort
> liability.  But as I said, that assumes that there
> is some inherent "LAW" that says the principal
> employer should be strictly liable for the torts of
> the agent, and that is simply not the case.
> Respondeat superior is a state imposed liability
> imposed for policy reasons.  I am very surprised
> that members of this list would act as if there is
> an objective Platonic law and limited liability is a
> deviation from that law.
>
> Second, I think the argument that limited liability
> is the primary benefit of the corporation is simply
> incorrect.  If limited liability were removed from
> corporations, there would be a massive shift from
> equity financing to debt financing.  In other words,
> investors will call themselves creditors and not
> shareholders.  The line between equity and
> subordinated debt is very close, but the courts have
> no problem calling one equity and one debt.  Are you
> going to take the position that creditors should be
> strictly responsible for the tortious acts of their
> borrowers (assuming they do not control the acts of
> the borrower)?  However, corporations would continue
> because of transaction cost advantages over
> partnerships and joint ventures.
>
> Jim Devine's insistence that limited liability
> permits shareholders to ignore external costs is
> simply not realistic.  It ignores that the
> corporation remains liability for its tortious
> conduct, and shareholders care about their
> investments.  To the extent that the corporation
> itself is not responsible for externalities, that is
> a different issue entirely unrelated to limited
> liability.
>
> I have been accused of being "reductionist."
> According to dictionary.com, reductionsist means:
>
> "An attempt or tendency to explain a complex set of
> facts, entities, phenomena, or structures by
> another, simpler set: 'for the last 400 years
> science has advanced by reductionism... The idea is
> that you could understand the world, all of nature,
> by examining smaller and smaller pieces of it. When
> assembled, the small pieces would explain the whole'
>  (John Holland)."
>
> Based upon that definition, I accept the label.  It
> is better than being "wrong."
>
> What really are we fighting about?
>
> David Shemano


__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
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Re: Corporations

[andie nachgeborenen]

>
> I always thought that corporations were legal
> fictions. Legal fictions are
> legally created entities aren't they? They may be
> more than this but they
> certainly are not less.

"Fictions" suggests they are not real. Here is an
example of a legal fiction: The notion that that in
suing a state official acting in his official capacity
you are not really suing the state, which is forbidden
under the 1th Amendment as interpreted by the S.Ct.

I ran into this problem today.  I am trying to process
through my new firm's conflicts check process -- to
make sure we are not representing and suing the same
people -- two pro bono habeas corpus cases in which I
represented convicted murderers. The nominal defendant
is the prison warden. My secretary reported back that
they had to do conflicts checks on the warden. I said,
that can't be right. The warden doesn't care; we are
really suing the state of Illinois. It and not the
warden is the real party in interest.

Anyway, corporations are not fictions. They are are
real as many people. Imdividuals, I mean.
Sure, corps have some of the powers of persons --
contracting, property ownership, suing and being sued,
etc. That did not make them persons any more than the
fact that I have some of Michael Jordan;s powers (a
very few) makes me a basketball player. But I am not
speaking of metaphysucal personhood, only of legal
personhood. It was a big jump when the S.Ct said that
corps were persons under the 14th Amendment, no point
in pretending otherwise, even if the other things were
true of them.

The question of whether corps are fictions is
diffewrent from whether they a reducible to
interlocking series of contracts,a nd more
interesting. The later view is legally an obvious
error. The former is potentially an interesting
metaphysical error. You are right of course that the
law can fail to recognize classes of individual as
(full) persons in a legal sense, and has done so. May
still, as in denying gays the right to marry in most
states. I am not sure what your point is here, though.


jks

 The problem is not claiming
> that corporations are
> legal fictions but in claiming that as such they are
> not some separate
> entity but a shorthand way of referring to
> interlocking contracts between
> individuals the very point that you seem to be
> making. However your point
> has nothing to do with corporations not being legal
> fictions.
> >
> >. . .  >
> >
> But surely it is essential to treat corporations as
> having at least some of
> the rights of individuals. Are you going to deny
> corporations the right to
> own property, sign contracts, pay taxes, sue and be
> sued, all capacities of
> individuals? Whether or not there is some special
> legal recognition of
> corporations as persons any legal system will surely
> want to give
> corporations rights such as these..
>
>  . .  .
>Of course for corporations to be persons under
> the law, the law must  say
> that they are. But this is true of individuals too.
> There was a time when
> women werent  persons and slaves were not either as
> far as their legal
> status was concerned. To be an individual person
> does not entail being a
> legal person.
>
> Cheers, Ken Hanly


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Re: Corporations

[Eubulides]

[A few months ago Business Week ran an article asserting that South Korea
had the biggest anti-corporate social movement of any country in the
world. Given the recent upheaval there and the issues raised in the
thread, I thought pen-ler's might find the following link on corporate
governance in Korea and the global connections interesting. The current
scandal[s] there raise serious issues for the strengths/limitations of the
Poulantzasian/Milibandian theories of the State/Capital nexus]

http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-1-0033.pdf



Parliament votes to impeach president

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Saturday March 13, 2004
The Guardian

Roh Moo-hyun yesterday became the first South Korean president to be
impeached, plunging the country into uncertainty weeks before
parliamentary elections.

Amid chaotic scenes, 193 members of the 273-seat national assembly - more
than the two-thirds majority required - voted to support the impeachment
bill after the president was accused of unfairly attempting to influence
the outcome of the April polls.

Mr Roh will be suspended and replaced by the prime minister, Goh Kun,
while the constitutional court decides whether to accept the vote, a
process that could take up to six months. If it does, South Korea will
have to hold new presidential elections.

Assembly members, who have a reputation for boisterousness, exchanged
shoves, yelled and wept during the historic vote.

"We won a victory," said Choe Byung-yul, leader of the Grand National
party, one of the sponsors of the bill. "But today is not a happy day
because the president elected by the people had to be impeached."

Mr Roh's supporters were incensed. "This is the day our nation's democracy
died," said a statement by the Uri party, whose 47 MPs say they will
resign.

It was Mr Roh's support for the Uri party that prompted his opponents to
begin impeachment proceedings. The president, who is required by law to
remain impartial in elections, had called for an "overwhelming" show of
support for the party.

The impeachment bill claimed his credibility had been shattered by a
series of political funding scandals involving his aides in the run-up to
the December 2002 presidential election. It also charged him with failing
to revive the Korean economy, which grew by just 2.9% last year, compared
with 6.3% in 2002.

Mr Roh, a strong-willed former democracy activist who made his name as a
human rights lawyer, refused to apologise, saying the impeachment bill was
politically motivated revenge for his unexpected election victory over the
Grand National party candidate, Lee Hoi-chang.

Mr Roh relented early yesterday and apologised for the political crisis,
but opponent said it did not go far enough. After he took refuge at his
presidential Blue House residence, his office said it hoped the
constitutional court would "make a quick decision to minimise confusion in
state affairs".

His temporary replacement's first task will be to reassure the rest of the
world that Mr Roh's absence has not created a political vacuum at a
crucial time for the economy and as South Korea and its allies attempt to
resolve fears surrounding North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

South Korea's financial markets were left reeling, with the Kospi
benchmark stock index falling 5.5% before recovering to close 2.4 % down.
The won fell by 1% against the dollar.

The interim president, whose new powers include responsibility for South
Korea's 650,000-strong military, vowed to keep the country stable.

"The people feel unease because the impeachment bill was passed at a time
when the economy faces difficulties," he said, adding that the government
had to do all it could to "ensure that the country's international
credibility will not be damaged".

Re: Corporations

[ravi]

David B. Shemano wrote:
>
> I have been accused of being "reductionist."  According to
> dictionary.com, reductionsist means:
> <...>
> Based upon that definition, I accept the label.  It is better than
> being "wrong."
>
> What really are we fighting about?
>

i called your definition (of corporations) reductionist. i am not
fighting with you. i used the term in a neutral sense.

that said, there are multiple arguments against reductionism. the
foundational ones are too detailed to hash out here. there is also the
argument against reductionism that in its use, in complex fields, there
is a tendency to oversimplify a problem, in order to solve it.
reductionism can lead to wrong and dangerous conclusions.

of course the onus to refute your argument (either on eco-theoretical
ground, or methodological ground as a critique of reductionism) lies, to
a large extent, on your detractors.


> "An attempt or tendency to explain a complex set of facts, entities,
> phenomena, or structures by another, simpler set: 'for the last 400
> years science has advanced by reductionism... The idea is that you
> could understand the world, all of nature, by examining smaller and
> smaller pieces of it. When assembled, the small pieces would explain
> the whole'  (John Holland)."


this is an extremely (and wilfully/intentionally) naive definition.
science rarely proceeded along this clean reductionist process. at best,
the context of justification has at times tended to honour reductionism.
may i suggest kline's works on the history of mathematics (math being
the language of science) and of course feyerabend's "expose" and defense
of methodoligcal anarchism?

--ravi

Re: Corporations

[David B. Shemano]

Justin writes:

>> Who said limited liability was limited to torts? The
>> corporate forms protects its investors against all
>> liabilities -- contractual, tort, property, civil
>> rights and other statutory -- even criminal to a
>> point, bankruptcy, etc.

Yes, but it is only with respect to non-contractual liabilities that the limitation is 
state imposed.  The contractual limited liability is, by definition, a matter of 
contract.  As I initially said, the other party to the contract can bargain for a 
personal guarantee, which is very common.

>> Moreover it is not treue that the only argument has
>> been reference to limited liability vs. torts or
>> anything else. A number of folks, Ian and myself
>> include, have emphasized that the corporation is a
>> creature of law that has real social efficacy like any
>> other social groups. The contract is also a creature
>> of law, and like the corporate form depends on that
>> social entity the state, which not reducible to the
>> behavior of the individuals in it.

I don't disagree, except that if you remove the issue of limited liability, a 
corporation is ultimately reducible to a series of contracts, just like any other 
social group.  Those contracts include agreements between the shareholders, agreements 
between the shareholders and directors, between the directors and officers, between 
the officers and employees, etc.  The state recognized entity (the "corporation") is a 
way to simpliy the transaction costs of these relationships.

>>
>> The corporate form, created by operation of law, is a
>> different thing from the contract: It depends on the
>> forbearance of the state in going after the
>> shareholderholders for the debts of the corporation,
>> something that the law does not permit the parties to
>> contract around. ("OK, you and I agree that we are not
>> liable for debts to anyone else." Good luck making
>> that one stick, fella!)

This is not correct.  It is possible to have the corporate form without limited 
liability.  As I said before, the limitation of contractual liability can be a matter 
of contract ("I promise to sell you widgets, but if I breach the agreement, you agree 
to cap your claim at X.").  The ultimate benefit of the corporate form is transaction 
costs -- for a variety of reasons, partnerships have major disadvantages compared to 
corporations which are unrelated to limited liability.  For instance, what happens if 
one of the partners dies or wants to leave the partnership?  Can one partner bind all 
the other partners? Who has authority to speak on behalf of the partnership?  The 
corporate form addresses these and other problems in a very effective fashion.

>> I don't know why you bring up strict liability --
>> liability without fault. That exists in some cases as
>> a matter of operation of the law. But it is sort of
>> anomalous. Anyway, there is nothing inherent about any
>> law -- positive law, enacted, common, constitutional,
>> administrative whatever. It's all a social product of
>> the state imposed of policy reasons or because of
>> political influence or corruption or whatever.

The point is that owner responsiblity for the acts of an employee is strict liability. 
 If the owner negligently hires an employee, that is negligence.  However, if the 
owner did not negligently hire the employee or otherwise commit a negligent act , 
imposing responsibility on the owner for the negligent acts of the employees is to 
impose strict liability, and that is a policy decision no different than determining 
shareholders should not be personally liable for the debts of the corporation.


>> You may be right about the effect of abolishing the
>> corporate form -- a big shift to debt-based financing.
>> However, there are presumably reasons based in part on
>> efficiency and lowerted transactions costs for equity
>> based financing. There is no point in pretending these
>> are the same or equivalent.

Of course.  However, investors will respond to the rules of the market.

As I was thinking about it, another major consequence of the removal of limited 
liability would be to dramatically shrink the size of the corporation.  In other 
words, large corporations would probably fragment into a multitude of independent 
corporations to ensure that one division is not liable for the acts of another 
division.  I suppose that would be a good thing if you are a Lefty, because that would 
decentralize corporate power.  However, it would significantly increase transaction 
costs.

David Shemano

Re: Corporations

[andie nachgeborenen]

> Yes, but it is only with respect to non-contractual
> liabilities that the limitation is state imposed.

I disagree. First, a contract is  state imposition or
creation. A contract, in law, is a promise the law
will enforce. Second, the limited libaility accorded
corporations is a matter of the corporate form, not of
contract. It is not contracted for, but is a creature
of the legal process of incorporation. Third, there
are lots of kinds of non-contractual, non-tort
liability that incorporation offers limited protection
against.


> The contractual limited liability is, by definition,
> a matter of contract.  As I initially said, the
> other party to the contract can bargain for a
> personal guarantee, which is very common.

That has nothing to do with the nature of
incorporation.

>
> I don't disagree, except that if you remove the
> issue of limited liability, a corporation is
> ultimately reducible to a series of contracts, just
> like any other social group.

Not all social groups are contractual and voluntary. I
am not a Jew in virtue of an agreement. Nor is the
working class, etc., or members thereof, (in) that
clas because of a contract.

Moreover, saying "take away limited liability, and a
corpration is just . . . " is to remove the essence of
thing.

 The state recognized
> entity (the "corporation") is a way to simpliy the
> transaction costs of these relationships.

Transactions cost analysis has its place in explaining
why the firm/market boundaries fall where they do --
indeed in a planned system, in explaining the
firm/firm boundaries. But you have not said why TCA
explains why some firms are limited liability entities
-- that there are corporations. The obviosu
explnataion is the simple and natural one, that
investors find the limitation of liability an
attractive feature. What is wrong with that view?

I don't claim expertise in this area, and can be
persuaded. I see from a quick persusal; of my limited
library of corprate law that Easterbrook and Fishel
seem to be in your court on the relevance of TCA, and
while I don't defer to them blindly (to say the least)
I recognize that they have real learning in the area,
and I don't. So I will look at what they say and
report back.


> This is not correct.  It is possible to have the
> corporate form without limited liability.

Not under any law of which I am aware, though I might
be wrong.

 As I said
> before, the limitation of contractual liability can
> be a matter of contract ("I promise to sell you
> widgets, but if I breach the agreement, you agree to
> cap your claim at X.").  The ultimate benefit of the
> corporate form is transaction costs -- for a variety
> of reasons, partnerships have major disadvantages
> compared to corporations which are unrelated to
> limited liability.  For instance, what happens if
> one of the partners dies or wants to leave the
> partnership?  Can one partner bind all the other
> partners? Who has authority to speak on behalf of
> the partnership?  The corporate form addresses these
> and other problems in a very effective fashion.

Well, yes. But there are limited liability
partnerships now. I work for one.

>
> >> I don't know why you bring up strict liability --
>
> The point is that owner responsiblity for the acts
> of an employee is strict liability.

Well, that's an interesting idea. A different
interpretation is that if the employee acts as an
agent of the owner, the owner is liable through agency
principles rather than withouta  shwoing of fault.
That is, the fault is there -- it was in the agent's
actions, but the principle is responsible. Negligent
horing, supervision, is something different from
responsibility for thetorts of the agent.

 > As I was thinking about it, another major
> consequence of the removal of limited liability
> would be to dramatically shrink the size of the
> corporation.  In other words, large corporations
> would probably fragment into a multitude of
> independent corporations to ensure that one division
> is not liable for the acts of another division.

No doubt.

  I
> suppose that would be a good thing if you are a
> Lefty, because that would decentralize corporate
> power.  However, it would significantly increase
> transaction costs.
>

Not all lefties think small is beautiful per se. Small
capital can be more vicious to workers than big
capital, truth be told. The Small Business Assn is
well to the right of the NAM, I think.

Right now this is a big division in VA, where big
capital in the state GOP supports higher taxes because
public services in the state are in the toilet, and
small capital, also in the GOP, is maintaining the
anti-tax faith.

jks

jks

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Re: Corporations

[Jurriaan Bendien]

that
> investors find the limitation of liability an
> attractive feature. What is wrong with that view?

"Wrong" in what sense - moral culpability, economic benefits or private
interest ? The search in on for new legal forms to offload costs and losses.
LLCs provide tax and managerial advantages.

J.

Re: Corporations

[andie nachgeborenen]

"Wrong" in the sense lacking explanatory power. David
S.and I are conducting a fairly austerely nonmoral
discussion about the nature and proper explanation of
the corporation. jks


--- Jurriaan Bendien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> that
> > investors find the limitation of liability an
> > attractive feature. What is wrong with that view?
>
> "Wrong" in what sense - moral culpability, economic
> benefits or private
> interest ? The search in on for new legal forms to
> offload costs and losses.
> LLCs provide tax and managerial advantages.
>
> J.


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Corporations/Side Issue

[paul phillips]

Mike B wrote

I agree, it would be much better, if workers ran and
managed the the firms in which they exploited
themselves for surplus value.  Honestly though,
hasn't the history of creating such entities, like
say
Mondragon or the Amana Colony or the kibbutz
movement
and all the utopian socialist movements of the
past--
co:operatives included--proven that they always
morph
into the undemocratic, totalitarian corporate
structures which we see ruling us today?
In other words, hasn't wage-labour always resulted
in
the developement of capitalist social relations?
Sincerely,
Mike B)

What evidence is there that Mondragon has morphed
into an "undemocratic, totalitarian corporate structure?"
Last I heard it was still going strong and expanding without
any change in its co-operative structure.  Check out the
Mondragon website.
On the theory of 'market socialism' more up to date than Vanek
and the others mentioned is Bruno Jossa and Gaetano Cuomo, "The
Economic Theory of Socialism and the Labour-Managed Firm." (EdwardElgar,
1997).  I also like Branko Horvat's "The Political Economy of Socialism"
(Sharpe, 1982).  On Mondragon, a recent book by Greg MacLeod, "From
Mondragon to America: Experiments in Community Economic Development"
(University College of Cape Breton Press, 1997) is an interesting
interpretation written by an activist in co-operative community
economic development in the Maritimes.  (I met Greg in Mondragon
where I was doing some research on worker co-ops and he was leading
a group of Canadian students studying the Mondragon and its derivative,
the Valencia, model.)
For a depressing and entertaining history, origins and abuse of
corporations which addresses most of the issues in the main thread
see the new 3 hour documentary "The Corporation" that has won a number
of awards at film festivals (including Sundance I believe). Mike Moore,
Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Elaine Barnard are featured in the film as
well as Milton Friedman and Michael Walker of Canada's ultra-rightwing
Fraser Institute. The film was made by a Canadian and has been in general
release as a feature film for the past few months. It is particularly
interesting in view of the discussion on this thread because it
analyzes the corporation as an individual suffering from all the
medical symptons of a psychotic personality.
By the way, corporations are legally individuals in Canada and thereby
their right to free speech is protected by the Charter of Rights in
Canada's Constitution.  This status was used by the big tobacco companies
when they appealed against a law restricting what they could put on their
tobacco packaging.  If I remember correctly, the tobacco corporations won.
So David Shemano is definitely wrong when he says that a corporation does not
speak as an individual.
Paul Phillips
Senior Scholar,
Economics,
University of Manitoba

corporations/More Side Issue

[Charles Brown]

 
 >the westerners don't come close to us indians when it 
comes to being
>conservative about this stuff. we literally wrote the book 
on sex, but
>now we don't even touch or kiss each other during sex ;-) 
;-).
>
> --ravi
^^
How do you avoid 
touching during sex ?  Must be quite a trick.
 
Charles
 
>

Racial identifies of corporations

[David B. Shemano]

Michael Perelman requests:

>> David, could you tell us more about this case, please?
>>
>> On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 11:39:22AM -0700, David B. Shemano wrote:
>> >
>> > Regarding corporations, everybody should be happy to know that the Ninth Circuit
>> Court of Appeals held this week that a corporation can sue for violations of civil 
>> rights
>> protecting against racial discrimination, which necessarily required the Court to 
>> hold
>> that a corporation can have a race.Tinket Ink Information Resources, Inc. v. Sun
>> Microsystems, Inc., 2004 WL 1088296 (9th Cir. 2004).

Here is a link to the case:  http://www.metnews.com/sos.cgi?0504%2F0216754

The issue is very simple.  The plaintiff was a minority-owned corporation (all of the 
shareholders are African-American).  The plaintiff suppled services to Sun 
Microsystems, but then Sun stopped using the plaintiff.  The plaintiff alleged that 
Sun refused to contract with the plaintiff "solely on its status as an 
African-American owned business."  The issue was whether the plaintiff, a corporation, 
had standing to sue in its own name for violation of an anti-racial discrimination 
civil rights law.  The Court concluded that the corporation had standing.  The Court 
acknowledged as an "anti-anthropomorphic truism as a general proposition" that a 
corporation does not have a racial identity.  However, based upon prudential grounds, 
the court said that the corporation had standing to sue.  The court was concerned that 
because the harm was suffered by the corporation and not the shareholders, nobody 
would have the right to sue if the court held the corporation could not sue in its!
  own name.

David Shemano

Can corporations have sex?

[David B. Shemano]

James Devine writes:

>> can a corporation have a gender, too? or rather, can a corporation have sex?

Absolutely, what do you think a corporate merger is?  One corporation propositions the 
other corporation.  The do mutual due diligence to find out if they like each other.  
There is a closing dinner at a fancy restaurant where a lot of liquor is imbibed.  
Then they go and screw the shareholders.

David Shemano

Re: Corporations/Side Issue

[andie nachgeborenen]

This threatens to lapse into the dreaded market
socialism debate. I do not want to get into that, and
Michael won't allow it anyway. I will just say here,
very briefly, that we do not know, but (a) the case of
Mondragon is not so bad, and is unlike the others, and
(b) there may be a difference between attempts to
create a worker-controlled island in a capitalist sea,
and the operation of worker-controlled enterprisers
(whether corporations or other enterprise forms) where
there is no or little wage labor, and they are the
dominant form. I should mention (c) that at least one
possible form of a worker-controlled enterprise is one
in which the workers are not wage laborers but
cooperators whose remuneration takes the form of a
profit share rather than a wage.

In my opinion, if something like a socialist market
economy won't be stable and better than capitalism,
then capitalist social democracy on the Western
European model is the best we can do. For reasons you
can look up in the PEN-L archives where I and othersd
have discussed the issues, or can read in books -- I
won't discuss them here -- I don't think that a
nonmarket econimy would be either stable or better.

But leave the point be. We are not faced today in
America with a choice of any of these alternatives. If
we could get social democracy, we'd think the
revolution was over and we'd won. But it as utopian
from where we stand as Marx's communism.

jks



--- Mike Ballard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> --- andie nachgeborenen
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Moreover one could imagibe a market society where,
> > for
> > eaxmple, the corporations did not have
> undemocratic
> > power and wealth, and where the workers managed
> them
> > themselves. Such corporations would be far less
> > problematic than the largest ones we have --
> > including
> > some of my clients.
> >
> > jks
>

> I agree, it would be much better, if workers ran and
> managed the the firms in which they exploited
> themselves for surplus value.  Honestly though,
> hasn't the history of creating such entities, like
> say
> Mondragon or the Amana Colony or the kibbutz
> movement
> and all the utopian socialist movements of the
> past--
> co:operatives included--proven that they always
> morph
> into the undemocratic, totalitarian corporate
> structures which we see ruling us today?
>
> In other words, hasn't wage-labour always resulted
> in
> the developement of capitalist social relations?
>
> Sincerely,
> Mike B)
>
>
> =
>

> Beers fall into two broad categories:
> Those that are produced by
> top-fermenting yeasts (ales)
> and those that are made with
> bottom-fermenting yeasts (lagers).
>
> http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
>
> __
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Search - Find what you’re looking for faster
> http://search.yahoo.com


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Re: Corporations/Side Issue

[Michael Perelman]

Paul, for some reason, your messages come to the list with the wrong date, throwing
them down lower in my inbox.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Corporations/Side Issue

[Mike Ballard]

--- paul phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mike B wrote
>
> > I agree, it would be much better, if workers ran
> and
> > managed the the firms in which they exploited
> > themselves for surplus value.  Honestly though,
> > hasn't the history of creating such entities, like
> > say
> > Mondragon or the Amana Colony or the kibbutz
> > movement
> > and all the utopian socialist movements of the
> > past--
> > co:operatives included--proven that they always
> > morph
> > into the undemocratic, totalitarian corporate
> > structures which we see ruling us today?
> >
> > In other words, hasn't wage-labour always resulted
> > in
> > the developement of capitalist social relations?
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Mike B)
> >
> >
> What evidence is there that Mondragon has morphed
> into an "undemocratic, totalitarian corporate
> structure?"
>
> Last I heard it was still going strong and expanding
> without
> any change in its co-operative structure.  Check out
> the
> Mondragon website.

I'm wondering about these pressures to cut costs which
Chomsky refers to.  Don't they lead to the big, nice
co:operative having to try to find cheaper sources of
material via low wage, usually dictatorial political
states?

And apologies to all (especially to jks) for bringing
this topic up again.  I just don't see a way out of
the tendency of the rate of exploitation to increase
as the rate of democracy decreases in economies
dominated by the politics of commodification.

Regards,
Mike B)
***
Re Mondragon

Reply from NC, to Jeremy Gibson, on Mondragon.

You're right to take this very seriously, in my
opinion.  It is a very substantial experiment in
participant-owned economy, including production,
finance, commerce and retail; and in terms of standard
economic measures, it's been quite successful.  There
have also been problems.  To what extent these derive
from implantation within a state capitalist economy of
the standard kind (e.g., the pressure to shift
production to low-wage high-repression areas where
workers will not be owners, violating the original
principle that kept this to below 10% of the
workforce) or to inherent factors of institutional
structure (such as separation of professional
management from workforce) is not so easy to
determine, and merits careful thought.  There is a lot
of literature on the topic.  A couple of fairly recent
books are David Ellerman, _The Democratic Worker-Owned
Firm_, and William & Kathleen Whyte, _Making
Mondragon_.  There was a review a year or two ago by
Mike Long in Libertarian Labor Review that I thought
was quite well-informed, perceptive, and interesting
(it was, incidentally, critical of my own criticism of
Mondragon for hierarchic managerial structures); my
understanding is that he might be a little less
optimistic about the prospects himself, right now.

Whatever one's assessment, this is an extremely
important endeavor, in my opinion, and should be
carefully studied.

Noam Chomsky

 http://www.zmag.org/forums/chomforumacrh.htm

=

...the safest course is to do nothing
against one's conscience.
With this secret, we can enjoy
life and have no fear from death.
Voltaire

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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Re: Corporations/Side Issue

[Devine, James]

Mike B. writes:
>I'm wondering about these pressures to cut costs which
Chomsky refers to.  Don't they lead to the big, nice
co:operative having to try to find cheaper sources of
material via low wage, usually dictatorial political
states?<

FWIW, David Schweikert's "market socialist" utopia of worker-managed co-operatives has 
two major institutions that are aimed at preventing the co-ops' profit-maximization 
from turning into this kind of thing:

1) a minimum wage, so that profit-max doesn't involve co-ops competing via a race to 
the bottom among themselves.

[I think there must also be some rule about not hiring non-co-op members to do work. 
But I don't remember it.}

2) a special tariff on imports from countries that don't live up to labor standards. 
In this case, the revenues collected by making these imports more expensive to 
domestic consumers are supposed to be returned to the country whose imports are taxed 
as a lump sum (development aid).

Jim Devine

Re: Corporations/Side Issue

[paul phillips]

Just to supplement Jim's  comments, in Mondragon wages were set at comparable
outside market wages and then profits at the end of the year were allocated
to individual members savings funds which would be paid out on retirement.
 The purpose was to build up funds for investment in expanding the coops
without having to rely on the commercial money market or banking system.
 All employees were required to become members except for specialists brought
in for short term projects (e.g. an engineer hired to design a new product
or process.)  Wage differentials were regulated with a maximum differential
of 3 to 1 although last I heard, they were considering raising this to 6
to 1 because of the difficulty they were having in attracting professionals
as  members as the co-ops moved more and more into high tech  areas and into
research and development.

In the case of Yugoslavia, wages were set by the workers councils, usually
at levels suggested by the managers.  With the 1974 constitutional changes
that introduced contractual self-management and the 1976 Law on Associated
Labour, the financing of investment was abandoned by the state and the independent
banks and was transfered to the enterprises from retained earnings and borrowings
from their captive banks.  This led to what became known as the 'Yugoslav
disease' because the workers would distribute all the earnings in the form
of wages leaving nothing for reinvestment.  The enterprises would then borrow
from their captive banks which basically printed the money with the resulting
inflation that really was a major factor in the collapse of the system.  This
was, of course, illegal under Yugoslav law but by then the state authority
was so dispersed and self-management so intrenched that little was done to
curb it.  Horvat claims, and I think he is right, that the real mistake was
to abolish the state investment funds.  It was during the time of the state
investment funds (the period of market socialism) that the rate of economic
growth and wage growth was at its highest.

Nevertheless, the self-management system of setting wages did result in the
most egalitarian distribution of wages in  Europe, both in the capitalist
and communist worlds.

Paul P

Devine, James wrote:

  Mike B. writes:
  
  
I'm wondering about these pressures to cut costs which

  
  Chomsky refers to.  Don't they lead to the big, nice
co:operative having to try to find cheaper sources of
material via low wage, usually dictatorial political
states?<

FWIW, David Schweikert's "market socialist" utopia of worker-managed co-operatives has two major institutions that are aimed at preventing the co-ops' profit-maximization from turning into this kind of thing:

1) a minimum wage, so that profit-max doesn't involve co-ops competing via a race to the bottom among themselves.

[I think there must also be some rule about not hiring non-co-op members to do work. But I don't remember it.}

2) a special tariff on imports from countries that don't live up to labor standards. In this case, the revenues collected by making these imports more expensive to domestic consumers are supposed to be returned to the country whose imports are taxed as a lump sum (development aid).

Jim Devine

  

Paul Phillips,
Senior Scholar,
Department of Economics,
University of Manitoba

Re: Corporations/Side Issue

[Mike Ballard]

--- "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mike B. writes:
> >I'm wondering about these pressures to cut costs
> which
> Chomsky refers to.  Don't they lead to the big, nice
> co:operative having to try to find cheaper sources
> of
> material via low wage, usually dictatorial political
> states?<
>
> FWIW, David Schweikert's "market socialist" utopia
> of worker-managed co-operatives has two major
> institutions that are aimed at preventing the
> co-ops' profit-maximization from turning into this
> kind of thing:
>
> 1) a minimum wage, so that profit-max doesn't
> involve co-ops competing via a race to the bottom
> among themselves.
>
> [I think there must also be some rule about not
> hiring non-co-op members to do work. But I don't
> remember it.}
>
> 2) a special tariff on imports from countries that
> don't live up to labor standards. In this case, the
> revenues collected by making these imports more
> expensive to domestic consumers are supposed to be
> returned to the country whose imports are taxed as a
> lump sum (development aid).
>
> Jim Devine


Thanks Jim.  These reforms sound very nice and I'm
sure that most people would be happier if they were
put in force.  Still, I remain sick to death of the
poltical-economy of commodity production.

Best,
Mike B)

=

...the safest course is to do nothing
against one's conscience.
With this secret, we can enjoy
life and have no fear from death.
Voltaire

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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Re: Corporations/Side Issue

[Mike Ballard]

Thanks for those insights, Paul.  I really do
appreciate them.  They do confirm my suspicions about
how the wages system and commodity production, no
matter how nicely controlled, have historically tended
in the direction of re-creating the social relation we
know as Capital and the eventual domination of
corporations and their States--totalitarian forms of
economic and political rule.

IMO, one needs to go in the opposite direction, away
from commodity prodution and the wages system, in
order  to get to a classless association of producers
who socially manage the means of
production/consumption for use and need.

Regards,
Mike B)
--- paul phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just to supplement Jim's  comments, in Mondragon
> wages were set at
> comparable outside market wages and then profits at
> the end of the year
> were allocated to individual members savings funds
> which would be paid
> out on retirement.  The purpose was to build up
> funds for investment in
> expanding the coops without having to rely on the
> commercial money
> market or banking system.  All employees were
> required to become members
> except for specialists brought in for short term
> projects (e.g. an
> engineer hired to design a new product or process.)
> Wage differentials
> were regulated with a maximum differential of 3 to 1
> although last I
> heard, they were considering raising this to 6 to 1
> because of the
> difficulty they were having in attracting
> professionals as  members as
> the co-ops moved more and more into high tech  areas
> and into research
> and development.
>
> In the case of Yugoslavia, wages were set by the
> workers councils,
> usually at levels suggested by the managers.  With
> the 1974
> constitutional changes that introduced contractual
> self-management and
> the 1976 Law on Associated Labour, the financing of
> investment was
> abandoned by the state and the independent banks and
> was transfered to
> the enterprises from retained earnings and
> borrowings from their captive
> banks.  This led to what became known as the
> 'Yugoslav disease' because
> the workers would distribute all the earnings in the
> form of wages
> leaving nothing for reinvestment.  The enterprises
> would then borrow
> from their captive banks which basically printed the
> money with the
> resulting inflation that really was a major factor
> in the collapse of
> the system.  This was, of course, illegal under
> Yugoslav law but by then
> the state authority was so dispersed and
> self-management so intrenched
> that little was done to curb it.  Horvat claims, and
> I think he is
> right, that the real mistake was to abolish the
> state investment funds.
>  It was during the time of the state investment
> funds (the period of
> market socialism) that the rate of economic growth
> and wage growth was
> at its highest.
>
> Nevertheless, the self-management system of setting
> wages did result in
> the most egalitarian distribution of wages in
> Europe, both in the
> capitalist and communist worlds.
>
> Paul P
>
> Devine, James wrote:
>
> >Mike B. writes:
> >
> >
> >>I'm wondering about these pressures to cut costs
> which
> >>
> >>
> >Chomsky refers to.  Don't they lead to the big,
> nice
> >co:operative having to try to find cheaper sources
> of
> >material via low wage, usually dictatorial
> political
> >states?<
> >
> >FWIW, David Schweikert's "market socialist" utopia
> of worker-managed co-operatives has two major
> institutions that are aimed at preventing the
> co-ops' profit-maximization from turning into this
> kind of thing:
> >
> >1) a minimum wage, so that profit-max doesn't
> involve co-ops competing via a race to the bottom
> among themselves.
> >
> >[I think there must also be some rule about not
> hiring non-co-op members to do work. But I don't
> remember it.}
> >
> >2) a special tariff on imports from countries that
> don't live up to labor standards. In this case, the
> revenues collected by making these imports more
> expensive to domestic consumers are supposed to be
> returned to the country whose imports are taxed as a
> lump sum (development aid).
> >
> >Jim Devine
> >
> >
> >
> Paul Phillips,
> Senior Scholar,
> Department of Economics,
> University of Manitoba
>


=

...the safest course is to do nothing
against one's conscience.
With this secret, we can enjoy
life and have no fear from death.
Voltaire

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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new frontiers for caring corporations

[Eubulides]

Corporate Voices for Working Families
http://www.cvworkingfamilies.org/facts.html

Poli. Sci. and the Corporations

[Michael Perelman]

The following shows that poli. science ignores the roles of
corporation.  Economics goes one step further.  We talk about "firms,"
but almost nothing in the economics literature ever mentions the role of
corporate power.

Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 15:15:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Weissman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [corp-focus] A Not So Academic Oversight

A Not So Academic Oversight
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

The American Political Science Association's annual convention recently
came through town, filling up Washington, D.C. hotels with thousands of
academics ready to present their latest research findings.

Browsing through the convention's program, we hoped to learn of new
findings on the role of corporations in the political process. Instead,
we
found that there appeared to be virtually no papers on or even
referencing
corporate power.

That's a little strange, we thought. After all, it is hardly a
controversial claim these days that corporations exert a major if not
decisive influence over politics, in the United States and around the
world.

We decided to make sure our impression that corporations were absent
from
the convention papers was correct. The American Political Science
Association has conveniently posted on its website approximately a
thousand of the papers presented at the conference, and the site has a
good search engine.

We searched through these thousand abstracts for the word "corporation."

Two hits.

We tried again, this time using the word "corporate." This time we came
up
with 11 hits. We did another search, for the word "business." After
eliminating abstracts that use the word "business" in a context where it

means something other than corporations (i.e., a reference to
Congressional business), we wound up with 23 hits.

In total, three dozen abstracts even mention the words "corporation,"
"corporate," or "business" -- 3.6 percent of the roughly thousand
abstracts we searched. This is only a rough approximation of the number
that actually discuss corporate power. The vast majority of those we
found
refer to corporations, but don't have corporate power as their focus. On

the other hand, our search undoubtedly missed some papers that
implicitly
discuss corporate power -- say, with a focus on labor relations -- but
don't use any of our key words.

Disturbed by the results of this survey, we asked some of those who had
presented papers that discuss corporations to ruminate on our findings.

Scott Pegg, an assistant professor in the Department of International
Relations at Bilkent University, in Ankara, Turkey, shared some
particularly interesting reactions. (Pegg's paper topic: "Corporate
Armies
for States and State Armies for Corporations: Addressing the Challenges
of
Globalization and Natural Resource Conflict.")

First, he validated our sense that the findings of our survey
constituted
a remarkable oversight. "The three largest subfields of [U.S.] political

science are American government/politics, comparative politics and
international relations. The study of transnational corporations is
relevant to all three of them," Pegg says. "In particular, in an
election
year, I find it stunning that the huge numbers of people working on the
American electoral system and presidential politics would be neglecting
the corporate role in bankrolling politicians to such a degree." Our
sentiments exactly.

Asked to account for the corporate studies vacuum, Pegg suggests several

explanations. Corporations may fall through disciplinary cracks, he says

-- they aren't the traditional political actors on which political
scientists focus. Corporations are reluctant to share information that
academics need to conduct their research, he points out, and information

that is available tends to come from nongovernmental organizations with
which many academics are not familiar. Academics tend to reward
theoretical inquiries over empirical investigations. And, he says, "many

academics are interested in securing outside funding for their research
projects. Corporate funding is available for some projects, but probably

not for those that critically assess corporate crimes or corporate human

rights violations."

To check that the results of our survey were not a fluke, we did a
similar
search on all U.S. dissertations published in the last two years. The
results were similar. After we eliminated those that mentioned
corporations in completely irrelevant contexts (e.g., thanking a
nonprofit
funder with corporation in its name, or mentioning that a corporation
had
invented a scientific process used in the dissertation) we found 75
dissertations that included the word "corporation" in their abstract. As
a
point of comparison, 43 dissertations used the word "baseball" in their
abstract, a

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Jurriaan Bendien]

Charles 
asked:
 
> How do you 
avoid touching during sex ?  Must be quite a trick.
 
This is a slightly 
"schizo" answer maybe, but I would say, it could happen in a dream. John Lennon 
explains this as follows in his track #9 Dream, as follows:
 
On a river of soundThru the 
mirror go round, roundI thought I could feel (feel, feel, feel)Music 
touching my soul, something warm, sudden coldThe spirit dance was unfolding. 

 
When as Annie Lennox sings 
"your crumbling world falls apart", then all you have left is a dream and a 
pocketful of mumbles. But, you could also think of it more soberly in terms of 
one of the best tracks by the band Blondie:
 


  
  
When I met you in the restaurant
You could tell I was no debutante
You asked me what's my pleasure; "A movie or a measure"?
I'll have a cup of tea, and tell you of my dreaming
Dreaming is free
I don't want to live on charity
Pleasure's real, or is it fantasy?
Real to real is living rarity
People stop and stare at me, we just walk on by
We just keep on dreaming
Feet, feet, walking a two mile
Meet meet, meet me at the turnstile
I never met him, I'll never forget him
Dream, dream, even for a little while
Dream, dream, filling up an idle hour
Fade away, radiate
I sit by, and watch the river flow
I sit by, and watch the traffic go
Imagine something of your very own; something you can have and hold
I'd build a road in gold, just to have some dreaming
Dreaming is freeSee further:http://www.marx2mao.org/Lenin/GNA21.htmlhttp://www.russiangifts4less.com/Jurriaan  
 
 

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Eubulides]

- Original Message -
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


How do you avoid touching during sex ?  Must be quite a trick.



Charles

===

Remember the condom scene in "The Naked Gun"?

Ian

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Craven, Jim]

- Original Message -
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


How do you avoid touching during sex ?  Must be quite a trick.



Charles

===

Remember the condom scene in "The Naked Gun"?

Ian

Response Jim C: Or, there are those phone numbers for phone sex, plus
new innovations in virtual technologies. Or, as that great exponent of
"family values" Woody Allen put it: "Masturbation is safe sex with the
one you truly love."

Jim C.

Re: Can corporations have sex?

[Craven, Jim]

-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David B.
Shemano
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 10:43 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L] Can corporations have sex?


James Devine writes:

>> can a corporation have a gender, too? or rather, can a corporation 
>> have sex?

Absolutely, what do you think a corporate merger is?  One corporation
propositions the other corporation.  The do mutual due diligence to find
out if they like each other.  There is a closing dinner at a fancy
restaurant where a lot of liquor is imbibed.  Then they go and screw the
shareholders.

David Shemano

Then there is "hostile takeover" a form of rape that, like all rape, is
not so much about sex as power. Then there is "greenmailing" when you
find out how expensive inter-corporate intercourse can really be.

Jim C

Re: Can corporations have sex?

[Devine, James]

okay, while we're on the subject of answering rhetorical questions, can corporations 
attain orgasm?
Jim D.

-Original Message- 
From: David B. Shemano [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Mon 5/24/2004 10:42 AM 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: [PEN-L] Can corporations have sex?



James Devine writes:

>> can a corporation have a gender, too? or rather, can a corporation have sex?

Absolutely, what do you think a corporate merger is?  One corporation 
propositions the other corporation.  The do mutual due diligence to find out if they 
like each other.  There is a closing dinner at a fancy restaurant where a lot of 
liquor is imbibed.  Then they go and screw the shareholders.

David Shemano

Re: Can corporations have sex?

[Ted Winslow]

Jim asked:
okay, while we're on the subject of answering rhetorical questions,
can corporations attain orgasm?
Jim D.
No.  They can play an important role, though, in the orgasms of those
for whom they are a fetish object.  The sex involved is anal sadistic
and non-consensual.  This is thinly disguised source of the "beauty" of
the Coase Theorem.
Ted

Re: Can corporations have sex?

[Burkhart]

 >>  okay, while we're on the subject of answering rhetorical questions, can
 >>  corporations attain orgasm?
 >>  Jim D.

If an orgasm were defined as that which provides self-awareness and positive feedback 
at the climax of a developmental event, then corporations attain orgasm.  Evolution, 
however, rewards the more potent orgasm of the most evolved/evolving participants -- 
and the "Corporate Orgasm" of "Aikido Activism" is a coming "Corporate Orgasm" of 
massive evolutionary resonance.

In the "Aikido Activism" model, "Noble Corporations" (blissful corporations?) throw 
off the misplaced sexual conservatism that together with broader moral 
authoritarianism aims to retain subversive control, and thereby to retain privelege -- 
but fails to maximize individual empowerment.  In the "Aikido Activism" model, 
"Corporate Orgasm" is essentially "Individual Empowerment Capitalism" (but I like the 
more evocative terminology of, "Corporate Orgasm," -- can I credit you Jim in a 
footnote if I employ that terminology in an update to the essay?).

The essay on "Aikido Activism" (now updated) is the first part of the new, more 
potent, "Corporate Orgasm" (the first part being self-awareness of what "Aikido 
Activism" can birth in progressive corporations and awareness of the anticipated 
transformations).  The second part of the orgasm of "Aikido Activism" (the positive 
feedback part) is currently in a stage of initial, but heightening foreplay -- the 
excitement that I am hearing from others who believe that such a transformation in 
corporate purpose is possible (such as leading author/thinker Douglas Rushkoff, at 
www.rushkoff.com, who shares with me that Aikido Activism "is the obvious next step"), 
driven by the excitment that new substantial corporations birthed in the model of 
Aikido Activism can provide historically unmatched transformations in society and 
economics.

Can I tempt others to engage in the current foreplay of "Aikido Activism" by having a 
look at the current version of the essay at http://tinyurl.com/2fupr (this version is 
without graphics and endnotes... to get the full copy, please request a copy from me 
via email)?

Burkhart

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[andie nachgeborenen]

There has been a lot of discussion of the question you
ask about the behavior of people in a self-managed
economy, some of it mathematized. For for formal
discussion, see various works of Jaroslav Vanek,
including, I think, The Labor Managed Economy, and
Benjamin Ward's classic paper 'The Firm in Illyria:
Market Syndicalism', American Economic Review, 1958;
there is an older (almost all this stuff is older
now), collection of papers and documents, etc., in an
out-of-print 2 vol. set called something like
Self-Managed Socialism, edited by Branko Horvat,
Mihalo Markovic, and others.  David Schweickart, a
philosopher who has a PhD in math, has a fairly
nontechnical but empirically grounded discussion in
his Against Capitalism, Westview 1993.

The general idea about is that in their economic
activities, worker-cooperators will act as if they
were profit-maximizers, but the fact that labor is not
a cost gives them a different set of incentives from
capitalist firms that are explored in the books and
papers above. Somed of these incentives produce more
internalization of cost and more socially productive
behavior than profit-maxing under capitalism. Other
social goals are attained through legislation
(including taxation), refgulation, and planning.

I don't think there is any need to put scare quotes
around "contracts" in a market socialist society. A
contract is just a legally enforceable promise, and
any market society, maybe any modern society, will
have a legal system and a set of rules for contract
law.

jks

--- Sabri Oncu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Justin:
>
> > Moreover one could imagine a market society
> > where, for example, the corporations did not
> > have undemocratic power and wealth, and where
> > the workers managed them themselves.
>
> This is an interesting point.
>
> I have never been against optimizing objective
> functions, assuming that objectives can reasonably
> be
> mathematized.
>
> Here is a question Justin:
>
> What may be some objectives of workers managed
> corporations in the market society you imagine?
>
> Put differently, what kind of "contracts" such
> corporations and the persons that embody them will
> have to "sign" in this market society?
>
> Of course, before such a society is constructed we
> may
> never know what these contracts will exactly look
> like
> but what do you expect them to look like,
> approximately, that is?
>
> Best,
>
> Sabri


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Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Sabri Oncu]

I am not sure if this is a _side issue_ Justin. As you
may have noticed, I do not use _scare quotes_ this
time since I use quotes most of the time, but not
always, to _highlight_ things.

>>

I don't think there is any need to put scare quotes
around "contracts" in a market socialist society. A
contract is just a legally enforceable promise, and
any market society, maybe any modern society, will
have a legal system and a set of rules for contract
law.

<<

Despite that I am more of an anarchist at heart who
despises rules and hierarchies of any kind, I
recognize that, whether market or not, in any society
in which we will live in the near future, there will
be a legal system and a set of rules for contracts.

After all, every human relation is based on some sort
of a contract whether it is our relationship with our
lovers, children, parents, siblings, friends and the
like.

Just that most these (unsigned) contracts are
enforceable not by law but by love and we can always
opt out provided that we choose to give up on love.

I have a question about this:

>>

The general idea about is that in their economic
activities, worker-cooperators will act as if they
were profit-maximizers, but the fact that labor is not
a cost gives them a different set of incentives from
capitalist firms that are explored in the books and
papers above.

<<

In the absence of labor as a cost in production, how
are the profits defined?

Best,

Sabri

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[joanna bujes]

Sabri Oncu wrote:



After all, every human relation is based on some sort
of a contract whether it is our relationship with our
lovers, children, parents, siblings, friends and the
like.
Just that most these (unsigned) contracts are
enforceable not by law but by love and we can always
opt out provided that we choose to give up on love.

Why not simply say that human relationships are bound by love. After all,
contracts are always conditional, whereas love is not.
Joanna

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Devine, James]

Sabri Oncu wrote:
>After all, every human relation is based on some sort
>of a contract whether it is our relationship with our
>lovers, children, parents, siblings, friends and the
>like.
>
>Just that most these (unsigned) contracts are
>enforceable not by law but by love and we can always
>opt out provided that we choose to give up on love.

Joanna: 
Why not simply say that human relationships are bound by love. After all,
contracts are always conditional, whereas love is not.

me: 
I think that Sabri goes much too far. All contracts -- including unsigned ones -- are 
based on trust, not love. (This may be good, since love can be an intense emotion that 
can morph into hate.) 
 
Since it's extremely hard to find a contract that's totally self-enforcing (i.e., 
ensures that someone [A] does _exactly_ what the other party [B] thinks he or she 
agreed to do) there has to be some good will (or fellow-feeling) to reinforce the 
written contract (getting A to do what A thinks he or she agreed to do without being 
monitored all the time) and some good will on the part of B to allow some lee-way, 
allowing for the fact that even honest people have differences in interpretation (the 
differences between A's and B's interpretation of the contract). Once this trust is 
there, the mutually beneficial results of the contract can be realized (though may not 
be realized all the time). 

One of the problems with a capitalist society (or, more generally, a 
commodity-producing one) is that market competition encourages rampant individualism 
and instrumentalism, undermining the needed fellow-feeling and trust. This makes 
contracts harder and encourages an over-use of monitoring (hierarchy) and the like, 
along with constant law-suits. This keeps the lawyers in business.

Jim D.

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Jurriaan Bendien]

Jim wrote:

> I think that Sabri goes much too far. All contracts -- including unsigned
ones -- are based on trust, not love. (...) One of the problems with a
capitalist society (or, more generally, a commodity-producing one) is that
market competition encourages rampant individualism and instrumentalism,
undermining the needed fellow-feeling and trust. This makes contracts harder
and encourages an over-use of monitoring (hierarchy) and the like, along
with constant law-suits. This keeps the lawyers in business.

I would basically agree with that, except that a contract might be based,
for better or worse, both on trust and on love, or on neither - i.e. it may
be precisely the lack of trust or love which forces the making of a
contract, which would not be necessary if love and trust really existed
(consider, for example, litigation disputes). In responding to Michael
Perelman on Frank Partnoy's conscience, I wrote "The question nowadays
regularly arises as to what compliance to the law [in respect to derivatives
securing the conservation and increase of value] would mean."

The problem here is, that all sorts of new creative ideas for contracts and
(as Sabri would say, "deals") are dreamt up which are not even captured by
legislation. This is the root of the dualistic "free trade/protectionism"
debate, because the bourgeois is in favour of trade which improves the
position of his own kind, but is against trade which harms his position.
Bourgeois accumulation may be viewed as legalised theft, but unequal
exchanges may not even be legalised.

The radical, class conscious working class typically inverts the bourgeois
position, thus, where the bourgeois calls for free trade, the working class
calls for protection, and vice versa. Since however both classes are human
beings living in the same society, there might be some degree of overlap
permitting of class compromise, in which case the question arises whether it
is a good compromise benefiting both classes or whether it is a rotten
compromise (a sell-out masking a a mutually beneficial deal). If the overlap
is too large, the compromise is so well understood it becomes tautological
and need not be discussed. If the overlap is very small, the compromise
becomes rhetorical nonsense generating indifference. This is forgotten in
Fukuyama's sociology of trust, because it abstracts from the fact the the
bourgeois classes seek to regulate the market in their own favour.

But this story has another implication. As I have said previously, the
perfect crime is "the crime which is not a crime" since then it considered a
crime, and can be prosecuted legally as such. This could be construed in two
ways: either negatively, the crime is not recognised in law as criminal, or
else positively, the crime is actually endorsed by the law, in which case,
it is not a crime at all legally speaking. This is what bourgeois
derivatives culture is all about, and it has its corollary in proletarian
culture wars, which are the only source of moral debate vital to a blooming
culture, since, for better or worse, they test out the limits of the status
quo. Parasitism leads to the disintegration of bourgeois culture, because it
is forced to derive a justifying morality from other social classes.

If the crime is actually endorsed by the law, then it can only be viewed as
a "crime" from a different moral perspective, in which case we are back with
the problematic of difference which bedevils postmodernist culture. As soon
as that moral perspective is admitted as valid, then the universalist
pretensions of bourgeois law are invalidated. The question then arises as to
what moral behaviour would be, and how we would know that. And moral
behaviour ultimately depends on the practical ability to secure the
conditions for survival and improve life, and so then we can discuss the
practical ability of individuals to survive and improve life... while the
social foundations of capitalist society remain unquestioned.

Here the difference between the liberal and the Marxian view of ethics
begins to show up. In answer to the question, "why should I be moral ?" the
liberal answer is essentially a stasis:

(1) all morality is based on a "no harm" policy ("do unto others...", "don't
do unto others...")
(2) moral rules intrinsically apply to all individuals under the same
circumstances
(3) Premiss (2) permits rational discussion of morality and moral rules
(4) being moral means adhering to moral rules
(5) adhering to moral rules guarantees the autonomy of persons, permitting
survival and improvement of life.

The Marxian critique of the liberal answer is essential dynamic. For a
start, ethics for Marx could not be discussed in abstraction from real
practical activity, and consequently could also not be discussed separately
from class interests and self-interests; an ethics abstracted from real
practical activity, he considered an ideological, not a scientific discourse
(NB the question then is how exactly this s

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Sabri Oncu]

Jim:

> I think Sabri goes much too far. All contracts --
> including unsigned ones -- are based on trust,
> not love.

Not all but most and I agree. Trust is the main thing.

What I had in mind when I wrote what I wrote was my
"contracts" with my late father, my son, my spouse, a
few close friends and the like.

The issue is the following;

If I heartlessly set up some objective functions and
crank my optimization tools to optimize them, why
should anybody trust me?

What if the optimal solution of my objective function
requires me to screw you?

Best,

Sabri

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Devine, James]

Sabri writes: 
> The issue is the following;
> 
> If I heartlessly set up some objective functions and
> crank my optimization tools to optimize them, why
> should anybody trust me?
> 
> What if the optimal solution of my objective function
> requires me to screw you?

that's my concern, too. I think that life in market society (a commodity-producing 
society) encourages the "screw you to benefit me" objective function to be embraced. 
It's only the existence of other, non-market, institutions that prevent the Hobbesian 
war of each against all from taking hold fully.
Jim D. 

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Jurriaan Bendien]

> One of the problems with a capitalist society (or, more generally, a
commodity-producing one) is that market competition encourages rampant
individualism and instrumentalism, undermining the needed fellow-feeling and
trust.

A problem I think is that many leftist politico's think that "solidarity" is
just about that fellow-feeling and trust, even although they do nothing to
actually create that fellow-feeling and trust within their own ranks. I
would say that is this is one of the most basic reasons why rightwing people
are often more successful. Personally, I've had the experience of getting
more work done in a church, than in a Marxist meeting.

J.

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[Sabri Oncu]

Marvin:

> I have a genuine interest in the issue, want to
> know more about it, and have no ax to grind. I
> think it was good of Juriann Bendian to raise it,
> and bad for Sabri to curtly dismiss his effort as
> a "bad essay" without any explanation
> except "derivative are dangerous" (indeed) and to
> invite me to kiss his sweet cheeks for pursuing
> the thread.

Dear Marvin,

We Turks kiss each other, male or female, on the
cheeks. There is nothing bad about that. It is a show
of sincerety and love.

Of course, it is unsual for you westerners who forgot
the closeness touching one another brings out but I
don't blame you. It is just sad that you don't know
how to touch and kiss each other except when you have
sex.

Maybe because, you like contracts more, who knows?

Also, as our Sufi's say, you cannot fill a glass
beyond its volume.

What can I do if you are shallow?

I cannot help you beyond your ability to receive help.

Best,

Sabri

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[ravi]

Sabri Oncu wrote:
>
> Of course, it is unsual for you westerners who forgot
> the closeness touching one another brings out but I
> don't blame you. It is just sad that you don't know
> how to touch and kiss each other except when you have
> sex.
>

the westerners don't come close to us indians when it comes to being
conservative about this stuff. we literally wrote the book on sex, but
now we don't even touch or kiss each other during sex ;-) ;-).

--ravi

Re: corporations/More Side Issue

[joanna bujes]

OK. That's hillarious.

Joanna

ravi wrote:

Sabri Oncu wrote:


Of course, it is unsual for you westerners who forgot
the closeness touching one another brings out but I
don't blame you. It is just sad that you don't know
how to touch and kiss each other except when you have
sex.


the westerners don't come close to us indians when it comes to being
conservative about this stuff. we literally wrote the book on sex, but
now we don't even touch or kiss each other during sex ;-) ;-).
   --ravi

A Brief History of Corporations

[Peter Hollings]

Title: Message



Appropro  our discussion 
on corporations, I thought this might be of interest.  Some 
related webpages can be accessed via the links at the 
bottom.
[>]  Peter 
Hollings 
Source:  http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/KnowEnemy_ITT.html 


Know Thine Enemy
A Brief History of Corporations
by Joel Bleifuss
In These Times magazine, February 1998

 
Corporations can't cast a ballot, but they do vote with their wallets. In 
the 1995-96 election cycle, corporations and corporate PACs contributed $147 
million to candidates running for federal office. The United States is one of 
the few democracies where such donations are legal. The Supreme Court affirmed 
the right of corporations to pay for electoral campaigns in the 1978 case First 
National Bank v. Bellotti. Writing for the majority, Justice Lewis Powell 
explained that giving cash to influence the outcome of an election "is the type 
of speech indispensable to decision making in a democracy, and this is no less 
true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an 
individual."
Indeed, under the prevailing interpretation of the Constitution, 
corporations have the same rights as individuals. This was not always the case: 
American corporations gained these protections in the 19th century, when the 
Supreme Court, in a series of rulings, defined the relationship between business 
and the state. Those rulings shielded companies from government regulation and 
thus allowed the corporation to become the dominant form of economic 
organization. [In] the 21st century, the combined gross revenues of the 200 
largest corporations exceed the GDP of all but the nine richest nations. In this 
context, it is important to know how corporations came to hold such sway over 
our everyday lives, and what can be done about it.
The first corporations appeared in 17th-century Europe, during capitalism's 
infancy. At the time, the government chartered all corporations-that is, it gave 
them a specific public mission in exchange for the formal right to exist. The 
United States was settled by one such corporation, the Massachusetts Bay 
Company, which King Charles I chartered in 1628 in order to colonize the New 
World. The practice of chartering companies was a crucial part of the mercantile 
economic system practiced by the epoch's great powers-Holland, Spain and 
England. By allowing investors to pool their capital, the monarch made it 
possible for companies to launch ventures that would have been beyond the means 
of one person. And in exchange for the charter, companies expanded their 
government's wealth and power by creating colonies that served both as sources 
of raw materials and as markets for exported goods.
But in the 18th century, the Enlightenment challenged this model of economic 
organization by putting forward the idea that people need not be subjects in 
feudal structures but could act as individuals. American revolutionaries, 
inspired by radical notions of "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness," fought for independence not only from the Crown, but from 
the corporate bodies it had chartered. The Boston Tea Party, for example, was a 
protest against the British East India Company's monopoly of Eastern trade. 
Another critic was Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations was published in the same 
year as the Declaration of Independence. Influenced by John Calvin, Smith 
believed that human resourcefulness and industry were earthly signs of God's 
favor, and thus that wealth obtained in a market economy was an _expression_ of 
"natural justice." Smith, however, did not think that corporations were a 
natural part of this order. Arguing that large business associations limit 
competition, he wrote, "The pretense that corporations are necessary to the 
better government of the trade is without foundation."
In the infancy of the republic, Americans gave little thought to 
corporations. In 1787, fewer than 40 corporations operated in the United States. 
By 1800, that number had grown to 334. Like the British corporations before 
them, these companies were typically chartered by the state to perform specific 
public functions, such as digging canals, building bridges, constructing 
turnpikes or providing financial services. In return for this public service, 
the state granted corporations permanence, limited liability and the right to 
own property.
American manufacturers began to form corporations only when trade with 
Europe was shut down by President Thomas Jefferson's embargo of France and 
Britain from 1807 to 1809 and by the War of 1812. In order to supply the 
domestic market with the manufactured goods that had previously come from 
England, Americans formed new companies to amass the capital needed to build 
factories. The rise of these associations-created not to fulfill a public 
mission, but

Julian Schnabel loves corporations, hates Cuba

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times Magazine, March 25, 2001 

Julian Schnabel's Lust for Life

By PHILIP WEISS

On a snowy night in Albany last month, 600 people packed a hall at the
State University of New York for a screening of the movie "Before Night
Falls" and cheered wildly when the filmmaker Julian Schnabel came onstage
after the show. Schnabel was wearing a boxy gray jacket; he did not fit the
image he had gained over the years as a painter in a sarong. He seemed
ungainly, and the heavy black glasses he put on only emphasized the
bluntness of his features. His beard stuck out like a shingle. His bright
round cheeks made his eyes almost disappear. 

But as comfortable as a man walking onto his veranda to greet old friends,
Schnabel spoke in a stream-of-consciousness way about his film, others'
films, art, whatever crossed his mind. "You know, I watch a movie like
'Cast Away' and I want to, like, commit hara-kiri," he said. "The dumb
lobby, the money lobby -- there are companies that would rather make one
dumb movie for $200 million rather than 20 $10 million movies that might
have some meaning." 

Thunderous applause.

I vexed Schnabel even more when I brought up the name of Fidel Castro. I
was taking a trip to Cuba, and I wanted to interview Castro about
Schnabel's movie. What should I ask the president? 

Schnabel sighed and got to his feet. He cast me a sidelong glance. He had
intuited something unseemly: I was using his movie to try and meet Castro
(it didn't happen, but I tried). Schnabel suddenly mistrusted me. He spoke
with blunt power. 

"I guess that's what you do as a journalist," he said. "I was 10 feet away
from him, and I wouldn't shake hands with him. I was invited to the film
festival, and there was a long line of people who were invited to this big
smorgasbord, and he was there where that chair is, and Tom Hayden was
shaking hands with him and all these other different people and directors,
but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I think there's too much blood
on his hands. I'm trying to be true to Reinaldo's voice here; I'm not that
civilized where I want to go and shake hands and hang around with Fidel
Castro. Jack Nicholson has done that, or Gérard Depardieu is friends with
him or whatever. I can't be that casual." Schnabel's description of himself
as "not that civilized" was honest and resonant. He might have said
"unsophisticated," but only a sophisticated person would use that word. At
dinner in Albany Schnabel spoke of people as being either "bums" or
"mensches." Bums were betrayers. Mensches were loyal to art and family. It
was simple, but it worked.

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/25/magazine/25SCHNABEL.html



The New York Times, November 2, 1986, Sunday, Late City Final Edition 

THE AVANT-GARDE COURTS CORPORATIONS 

BY CATHLEEN MCGUIGAN; Cathleen McGuigan writes on cultural subjects for
Newsweek 

KAREN BROOKS HOPKINS looked satisfied - so many people had wanted to attend
this year. The chief fund-raiser for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, an
institution usually known as BAM, Karen Hopkins was standing in what was
once the academy's ballroom, spotting lots of important people in the
crowd. They were so crammed around extra tables that the waiters could
hardly squeeze by with their trays of duckling and champagne. Over there
was Richard Gere, laughing it up with the painter JULIAN SCHNABEL. Dianne
Brill, the Valkyrie of the downtown disco set, was table hopping. Candice
Bergen and her husband, Louis Malle, were chatting with Bianca Jagger. 

But it was not the sight of all the stars that swelled Karen Hopkins's
heart that night. It was the fact that so many people from the staid
corporate world were there. The occasion was last month's opening night
gala of BAM's Next Wave Festival, the biggest assemblage of avant-garde
performing art in the country, and dozens of businessmen had put on black
tie and come to see the show. They had sat through the American premier of
Merce Cunningham's ''Roaratorio,'' a dance based on James Joyce's
''Finnegans Wake,'' with a cacophonous score by John Cage, which included
tape recorded barking dogs and crying babies. And then the business types
had stayed for dinner. They seemed happy. 

Karen Hopkins, whose official title at BAM is vice president for planning
and development, could see executives from American Telephone and
Telegraph, Schlumberger, Remy Martin Amerique, Bankers Trust and Barneys
New York. She could see real estate moguls. Three genera-tions of chairmen
of the board of Phillip Morris Companies Inc. were there - Joseph F.
Cullman, George Weissman and the current one, Hamish Maxwell. All these
business people had given big money to the avant-garde event, but Philip
Morris had outdone everyone else

Difference between corporations and party responsibility

[miychi]

On 2002.04.16 07:28 AM, "Ian Murray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> - Original Message -
> From: "Sabri Oncu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "PEN-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 3:11 PM
> Subject: [PEN-L:24950] Re: Binary scheme of democracy and centralism
> 
> 
>> Miyachi wrote:
>> 
>>> From the viewpoint of Stalinism, the content of
>>> centralization of power is not considered as a pair
>>> of centralization of leadership and decentralization
>>> of responsibility, but only centralization of leadership
>>> has been put forward.
>> 
>> Dear Miyachi,
>> 
>> I have served at a few of the most Stalinist institutions in the
>> world: US financial corporations. They talked about
>> centralization of leadership and decentralization of
>> responsibility incessantly. This is the way the US financial
>> corporations are organized and I doubt that non-financial
>> corporations are significantly different. Responsibility without
>> authority is one of the most painful experiences I have ever had,
>> where, in this context, with authority I mean ability to make
>> decisions.
>> 
>> What is the point of decentralized responsibility if those who
>> are responsible have no ability to make decisions?
>> 
>> Best,
>> Sabri
> =
> 
> To protect the leadership. It's called the musical chairs theory of
> unaccountability.
> 
> Ian
> 
Thank you for your reply
As for decentralized responsibility, party cell duty is regular report to
central committee and maintain  party's program. If he has not ability to
this duty, simply he must give up, or choose to change his duty. Here no
command exists. Only member's will and passion is required. In a sense This
type of organization is network-type like Al-Qaeda. On the contrary, for
example, in US financial corporations as you, You may decision business
yourself, but you must seek profit in decentralized responsibility. If you
fail to raise profit, you fire. It is the difference between party and
corporation. In reality you obey  corporations as unpaid worker but wage
form of payment hide this ruler-ruled relationship. Below is from "Capital"

The wage-form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the
working-day into necessary labour and surplus-labour, into paid and unpaid
labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corvée, the labour of the
worker for himself, and his compulsory labour for his lord, differ in space
and time in the clearest possible way. In slave 1abour, even that part of
the working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own
means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself
alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave's labour appears as
unpaid labour. [8] In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or
unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the
labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the
unrequited labour of the wage labourer.

Hence, we may understand the decisive importance of the transformation of
value and price of labour-power into the form of wages, or into the value
and price of labour itself. This phenomenal form, which makes the actual
relation invisible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation,
forms the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourer and
capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of
production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shifts
of the vulgar economists.

If history took a long time to get at the bottom of the mystery of wages,
nothing, on the other hand, is more easy to understand than the necessity,
the raison d' etre, of this phenomenon.

The exchange between capital and labour at first presents itself to the mind
in the same guise as the buying and selling of all other commodities. The
buyer gives a certain sum of money, the seller an article of a nature
different from money. The jurist's consciousness recognizes in this, at
most, a material difference, expressed in the juridically equivalent
formula: "Do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias." [9]
 
Regards
MIYACHI TATSUO
Psychiatric Department
Komaki municipal hosipital
1-20.JOHBUHSHI
KOMAKI CITY
AICHI PREF.
486-0044
TEL:0568-76-4131
FAX 0568-76-4145
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

Re: new frontiers for caring corporations

[Michael Perelman]

could you please send me a tee shirt with the logo?

http://www.cvworkingfamilies.org/current.html

On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 02:55:37PM -0800, Eubulides wrote:
> Corporate Voices for Working Families
> http://www.cvworkingfamilies.org/facts.html

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Foreign Sales Corporations update at WTO

[Lisa & Ian Murray]

Friday September 1 3:51 PM ET
Administration To Push Tax-Breaks

By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Over European objections, the Clinton administration will
continue to push for enactment of legislation creating new tax breaks for
U.S. companies that export goods or make them abroad, a senior
administration official said Friday.

The remarks came soon after the European Union rejected the U.S. proposal as
failing to rectify a violation of World Trade Organization rules, raising
the specter of a potential trade war.

``We are disappointed with (the Europeans') response to our proposal, with
the continued unwillingness of the EU to negotiate with us and with their
unwillingness to provide any constructive suggestions,'' the official who
spoke on condition of anonymity told reporters in a conference call.

``It is critical'' to press ahead with the legislation to meet an Oct. 1
deadline for U.S. tax compliance set by the World Trade Organization, he
said.

That body ruled in February that the current U.S. program, giving $4.1
billion in annual tax breaks to some 6,000 American companies that set up
export subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, is an illegal export subsidy. In
making the ruling, the WTO agreed with the EU's earlier claims.

The Foreign Sales Corporation program, created in 1984, enables the U.S.
companies, including Microsoft, Boeing, General Motors and United
Technologies, to reduce income taxes by 15 percent by creating export
subsidiaries in offshore tax havens such as the Virgin Islands and Barbados.
It was designed to offset an EU tax rebate given to European companies for
products sold overseas.

The WTO gave the United States an Oct. 1 deadline to comply or face possible
EU retaliation in the form of higher tariffs or other trade sanctions.

To replace the offshore tax program, the Clinton administration and key
lawmakers came up with the new legislation, which would create new tax
breaks applied equally to exports by U.S. companies and products they
manufacture abroad.

The bipartisan proposal would satisfy the WTO's objections by creating a new
system of taxes to replace a special exception, lawmakers and administration
officials say.

It cleared the House Ways and Means Committee by a 34-1 vote on July 27, and
the administration wants to push it through the full House and the Senate in
the last few days of the congressional session. Lawmakers plan to adjourn
for the year early next month.

``It still remains a priority for the chairman,'' said Greg Crist, spokesman
for Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas.

But the Europeans aren't satisfied by the proposed alternative. In a
statement Friday from its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, the EU said the
legislative proposal still violates WTO rules by improperly subsidizing U.S.
exports.

``The EU can't make it a subsidy by calling it one,'' the administration
official said a few hours later. ``We would be more than happy to negotiate
(with the Europeans) but ... we're left with no choice but to move forward
to meet the Oct. 1 deadline.''

``What we're trying to do is avoid a trade war. We're behaving
responsibly,'' the official insisted. ``If there's to be one, it will be in
their hands, not ours.''

European authorities are believed to be developing a list of $26 billion of
American products, or 17 percent of U.S. exports to EU member countries,
that would be targets of retaliatory sanctions, according to the European
American Business Council.

The proposed legislation would bring the U.S. tax system closer to those in
several European countries. By expanding the class of U.S. companies that
could benefit from tax breaks, it would cost American taxpayers $300 million
more a year than the current system, experts estimate.

-

[PEN-L:1977] INTERNATIONALIZE THE CORPORATIONS !

[U.P.secr.]

>  The  rapid  development  toward  the  political / environmental
>  catastrophes  has  reached  the  stage  where  only  those  
>  aiming  directly  at  terminating  the  transnational  corporations
>  are  entitled  to  call  themselves  progressive.

The  march  of  events  seems  accelerating.
Here  is  another  example  seen  on  Leftlink.
Ole,  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://home4.inet.tele.dk/peoples
 

LL:Shell Head Office Occupied

UKOOA (UK Oil Overthrow Association)

News release 9am Monday, January 4, 1999

Shell: Head Office Occupied 
Activists give taste of protests to come

At 9am environmental and human rights protesters began 
occupying  management  offices in Shell-Mex House, The Strand, 
London. The activists are  barricaded  into the offices and are 
refusing to leave. This is in solidarity  with  indigenous resistance 
to oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell in Nigeria  and to give a
foretaste of direct action to come. 

Today is the first day of work in the last year before the new
Millenium. The  activists have chosen this day to send a message 
to Shell and  other  transnational corporations that 
>1999  will  be a  year of  increased  globalisation  of  protest, and the 
>turning point  that they say will see the end  of  corporate  dominance. 

January 4 is also Ogoni Day, celebrated since 1993 when Shell was
forced from  Ogoni in the oil-rich Niger Delta by non-violent mass
mobilisation. Throughout  1997-98, occupations of oil facilities by 
the Ijaw ethnic group of  southern  Nigeria have grown in number 
and degree, cutting Nigeriaôs oil  output by up to  one third. Now the 
Ijaws have told Shell and other oil companies  to quit their
land by January 11, 1999 - or face eviction by the people.
Killings by  Shell-backed troops have already claimed the lives of at 
least 20  Ijaws since  the first deadline expired on 30 December.

The protesters in London are demanding compliance with the Ijawôs
demands to  leave their traditional lands and for an end to corporate-
backed  military  repression. Live footage of the protest will be relayed 
directly  from Shellôs  own offices to an internet website at
<<http://www.kemptown.org/shell>www.kemptown.org/shell> using a
lap-top  computer  and mobile phone.

A spokesperson said,  õThe violent militarisation of the oil
producing  areas in  Nigeria are indicative of the global militarisation 
of commerce.
Moreover, oil  industry-derived climate change is causing more global 
disruption,  and  restructuring and oil mergers are causing massive job losses.
Shell and the  other oil transnationals are bad news for everyone  ultimately
even for  shareholders. We call for no more oil.æ

Further information is available from (+44) (0171) 561 9146
Video footage of the protest, shot inside the building, may be
available from  (+44) (0) 966 137925. You can also check out the website at
<<http://www.kemptown.org/shell>www.kemptown.org/shell>

end
==
 Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List
   
http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html
  
   The Year 2000 Bug - An Urgent Sustainability Issue
  http://www.peg.apc.org/~psutton/grin-y2k.htm

Re: Poli. Sci. and the Corporations

[Michael Hoover]

> The following shows that poli. science ignores the roles of
> corporation.  Economics goes one step further.  We talk about "firms,"
> but almost nothing in the economics literature ever mentions the role of
> corporate power.
> A Not So Academic Oversight
> By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
> The American Political Science Association's annual convention recently
> came through town, filling up Washington, D.C. hotels with thousands of
> academics ready to present their latest research findings.
> Browsing through the convention's program, we hoped to learn of new
> findings on the role of corporations in the political process. Instead,
> we
> found that there appeared to be virtually no papers on or even
> referencing
> corporate power.
> --
> Michael Perelman

US political science has long been dominated by those arguing virtues of 
interest group pluralism approach (even as 1950s pluralist assertions that 
"elites" have little effect on decisionmaking receded in favor of talking 
about "plural elites").  High point for "science of politics" was 1950s/
1960s emergence of analysis drawing upon behavioralism and leading to 
proliferating studies in areas such as voting behavior because quantifiable 
data was available.  Recent decades have witnessed rise of "rational choice," 
"public choice," "social choice" poli sci that draws upon economics in 
constructing models based on procedural rules about rational self-
interested behavior of individuals.  This development has spawned plethora 
of studies about bureaucrats, lobbyists, politicians, voters.  One result 
of all this has been for poli sci people (with exception of folks in and 
around several dissident caucuses such as New Political Science) to be 
"merrily" distant from and silent about real-world political debates and 
struggles.  Michael Hoover

Trespassing in Cyberspace: Corporations Seek Control

[Nathan Newman]

I rank this case up as one of the top cases likely to shape property
rights in the new Net economy.  The judge in the case declared even
publicly available web sites to be private property from which any person
can be excluded based on "trespass" law.  In this case, the goal is to
exclude comparison shopping services, but the broader point is to allow
companies to condition access to information on the customer not using
that information in any way the provider objects to.  Potentially, this
could extend to prohibiting hostile reviews and without question is a way
to gut Supreme Court decisions that clearly made facts in database outside
copyright law and inherently in the public domain.

Here's the case:

Judge Halts eBay's Unwanted Hits

Judge says eBay likely to win suit against rival that uses Web crawler to
catalog auction site

Brenda Sandburg
The Recorder 
May 26, 2000 
 

Clarifying what constitutes trespassing on the Internet, a California
federal judge has blocked Bidder's Edge Inc. from using its Web crawler to
access eBay Inc.'s Internet auction site. 

Bidder's Edge, an auction aggregation site, allows consumers to comparison
shop online auctions. The company posts items that are available through
eBay, as well as other auction sites. When negotiations over a licensing
agreement broke down, eBay demanded that Bidder's Edge stop searching its
site. Bidder's Edge refused, and eBay filed suit seeking a preliminary
injunction. 

In eBay Inc. v. Bidder's Edge Inc., 99-21200, California Northern District
Court Judge Ronald Whyte concluded that eBay is likely to prevail on its
trespassing claim. 

"Under the circumstances present here, BE's ongoing violation of eBay's
fundamental property right to exclude others from its computer system
potentially causes sufficient irreparable harm to support a preliminary
injunction," Whyte wrote. 

Whyte dismissed the argument by Bidder's Edge that it cannot "trespass"
eBay's Web site because the site is publicly accessible. "EBay's servers
are private property, conditional access to which eBay grants the public,"
Whyte said. 

Some attorneys are concerned that the ruling could impact the free flow of
information over the Internet. Depending on how broadly the ruling is
construed, "it means everybody's got a right to pick and choose who comes
to their Web site and for what purposes," said Mark Lemley, a professor at
Boalt Hall School of Law. 

He said comparison shopping sites will go out of business since "there
will always be one party who doesn't like the idea that a consumer will
find out they can get a product for less money." 

But more troubling, Lemley added, the decision "makes the whole concept of
search engines tenuous." Under Whyte's ruling, anyone who is not
authorized to come to a site could be deemed a trespasser after the fact,
he said. Thus, "anyone who wants to block access to a search engine can do
so or give preferential treatment to a search engine." 

While not specifically addressing Whyte's ruling, Daniel Harris, a partner
at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison's Palo Alto, Calif., office who is
representing Tickets.com in a case that poses similar issues, said
applying trespass laws to the online community would be a "dangerous
precedent." He distinguished cases involving spam assaults on a server or
hackers breaking into a site and carrying out mischief to the activity of
search engines. 

However, eBay attorney Janet Cullum, a partner at Cooley Godward's Palo
Alto office, said Whyte "was careful to point out that Internet search
engines are not an issue here." 

For Cullum, the ruling establishes the right of Web-based businesses "to
control access to and use of their Web sites." 

Bidder's Edge disagrees that using its Web crawler to access eBay's Web
site constitutes electronic trespassing. 

The company's attorney, John Cotter, a partner with Boston-based Testa,
Hurwitz & Thibeault, said he was "pleased that the court recognized that
accessing of eBay's system has no impact on eBay operations." 

However, Whyte's ruling states that "if BE's activity is allowed to
continue unchecked, it would encourage other auction aggregators to engage
in similar recursive searching of the eBay system, such that eBay would
suffer irreparable harm from reduced system performance, system
unavailability or data losses." Whyte noted that Bidder's Edge had
accessed eBay's site approximately 100,000 times a day. 

Bidder's Edge plans to appeal Whyte's decision. A trial date has been set
for early in 2001. 

[PEN-L:114] Top Global Corporations

[Michael Eisenscher]

M),
which jumped 77 notches, to No.123, is set to become the first
foreign broker able to serve Japanese investors with a
nationwide retail network. Merrill is reopening, under its own
name, 33 branch offices of Yamaichi Securities Co., which
collapsed last year. And it has launched training centers for
Japanese brokers. In another groundbreaking development,
Travelers recently paid $1.6 billion for 25% of Nikko Securities
Co.

Until recently, such linkups would have been impossible for
Japanese institutions. But with the Japanese banking system in
peril, more tieups with stronger U.S. or European partners
seem likely. Predicts Michael J. Biondi, CEO of Wasserstein
Perella & Co., a global mergers firm: ''The problems have gotten
so severe that the gradualist approach [to Japan's financial
sector woes] may not suffice.''

Like their counterparts in banking and industry, Japanese
tech-based companies also have taken a plunge in this year's
Global 1000. Toshiba Corp., for example, dropped from No.162
to No.307. Hurt by weak personal computer sales at home,
Toshiba's net earnings fell by 89%, to $52 million, last year.

Elsewhere in the world, however, investors continue to be
dazzled by technology. The market capitalization of Microsoft
Corp. (MSFT) jumped 41%, to $209 billion, making that
company the second most valuable in the world, after GE.
U.S.-based Dell Computer Corp. (DELL) soared from No.177 to
No.63. In Europe, exciting new products helped Finnish
cell-phone superstar Nokia (NOK.A) impress investors and glide
from No.166 to No.87. And SAP, the German-based software
giant, has seen its orders explode as companies hustle to install
systems to cope with both the euro and the Year 2000 bug.

SAP now ranks as No.61 in the world, up from No.180 last year.
With his $55.6 billion in market cap, SAP CEO Hasso Plattner
has plenty of money to buy up talent. Instead of megadeals,
Plattner buys niche outfits with technologies to plug into SAP's
massive, companywide software systems. In recent months, for
example, he has picked up for an undisclosed sum Israel's
OFEK-tech Software Industries Ltd., which specializes in
warehouse logistics management. And SAP has increased its
stake in Germany's Kiefer & Veittinger, which produces
programs to automate company sales forces. The company
plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange on Aug.
3.

In telecommunications, meanwhile, the
mergers-and-acquisitions action is wilder. From L.M. Ericsson
(ERICY) in Sweden to Northern Telecom (NT) in Canada,
telecommunications companies are in a race for partners that
will help them create digital systems capable of carrying voice
and data via mobile phones, satellites, or cable. The decision of
AT&T (T) and cable provider Tele-Communications Inc. TCOMA
to team up--in a stock deal worth $48 billion--is likely to spur
further consolidation. ''What the world doesn't need is more
complexity,'' explains C. Michael Armstrong, chairman and CEO
of AT&T. Combining phone and cable companies makes sense,
''so that we can deliver all the communications service from a
single connection from one company,'' says Armstrong.

NO DEAL. Of course, as the global deal engine roars along,
there is no guarantee that all cross-border mergers--or even
those in single markets--will work out. Last winter's failed $100
billion tieup of Glaxo Wellcome PLC (GLX) and SmithKline
Beecham PLC (SBH) is a case in point. Despite their agreement
to work hand in hand, Glaxo chief Richard Sykes and
SmithKline's Jan Leschly could not overcome their differences.
In spite of what they said, analysts point out, both men wanted
to be top dog.

Antitrust worries also are delaying some pending deals.
European Union officials, for example, held up WorldCom Inc.'s
(WCOM) $37 billion purchase of MCI Communications Corp.
(MCIC) until MCI agreed to sell its major Net businesses. EU
Competition Commissioner Karel van Miert has vowed to
scrutinize all deals that could affect competition in Europe,
even when the companies aren't based in the EU.

Still, it seems likely that corporations most attuned to the
forces of global competition will continue to look for new
strategic opportunities--and, thus, new partners or acquisitions.
European companies hoping to pay for acquisitions in the U.S.
with stock will have to follow in the footsteps of such companies
as Daimler and Alcatel, whose accounts meet American
standards and whose stock is traded in the U.S.

More companies are doing just that. Executives from German
chemicals maker BASF--No.137 on the BUSINESS WEEK
list--were recently in New York to test the waters for a New York
Stock Exchange listing. ''It's a certificate of quality,'' says BASF
Chief Executive Jurgen Strube. But it also would allow the
company to pursue American takeover targets--and pay in
stock. ''In terms of opening up strategic options, it would be a
must,'' he says. If more CEOs start thinking like Strube, the age
of the global deal may be just beginning.

By Joseph Weber in Toronto, with bureau reports 

Re: Difference between corporations and party responsibility

[Sabri Oncu]

Miyachi wrote:

> Thank you for your reply
>
> As for decentralized responsibility, party cell duty is
> regular report to central committee and maintain  party's
> program. If he has not ability to this duty, simply he must
> give up, or choose to change his duty. Here no command exists.
> Only member's will and passion is required. In a sense This
> type of organization is network-type like Al-Qaeda. On the
contrary,
> for example, in US financial corporations as you, You may
decision
> business yourself, but you must seek profit in decentralized
> responsibility. If you fail to raise profit, you fire. It is
the
> difference between party and corporation.

I am not sure if there is a serious difference between party and
corporation, except from the objectives. Both are organizations
with objectives.

If in a "democratically centralized" party, that is, in a party
where leadership is centralized whereas responsibility is
decentralized, what is required is only the member's will and
passion, and there is no command, why do we need leaders, or a
program? Will and passion would suffice, wouldn't they?

Also, how are we going to decide whose duty is what and whether a
person has the ability to perform his/her duty?

I think these are important questions to discuss.

Thanks Miyachi for your contributions,

Sabri

P.S: I am against commands of any kind, by the way. Just say
please, please.

Re: Difference between corporations and party responsibility

[Sabri Oncu]

On another note, what happens if there are more than one
"democratically centralized" parties, each claiming to be the
vanguard of the working and allied classes? Which one gets to
lead the revolution?

Sabri

P.S: I lost the count of such vanguard parties in Turkey. There
are way too many.

Multinational Oil Corporations and US Foreign Policy

[Michael Pugliese]

 http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/oil1.htm

The silver tax lining for failing corporations

[joanna bujes]

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Robert Willens a tax 
expert, published in Barron's 8/26/02. FYI.

Joanna
___

Q. We've talked aobut some macro issues. How about some micro issues?

A. A lot of companies have sustained losses this year. When a company has a 
loss, it is allowed to carry back that loss to recover taxes that they paid 
in prior years. If the loss is not fully absorbed through the carry-back, 
the company may then carry forward the loss to reduce taxes it would 
otherwise have to pay in future years. The idea is to make sure companies 
in cyclical industries do not pay more taxes over a period of years than 
their counterparts in more stable industries. The idea was to strike an 
average taxable income over a period of time. Currently the carry-back 
period is limited to two years. But you can carry it forward for the next 
20 years to redue future taxes. In March of this year, Congress decided 
that for losses sustained in 2001 and 2002 -- only those two years -- 
companies could carry back the losses five years to recover prior taxes. 
That's been great for a lot of companies.

Q. I can imagine. Any in particular?

A. Lucent Technologies has received a check for $500 million in windfalls 
from the IRS. And they still have billions of dollars in loss 
carry-forwards. Literally, $6 billion of losses. The airlines qualify and 
UAL and US Airways have received refunds already.

Q. So things aren't as dire for some of these companies as they seem.

A. No, they never are.

Q. Any others like this?

A. Earlier in the year, the IRS issued a ruling in the case of a company 
that was sued by its shareholders because the company had issued false and 
misleading financial statements. A class-action lawsuit was instituted and 
a settlement payment was made to shareholders. The company asked the IRS 
whether or not it could get a tax deduction for that payment. If it could, 
the government would be in essence picking up 40% of the payout.

Q. And?

A. The IRS said it was deductible.

Q. Why?

A. The way you determine whether a payment is deductible is through the 
origin-of-the-claim doctrine. If the origin of a payment is a company's 
regular business activity, the payment is deductible. In this case, the IRS 
determined the origin of the claim was related to dissemination of 
financial information and the dissemination of financial information, false 
or otherwise, is a regular business activity. Ergo, the origin of the claim 
is a regular business activity and the payment  must be deducted.

Q. So, this has implications for Enron and WOrldCom and Adelphia?

A. Every single one of them will be able to deduct. That means that you and 
I and the guy around the corner are going to be, in essence, bearing 40% of 
this settlement. Really, it's amazing to a logical person who is not 
steeped in tax law because from a tax point of view, it is so clearly 
deductible. There was just no doubt about it.

[snip]

[PEN-L:1981] Re: INTERNATIONALIZE THE CORPORATIONS !

[Gregory Schwartz]

This is rather millenerian? "The rapid development towards the
political/environmental catastrophe"? That's what they said in ancient Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and Greece (since these societies have left us written words). We are
still here today, aren't we. It is simply called change! It's not good change; it
is change we have little control over, and perhaps that's why, just like in the
past, it seems rapid and suggests tomorrow's catastrphe. But it equally stands to
reason that no change historically has been without an injury to 'good,' in the
sense that good is scarcely to be found in the past few thousand years, at least.
Some would say (myself including) we have been living in 'catastrophe' conditions
since the development of speech, because that was the first time a human could
share with other humans and realise that he/she was not alone in feeling the fact
that today has replaced yesterday. "You never step into the same river twice." This
has nothing to do with 'change' as a temporal phenomena; only with its quality. We
will always feel that changes are "rapid" and may be even "towards a catastrophe,"
because they seem so rapid. So, the monopoly stage of capitalism might have seemed
to some to represent the few final seconds of jouissance before the armaggedon.
Well, Einstein's theory is again proven correct; one hundred years later we are
still labouring through those last few seconds.

Also, if I am chosing to fight homelessness in my neighbourhood, or the opression
of women, or for adequate day-care facilities for children, or capitalism as a
socio-cultural system generally, am I reactionary, because I am not fighting the
transnational corporation, per se? Does not the transnational corporation exist by
virtue that all those issues I have just mentioned worth fighting for have been
supressed by the very logic the corporation operate (i.e. capital over labour)? To
put _all_ your efforts into fighting the transnational corporation, and only the
transnational corporation, is tantamount to waving your fists at the enemy while
having the consequence of pushing him up to the higher ground and allowing him to
gain more leverage over you as the basis on which he stands (i.e. the suppressed
social costs) give him more room and firmer ground for manouvre. I would rather see
the ground sink under him as I and my comrades shovel it out, for the beast we are
attacking is no fist-fighter.

In solidarity,
Greg.

U.P.secr. wrote:

> >  The  rapid  development  toward  the  political / environmental
> >  catastrophes  has  reached  the  stage  where  only  those
> >  aiming  directly  at  terminating  the  transnational  corporations
> >  are  entitled  to  call  themselves  progressive.
>
> The  march  of  events  seems  accelerating.
> Here  is  another  example  seen  on  Leftlink.
> Ole,  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://home4.inet.tele.dk/peoples
>
>

--
Gregory Schwartz
Department of Political Science
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, Ontario
M3J 1P3
Canada
tel:  (416) 736-5265
fax:  (416) 736-5686

[Fwd: Re: [sixties-l] Re: Horowitz corporations]

[Carrol Cox]

A thread currently running on the sixties-l list produced a post that
offers an interesting perspective on this list's debate on efficiency,
etc.

Carrol

 Original Message 
Subject: Re: [sixties-l] Re: Horowitz corporations
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 01:27:20 -0700
From: Jeffrey Blankfort <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

As Bill Mandel says, " There are no easy answers and no formulaic
solutions," but there is a tendency in this country to view things from
a purely US perspective, such as the notion that the majority of people
in poorer countries will do anything to get into the United States, when
it is only the ones who desperately try, and either succeed or fail,
that we pay any attention to. Having spent considerable time over the
years in poor countries, I have not found the same eagerness to emigrate
to the US that one can mistakenly extrapolate from media reports of the
minority that do.

Some situations are worse than others, Haiti being one example. Many
Israelis on the other hand, who enjoy a relatively high standard of
living, find the society's religious overtones restricting while a
welcome mat from both the US and the Jewish community awaits them here.

For corporations, diversity is often a better indicator of success than
is productivity, and the quality of the product becomes secondary when
one has a monopoly. An example is the Levition Co. which is the largest
manufacturer of electrical products. Seventy years ago, Leviton was one
of some 50 manufacturers of light sockets, and far from the best,
although their product then was far superior than any you can buy today.
But Leviton's product line was much more extensive, so that when the
others fell by the wayside, mostly in the depression, it was left with
but two competitors, Eagle and Bryant, both of which manufactured a
superior socket, but not much more than that.  When Bryant gave up the
ghost about 10 or so years ago, Levition down-graded its quality and
then placed stickers on the new sockets that warned the consumers
against using anything higher than 60 watts (simply because the base of
the socket had been so reduced in size that anything higher might cause
a short).  What are we to make of the fact that superior sockets that
safely allowed one to use a 250 watt bulb were being manufactured 100
years and can not be found today, except second-hand, if you're lucky? 

Take your average appliance. Most of those made forty and fifty years
ago still work, while those manufactured today have a minimum life span
and those who buy them have no great expectations of their lasting even
a decade.  Of course, they have been persuaded by sophisticated
advertising to become a part of what has been called as "conspicuous
consumption," and that they should change their appliances, most of
which they don't need, as often as they change their car.

I do agree that most people put their living standard before everything
else, but the standards, like quality of life, are not universal. I have
lived on several occasions over a thirty-five year period in Rome, where
the definition of quality of life was more dependent on social relations
than on material acquisitions, although thanks to the apparently
unstoppable penetration of US/MacDonald cultural values into Italian
society, as into virtually every other on the planet, it has begun to
change for the worse.

Marty Jezer is correct in pointing out that corporations rally innovate,
their entrepreneurial skills being more concentrated on buying out their
competition, and when necessary, keeping an innovation off the market.
One of the biggest crimes of capitalist society is its use of fossil
fuel in the thousands of instances when solar energy would be more
practical and this foolishness has been imitated by third world
countries that should know better such as Cuba that have been
"colonized" by first-world technology.

The best thing that I can say about Israel is that the Israelis
understand that they cannot hinge their economic well-being on fossil
fuel.  Consequently, virtually every building in Israel has a solar
collector atop its roof. Is this an indication of capitalism's
superiority or simply realistic planning?

At the present time, as Bill points out. it does appear that some mix of
private ownership with a strong core of public welfare is the best
solution on the immediate horizon, but, in comparison with the present
mix enjoyed in other developed countries, the US is not even inside the
door. Although, since the fall of the USSR and the collapse of the East
Bloc there has been a major effort by international capital to destroy
the strong welfare institutions and worker protections in the other
developed countries, the like of which Americans could only dream of --
and which are considered socialistic here -- all of these countries are
l

Go down, Moses, laissez my corporations faire . . .

[Timework Web]

Cross threading right along, a triumphal Lochner era ring is evident in
Laughlin's title, "The Unions v. Higher Wages". The Lochner verdict
(striking down a unamimous New York State law to regulate the hours of
work in bakeries) was rendered in 1905, the same year Laughlin gave his
address to the Citizens' Industrial Association of America, which was
published in the JPE the following year.


Tom Walker

Go down, Moses, laissez my corporations faire . . .

[Timework Web]

Cross threading right along, a triumphal Lochner era ring is evident in
Laughlin's title, "The Unions v. Higher Wages". The Lochner verdict
(striking down a unamimous New York State law to regulate the hours of
work in bakeries) was rendered in 1905, the same year Laughlin gave his
address, which was published in the JPE the following year.

Tom Walker

Abraham Lincoln, the Corporations and Ralph Nader

[Jurriaan Bendien]

According to the Socialist Worker, "The Green Party campaign of Ralph Nader
for president in 2000 was a lightning rod for grievances throughout U.S.
society - and helped to bring together activists from different movements
who had never worked together before. But while elections do matter,
struggle matters more. That's how our side has won in the past--and will
again in the future." (November 8, 2002).

According to Kevin Phillips, in his new book Wealth & Democracy, it was in
January, 2000, on the eve of the stock market crash, that a movement to
draft Ralph Nader to run for president (not exactly a "mainstream" crowd, he
says) - rallied at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, at which they
reportedly read from a letter of November 21st, 1864, written by Abraham
Lincoln to Colonel William F. Elkins.

Looking beyond the American civil war (1861-65), Abraham Lincoln had
prophesied:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high
places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor
to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people
until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is
destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country
than ever before, even in the midst of war."

Yea, verily, amen. Phillips then claims the Lincoln passage which was read
out by
the Nader supporters, and often quoted by "anti-corp" people, had been taken
from the book "Democracy At Risk - Rescuing Main street from Wall street" by
Jeff Gates, a Georgia Green Party activist, who, in turn, got it from page
40 in "The Lincoln Encyclopedia" by Archer H. Shaw (New York: Macmillan,
1950).

For his part, Archer H. Shaw sourced the quote to p. 954 of Volume 2 of
"Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait", by Emanuel Hertz (New York: Horace
Liveright Inc, 1931) but the full quote actually provided by Hertz himself
was:

"Yes, we may all congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its
close. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of
the flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country's
altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying hour for the
republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me
and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the
war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high
places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to
prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all
wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel
at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before,
even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove
groundless."

Some American historians questioned the authenticity of this exact
quote. So did folksinger Pete Seeger, who sent a fax to the Abraham
Lincoln Association seeking verification.

Correctly so, because no such letter actually exists in the
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, a chronological
compilation with supplements compiled by the Abraham
Lincoln Association.

The quote was in fact originally cited in Hertz's 1931 book
without providing any date, source, or other identifying
information. Caroline Thomas Harnsberger quoted it
in her book "The Lincoln Treasury" (Wilcox & Follett Co., 1950)
citing the earliest known documentation for it by
George H. Shibley in "The Money Question" (Chicago:
Stable Money Publishing Company, 1896), but she said
that "this letter, often quoted is considered by the Abraham
Lincoln Society to be spurious"

Emmanuel Hertz's "The Hidden Lincoln; from the Letters and Papers of William
H. Herndon" (New York: Viking Press, 1938) says Herdon compiled many of
Lincoln's utterances, written and oral, into a collection, which served as
a basis for subsequent "authoritative" treatises on Abraham Lincoln.

But Herndon himself was critical of various "big-name" authors who
relied mainly on his compilation for primary sources: "They are
aiming, first, to do a superb piece of literary work; second, to
make the story with the classes, as against the masses. It will
result in delineating the real Lincoln about as
well, as does a wax figure in the museum."

Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who owned almost all of
his father's papers, dismissed the quote as inauthentic in an
unpublished letter on March 12, 1917. He said he tracked
the source of the quote to a Spiritualist séance in an Iowa
country town, and that the quote had supposedly been voiced by Abraham
Lincoln through a medium. Robert stated "[B]elief in its a

Corporations by their very nature are psychopathic

[Louis Proyect]

Move Over, Michael Moore!
by Sheelah Kolhatkar
In the soon-to-be-released documentary The Corporation, a commodities 
trader named Carlton Brown stares into the camera and describes his 
first reaction upon hearing that two airplanes had crashed into the 
World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

"How much is gold up?" he wondered. "My God, gold must be exploding!" He 
explains that he and his clients went on to mint money as gold futures 
shot up and the buildings came down.

Craven attempts to capitalize on tragedy aside, corporations and those 
who operate them are destined to behave amorally because, well, that’s 
what they do, according to The Corporation, a film that won the World 
Cinema Documentary Audience award at Sundance and opens in New York on 
June 30. The filmmakers’ reasoning is simple: Corporations by their very 
nature are psychopathic.

"Both my parents are psychologists and I did my first degree in 
psychology, and in Psych 101 you learn that a psychopath is a person who 
is pathologically unable to care about another person," said Joel Bakan, 
a 44-year-old law professor at the University of British Columbia and 
one of the film’s co-creators. "In law school, the first thing you learn 
about the corporation is that it always has to act in its own 
self-interest. So if that person was a human, it would be a psychopath."

Mr. Bakan wrote a book about it, exploring the corporation’s 150-year 
history and its legal status as a person with a mandate to pursue only 
its own economic self-interest. The film was made concurrently, 
co-directed by 48-year-old Mark Achbar, who in 1992 made 
cult-documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, and 
39-year-old Jennifer Abbott. After premiering at the Toronto Film 
Festival last year, the film was scooped up by Zeitgeist Films for U.S. 
distribution. But the process leading up to that triumphant moment took 
nearly seven years. In the course of the production, the filmmakers 
interviewed economists and academics, philosophers and C.E.O.’s, 
investigating what a modern corporation is and what it means, and 
whether any of it is a good thing.

"We wanted to alienate people from the normalcy of corporate culture and 
to try to encourage a kind of critical distance, so that people can see 
the corporate waters we’re all swimming in," said Mr. Achbar, without 
flinching. "Because we’re lost in it. And there are aspects of that 
world that are highly problematic, and we take them for granted and 
accept them. And we shouldn’t. We should question them."

full: http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage6.asp
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

[PEN-L:5973] Americans want protection from corporations

[D Shniad]

7

AMERICANS ARE ANGRY AT CORPORATE EXCESS AND WANT THEIR
GOVERNMENT TO STEP IN

Focus groups and an opinion poll, conducted in May-
June, 1996, show Americans are so frightened by their
economic vulnerability they are willing to take a
chance on government intervention.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Anger and anxiety over layoffs, wage stagnation,
declining benefits and the movement of jobs overseas
has left the American public with a starkly negative
view of the actions and motivations of corporate
America. Ire at large corporations crosses race, class
and political lines and is not waning despite the
upbeat economic news of the last several months. It's
so intense that, for the majority of citizens, it now
rivals or exceeds anger at government. Most significant
and most surprising, anger at corporate America has
begun to translate into broad public support for
government action to make corporations act more
responsibly - and has the potential to change the
nation's political landscape.

These are central findings of a public opinion survey
commissioned by the Preamble Center for Public Policy
in order to better understand public anger at
corporations and how it relates to issues of public
policy and to American politics. The study, and a
corresponding series of focus groups with middle and
working class Americans, reveal that the American
people have become firm in their belief that
corporations are good investments but bad citizens. For
example, when asked to assign corporate America letter
grades for its performance in various areas, 78% of
respondents give companies good grades (an A or a B)
for making profits. "When it comes to keeping jobs in
the US" and "being loyal to employees," however, seven
in ten people say companies are not getting the job
done (giving companies a C, D or F in these areas).

Between 70% and 80% of the public recognize "serious
problems" in the way corporations put the interests of
their executives and shareholders ahead of their
employees and society, and identify greed "as the
motivation behind new waves of corporate layoffs and
downsizing," rejecting the corporate argument that such
actions are necessitated by competitive pressures.

These attitudes are held across the economic and
political spectrum, and are especially evident among
the core middle class workforce hard-hit by corporate
layoffs and downsizing. This attitude has remained
intense and shows no sign of abating - even as media
coverage of downsizing has dwindled, and despite the
recent stream of positive economic news. The public now
realizes that corporate profitability does not
guarantee worker well being (even though much economic
policy making in recent years has been based on exactly
that assumption).

The study also demonstrates that public anger at
corporations has significant political and policy
implications as it begins to translate into popular
support for more aggressive efforts to alter corporate
behavior. While anger at government remains high,
people are so fed up with corporate behavior and so
frightened by their economic vulnerability that they
are willing to take a chance on government
intervention.

Consequently, seven in ten people (69%) favor
government action to promote more responsible corporate
behavior and to penalize bad corporate citizenship.
Large majorities favor a host of specific policy
approaches, many of which are already part of the
political debate - from "living wage" laws, to proposed
New Jersey legislation designed to penalize corporate
downsizers, to Minnesota's law requiring corporations
that get tax breaks for job creation, but do not create
new jobs, to pay back the money.

The survey results also indicate that issues of
corporate accountability and economic fairness may well
have increasing salience in the electoral debate. This
opinion climate creates the potential for a new kind of
political dialogue - the public is increasingly eager
to hear what their leaders have to say about the
problems created by big business. Those who present a
strong critique of corporate behavior and show how
proactive government action can be a remedy will be
striking a responsive chord.

Americans are much more likely to support leaders who
favor such policies as setting standards for
responsible corporate behavior and rewarding companies
that meet the standards, denying tax deductions for CEO
raises granted at the same time layoffs are occurring,
and requiring large companies to provide basic benefits
to all employees. And when the public faces a choice
between a politician focusing on the problem of
corporate greed and one attacking big, bad government,
public sentiment will increasingly be with the former.
In 1994, simply being the more antigovernment candidate
was often enough; in the future, it won't be that
simple. Progressive leaders focusing on corporate
misbehavior as a central cause of economic problems for
workin

Walden Bello on dismantling corporations and their proxies

[Lisa & Ian Murray]

<http://www.policyalternatives.ca/>

Should corporate-led institutions be reformed or disempowered?
It's not off the wall to think of dismantling corporations
[Part II of The most crucial task facing the world's NGOs]

by Waldon Bello
The CCPA Monitor, February 2001, pp 14-16

The battle against the global corporate agenda will be largely decided by the
tactics adopted by the world's non-government organizations (NGOs). And these
tactics in turn depend not only on the balance of forces, but will turn even
more fundamentally on our answer to the key question: Should we seek to
transform or to disable the main institutions of corporate-led globalization?

Institutions should be saved and reformed they're functioning, while defective,
but nevertheless can be reoriented to promote the interests of society and the
environment. They should be abolished if they have become fundamentally
dysfunctional.

Can we really say that the International Monetary Fund can be reformed to bring
about global financial stability, the World Bank to reduce poverty, and the WTO
to bring about fair trade? Are they not, in fact, imprisoned within paradigms
and structures that create outcomes that contradict these objectives? Can we
truly say that these institutions can be re-engineered to handle the multiple
problems that have been thrown up by the process of corporate-led globalization?

The answer to all these questions, realistically, is NO. So, instead of trying
to reform these institutions, would it in fact be more realistic--and
"cost-effective," to use a horrid neoliberal term--to abolish or at least
disempower them, and create totally new institutions that do not have the
baggage of illegitimacy, institutional failure, and Jurassic mindsets that
attach to the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO?

Disabling the corporation

Indeed, I would contend that the focus of our efforts these days is not to try
to reform the multilateral agencies, but to deepen the crisis of legitimacy of
the whole system. Gramsci once described the bureaucracy as but an "outer trench
behind which lay a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks." We must no
longer think simply in terms of neutralizing the multilateral agencies that form
the outer trenches of the system, but of disabling the transnational
corporations that are the fortresses and earthworks that constitute the core of
the global economic system.

I am talking about disabling not just the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank, but
the transnational corporation itself. And I am not talking about a process of
"reregulating" the TNCs but of eventually dismantling them as fundamental
hazards to people, society, the environment, to everything we hold dear.

Is this off the wall? Only if we think that the shocking irresponsibility and
secrecy with which theMonsantos and Novartises have foisted biotechnology on
us is a departure from the corporate norm. Only if we also see as deviations
from the norm Shell's systematic devastation of Ogoniland in Nigeria, the Seven
Sisters' conspiracy to prevent the development of renewable energy sources in
order to keep us slaves to a petroleum civilization, Rio Tinto's and the mining
giants' practice of poisoning rivers and communities, and Mitsubishi's recently
exposed 20-year cover-up of a myriad of product-safety violations to prevent a
recall that would cut into profitability. Only if we think that it is acceptable
business practice to pull up stakes, lay off people, and destroy
long-established communities in order to pursue ever-cheaper labour around the
globe--a process that most TNCs now engage in.

NO, these are not departures from normal corporate behaviour. They are normal
corporate behaviour.   And corporate crime against people and the environment
has, like the Mafia, become a way of life because, as the British philosopher
John Gray tells us, "Global market competition and technological innovation have
interacted to give us an anarchic world economy."

 To such a world of anarchy, scarcity, and conflict created by global
laissez-faire, Gray continues, "Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Malthus are better
guides than Adam Smith or Friedrich von Hayek, with their Utopian vision of a
humanity united by "the benevolent harmonies of competition." Smith's world of
peacefully competing enterprises has, in the age of the TNC, degenerated into
Hobbes' "war of all against all."

Gray goes on to say that, "As it is presently organized, global capitalism is
supremely ill-suited to cope  with the risks of geo-political conflict that are
endemic in a world of worsening scarcities. Yet a regulatory framework for
coexistence and cooperation among the  world's diverse economies figures in no
historical or political agenda."

Recent events underline his point. When the ice  cap on the North Pole is
melting at an unprecedented  r

Re: Re: Walden Bello on dismantling corporations an

[Patrick Bond]

> Date:  Mon, 26 Feb 2001 18:34:03 -0800
> From:  Peter Dorman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I appreciate the spirit behind Bello's piece (as exerpted here), but, stripped to
> its elements, it strikes me as much too reformist.  It hearkens back to the pre-1982
> dispensation as a sort-of golden age, and it presents as its agenda all those
> progressive things that governments were supposed to do back then but generally
> didn't or at least not very well.  Its call to dismantle the TNC seems to be hedged
> by support for nationally-based private corporations that are supposedly more
> responsive, and it seeks no discernable management over the global trading system.

Comrade Peter, would this perhaps have something to do with the 
balance of forces? You want Zoellick/Barchefsky or O'Neill/Summers to 
manage int'l trade/finance more than they do now? That's the 
implication of continuing to promote the world-state-building 
project, I fear. Or, as you've pointed out so eloquently, even where 
eco-regulation is vital at the global scale, we get Kyoto emissions 
trading that just makes matters worse...

Trade and Corporations: free trade as strategic trade

[Ian Murray]

Came across the below as I was searching for further work on Roger
Sugden's use of "divide & rule" in the international division of
labor. That essay -- Divide and Rule by Transnational Corporations--
builds on Stephen Marglin's "What do Bosses do?" and can be found in
the excellent "The Nature of the Transnational Firm" edited by
Christos Pitelis and Roger Sugden, Routledge 2000. The essay below
gets very interesting around page 7 and it's not a very long paper.
Reads well too.

Ian

==

Strategic Trade Policy Considered: National Rivalry vs Free Trade vs
International Competition, 1997.
Authors: Keith Cowling & Roger Sugden

< http://business.bham.ac.uk/business/papers/dp1.pdf >

Trade and Corporations: free trade as strategic trade

[Rob Schaap]

Truss disappointed with US subsidies deals
CANBERRA, Dec 12 AAP|Published: Wednesday December 12, 7:49 AM

http://www.theage.com.au/breaking/

  The United States will not cut billions of dollars in farm subsidies despite
a plea in Washington from a high-level group of Australians, including
Agriculture Minister Warren Truss.

  And in a further blow to Australia, it appeared the White House had done a
deal with Congress to
exclude key commodities such as sugar and citrus in any free trade agreements.

  Mr Truss, in Washington to lobby for cuts to the $A340 billion financial
support package for US farmers, said the deal took US farming to a new low. 

  "From the point of view of our delegation, we have therefore been, I guess,
disappointed, that it seems that the US will indeed put in place a significant
farm subsidy program for the years ahead," Mr Truss told ABC radio.

  The government was especially concerned with the clear intent of the farm
lobby to seek to entrench a mentality of farm subsidies in the USA, Mr Truss said.

  "It is obvious, that the US, which was once proudly boasted to be the most
efficient farmers in the world, have now degenerated to a situation where US
farmers are dependent upon the taxpayers for around half their income," he said.

  Yesterday US farmers said Australia's bid for the US to cut support for
American farmers had as much chance at success as snow falling in summer.

  American National Farmers Union president Leland Swenson (Leland Swenson)
said the US would comply with world trade rules but its prime concern was to
look after its farmers.

  Today Mr Truss said some of the US deals done to secure votes to ensure the
subsidies proposal would become law meant it would be almost impossible to
include key commodities in any free trade agreement with Australia.

  "Things like textiles and steel have been identified as areas where
particular procedures will have to be followed before any administration will
be able to negotiate arrangements," Mr Truss said.

  The laws are to be debated in the US Senate this week.

RE: Re: Difference between corporations and party responsibility

[Devine, James]

Sabri Oncu writes:
>On another note, what happens if there are more than one "democratically
centralized" parties, each claiming to be the vanguard of the working and
allied classes? Which one gets to lead the revolution?<

the one that's correctly following Lenin. It should be obvious, comrade!
JD

Re: Go down, Moses, laissez my corporations faire . . .

[JKSCHW]

In a message dated 6/6/00 8:57:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

<< ross threading right along, a triumphal Lochner era ring is evident in
 Laughlin's title, "The Unions v. Higher Wages". The Lochner verdict
 (striking down a unamimous New York State law to regulate the hours of
 work in bakeries) was rendered in 1905, the same year Laughlin gave his
 address to the Citizens' Industrial Association of America, which was
 published in the JPE the following year. >>

What is a unanimous NYS Law? Btw the Lochner case prompted the most famous 
dissent in US S.Ct history, where Holmes fulmigated that "the 14th Amendment 
does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's _Social Statics_., presaging modern 
economic regulatuion jurisprudence. --jks

[PEN-L:5084] Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy

[Michael Perelman]

Forwarded message:
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Wed Jul 10 17:28:07 1996
From: D Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: For your lists
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Sam Lanfranco),
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (michael perelman)
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 17:28:04 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Gentlemen,

I'm not tuned in to Pen-l or labor-l these days.  (I'm on holidays.)  But 
I thought you might want to forward this to your respective lists.


Cheers,

Sid Shniad
===

NATIONAL TEACH-IN ON CORPORATIONS, EDUCATION, AND  
DEMOCRACY  
  
* Call to Chicago: End Corporate Rule! *  
  
  Historically, corporations were created with the purpose of serving the  
public good.  Yet today's corporate reality contrasts deeply with the  
original role of corporations in a democratic American society.  Both in  
America and across the world, people are struggling with the reality of  
corporate rule and corporate abuses.  It is time for justice-minded  
individuals to come together and organize a broad movement to take power  
away from corporations.  Such a movement needs a common language, a  
common understanding of history, and a shared vision.  We propose to do  
everything in our power to make this movement a reality.  
  
* The Teach-In: The idea *  
  
  Over the course of the third week of October of this year, people across  
the country will participate in the National Teach-In on Corporations,  
Education, & Democracy.  This teach-in is intended to bring together those  
who have struggled against corporate rule and those who are concerned  
about the harm caused to families, communities, ecosystems, and  
individuals by corporations.  This teach-in will give give millions of  
individuals the opportunity to join the movement to shift power away from  
corporations and back to the people.  
  
  On every participating university campus and in each community hall  
people will gather to educate each other about the realities of corporate  
rule:  
 
- About the hidden history of corporations in the United States, and about  
how previous generations defined what corporations could and could not  
do.  
 
- About the many alternatives to giant corporations that exist in the form of  
cooperatives, locally based exchange, and economic democracy in general.  
 
- About the culture of democracy and free expression, which has been so  
twisted and wrung dry by corporate manipulation, yet still persists in  
America.  
 
- About what corporations have done to weaken and to take advantage of  
our public and private universities, and what we can do to take our schools  
back.  
 
- About the harms corporations have caused us all, and strategies we can  
employ to bring our common resources to bear on our common corporate  
problem.  
  
  A National Teach-In of such scale is no small thing to organize.  Lists  
must be compiled, mailings must be mailed, materials must be prepared,  
calls must be made.  This summer, organizers and activists will convene in  
Chicago for an organizing conference in preparation for the October  
Teach-In.  
  
* Chicago! *  
  
  The Democratic National Convention will take place in Chicago this  
August, and will be the focus of great protest and celebration. This gives  
us an opportunity to come together with many others working for justice.  
We do not necessarily go to protest, or participate in the Convention, but  
to convene.  On August 16 & 17th we will convene an organizing  
conference in preparation for the National Teach-In on Corporations,  
Education, & Democracy.  
  The Organizing Conference will begin at 10:00am on Friday, August 16th,  
and will take place at the International Conference Center in north Chicago  
(4750 North Sheridan Road).  Spaces at the center for a limited number of  
overnight lodgers have been reserved.  Participants are asked to contribute  
$30 towards the costs of lodging and food for the conference; checks should  
be made payable to the National Teach-In Organizing Committee and  
should be sent to 29 East Wilson St #201, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.  
  
  It is time for the Teach-In on Corporations, Education, and Democracy.  
And once the Teach-In has taken place,  it will be time for bigger and  
better things.  Let's work at the task at hand.  Please join us.  
  
* Contacts: *  
  
Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy, 2718 Painter Ave, #C105,  
Knoxville, TN, 37919 (423) 546-3945, [EMAIL PROTECTED] - c/o Rob  
Inerfeld  
  
Democracy Unlimited of Wisconsin Cooperative, 29 East Wilson, Madison,  
Wisconsin 53703 (608) 255-6629, [EMAIL PROTECTED] - c/o Ben  
Manski  
  
Please contact us if you want to be kept up to date as planning for the  
Teach-In progresses.  
  
Rob Inerfeld  
Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy  
2718 Painter Ave, #C105, Knoxvill

[PEN-L:5096] Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy

[Patrick Bond]

>From Jo'burg it was good to see Sid's post on this issue.

Just spent yesterday in our new Constitutional Court trying to help write
out corporate fundamental rights from the Bill of Rights; Ralph Nader has
been exceptionally helpful in putting this onto the agenda here, pointing
out the many ways that corporations trump individuals' fundamental
rights when the former claim right to association, privacy, political
expression, etc.

We'll know in a few weeks whether the Court gives an interpretation in
our favour. If anyone has any scare stories about corporations trampling
people via claiming fundamental rights, send 'em along to me and we can
continue building public pressure on the judges (most small-l
liberal-inclined) to do the right thing.

Ciao!

public confidence in corporations (formerly The Emporer Has NoClothes!)

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Here is another shot at public confidence in major companies.  It is a
byproduct of my work for a project at Johns Hopkins.  In that project, I was
interested, among other, in the confidence levels public places in major
companies in different countries.

I used the World Values Survey (WVS) conducted in 1991 by a team under the
direction of Ronald Ingelhard.  WVS asks respondents a number of standard
questions (similar those found in General Social Survey conducted annually
in the US) on various social, political and economic topics. The 1991 WVS
was conducted in nearly 50 countries, where representative samples of the
population were selected. I excluded former "Communist" countries from the
analysis.

The survey asked, among other, about the Respondent's confidence in various
types of public institutions, such as government agencies, the media,
education , church, unions, or major companies (altogether 12 types of
institutions).  The reponses were recorded on a 4-point scale ranging from
"a lot" to "none at all."  

What I was intersted is how individals scored on their confidence in major
companies relative to their confidence in other public institution (direct
comparisons of responses are meaningless since "a lot" or "none at all" mean
different things for different people).  Consequently, I calculated a score
indicating how an individual respondent's confidence in major companies
differ  from his/her average confidence level in other public institutions.
The score ranges from -3 to +3 -- the lower the number the lower the
confidence in major companies relative to other public instituions.  I then
averaged these scores for each country.  The results are displayed in the
table below.

PUBLIC CONFIDENCE IN MAJOR COMPANIES RELATIVE TO OTHER 
PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS, BY COUNTRY

in the ascending order of confidence level

country   N  Mean Confidence 
 level   St. dev.
skorea 1,239   -0.610   0.747
turkey   938   -0.598   0.829
denmark  978   -0.267   0.678
iceland  675   -0.223   0.669
wgermany   2,093   -0.184   0.699
ireland  989   -0.160   0.711
nireland 300   -0.158   0.624
finland  535   -0.141   0.638
japan987   -0.123   0.531
india  2,393   -0.122   0.766
austria1,429   -0.100   0.659
usa1,797   -0.096   0.657
norway 1,224   -0.093   0.610
canada 1,711   -0.074   0.661
nethland   1,000   -0.057   0.616
britain1,433   -0.048   0.712
argentin   1,002   -0.004   0.730
portugal   1,1400.008   0.661
belgium2,7360.009   0.688
mexico 1,5060.021   0.744
chile  1,5000.037   0.818
spain  4,0700.046   0.680
sweden   9510.077   0.659
s africa   2,4900.160   0.706
brazil 1,7750.170   0.838
france   9020.188   0.671
italy  2,0050.258   0.765

source: author's calculations based on the 1991 World Values Survey data

NOTES:
Mean confidence level = an average score comparing public confidence in
major companies to confidence in other public institutions; the lower the
score, the lower the confidence in major companies level;

N = number of respondents in each country used to calculate the mean
confidence level;

St. dev = standard deviation from the mean (for those statistically
challenged: greater numbers indicate greater variety in confidence levels in
a country).

Institutions used in comparisons: church, armed forces, education, legal
system, press, unions, police, parliament, civil service, major companies,
social security, and TV.

-

The greatest variety in confidence in major companies was found in Brazil,
closely follwoed by Turkey -- the least variety was found in Japan.  Souht
Korean public was most distrustful toward major corporations, Italians --
most trustful (sic!).

What is really surprising is that countries that conservative pundits like
Fukuyama portray as paragons of public confidence in major corporations --
such as Japan or West Germany -- turned out to have very low levels of
public confidence in major corporations.  France and Italy, on the other
hand, Fukuyama's paragons of distrust in big business, turned out quite
high.  The US is in the middle -- our confidence in major companies is below
that of our neighbors -- Canadians and Mexicans.

Again, these are relative numbers, they say that in the US, average
confidence in major companies is somewhat below public trust in all other
public institutions combined (a negative mean confidence score); In Canada,
it is also below, but not as much a

[PEN-L:2090] corporations, non-profits, professors, boss loss.

[James Devine]

1. Mason Clark suggests that "corporations are owned by the 
state." But aren't corporations treated as "legal persons" under 
US law? How can a "legal person" be owned by the state?

There _are_ "state capitalist" organizations, such as the US 
Tennessee Valley Authority; they are more common outside the US. 
Most of these break even or run at a loss, subsidizing 
privately-owned business.

2. Speaking of non-profit organizations, I think the best way to 
treat non-profits (such as the university where I work) is, as a 
first step, to see them as a modern version of simple commodity 
production, one that is encouraged and sanctioned by law. There 
are certain services that capitalism needs (in the eyes of the 
powers that be, not necessarily in terms of what's ultimately 
good for capitalism) that will not be produced by profit-seeking 
organizations. 

They act like simple commodity producers since the goal of a 
non-profit is to provide a specific service and to break even, 
rather than to seek a maximum profit. Because of the state 
sanctioning, one might see them as veering toward what's called 
"parastatal" in Latin America. 

These organizations may produce surplus-value (I don't want to 
get into _that_ issue) but if they do, the surplus-value is 
realized as profits by profit-seeking organizations. It's 
important to realize (as it were) that there is often a 
difference between the organization whose workers produce the 
surplus-value and the organization(s) whose managers are able to 
approprate that surplus-value as profit. (That's one of the 
things that the so-called "transformation problem" is about.)

Of course, non-profits, though not purely capitalist 
organizations, are subordinated to a capitalist society.

3. Do professors produce commodities? Yes and no. There are 
people who see my services as useful, so I produce use-values. 
The organization as a whole produces a package of services. It's 
not just the education; they also want their kids out of the 
house; the students of course want to meet potential future 
mates, play sports, get drunk away from the prying eyes of their 
parents, etc. (Note: most of my students are 18-22 years old.) 

These people are willing to pay money for the university's  
services (in the form of tuition). So far, we're producing 
commodities.  

The problem comes from the fact that the cost of producing the 
service exceeds the tuition & room & board price. Here's where 
the official sanctioning (state aid to colleges in the form of 
scholarships and tax breaks to those who give money to colleges) 
comes in. So I would guess you would see what my university 
produces as "semi-commodities." 

I think the fact that you can't fit what my university produces 
totally into the conceptual box labelled "commodity" is not a 
problem. It says that our understanding of commodities helps us 
understand universities, but we need other knowlege in addition.

4. Are professors in the working class? This is an issue that is 
answered only in practice.  An old Russian guy who's currently 
out of favor (and who I am surprised to be citing twice this week 
when I usually don't cite him at all) once said something like 
that classes are created only in struggle. 

Of course, this reflects the E.P. Thompson-type view that the 
existence of classes involve subjective class consciousness and 
organization as opposed to the more "structuralist" view that 
classes exist as objective positions (slots) in the social 
structure (as in E. O. Wright's old class-structure diagram). I 
think both perspectives have something to say. Marx's theory was 
about how objective positions (classes in themselves) evolve 
toward -- or away from -- being subjective organizations (classes 
for themselves) in the process of capitalist accumulation and 
class struggle.

In the meantime, we have to see if coalitions involving both 
professors and workers (as normally defined) actually can work to 
promote the class interests of the proletarians. (In any event, 
people outside of academia need all the help they can get.) If it 
works (hope, hope, hope), then the view that professors 
objectively belong to the working class wins. We will see.

Of course, maybe not. Marx and Engels (in the COMMUNIST 
MANIFESTO) talk about the working class having petty-bourgeois 
allies and, if I remember correctly, sometimes benefitting from 
such alliances. So maybe even if professors are closer to being 
petty bourgeois than proletarian, it's a useful experiment to see 
if profs and proles can get together.

(Of course, we profs have to abandon our elitist attitudes.)

5. Tom Walker posts a story about the Canadian "boss loss" or 
"leech breech," part of the process of the competition upward of 
Canadian (and other) exec

Re: Walden Bello on dismantling corporations and their proxies

[Peter Dorman]

I appreciate the spirit behind Bello's piece (as exerpted here), but, stripped to
its elements, it strikes me as much too reformist.  It hearkens back to the pre-1982
dispensation as a sort-of golden age, and it presents as its agenda all those
progressive things that governments were supposed to do back then but generally
didn't or at least not very well.  Its call to dismantle the TNC seems to be hedged
by support for nationally-based private corporations that are supposedly more
responsive, and it seeks no discernable management over the global trading system.

Me, I would begin talking about concrete steps to socialize (which is not
necessarily to put under public ownership) corporations national and transnational,
and to craft a set of rules and governing procedures to make possible trade without
the lash of global competitiveness that has poisoned every national political
economy.  The coalitions to do these things would be international and horizontal
(class and social interest based), not (as apparently with Bello) national and
vertical.

Peter

Lisa & Ian Murray wrote:

> <http://www.policyalternatives.ca/>
>
> Should corporate-led institutions be reformed or disempowered?
> It's not off the wall to think of dismantling corporations
> [Part II of The most crucial task facing the world's NGOs]
>
> by Waldon Bello
> The CCPA Monitor, February 2001, pp 14-16