Marx and Corporations

[A.R.Amistad]

Is it safe to say that the bourgeoisie aren't really even living, breathing, human beings anymore? Given that there is corporate person-hood, are corporations now in and of themselves the bourgeoisie? Or are the CEO's of said corporations the owners of the means of production? The capitalists seem to want people to think they have control over the means of production by buying stocks, but the people really have little say over ow the means of production are run. How does ownership of stock fit into the whole capitalist system? It can't be said that only the wealthy classes own stock, but it also can't be said that the working class really has any control over the means of production. I have a little theory that the buying and selling of stock is, in and of itself, an industry, and that CEO's control the means of production in the selling and buying of stock. I was wanting somebody to clear up just how corporations fit into the capitalist sytem, and most importantly in the class struggle. I know it can't be benign.

[Robocommie]

The stock market is closed off to worker's control of the means of production in the same way that simply beginning a new firm is impossible for the working class at large - only the bourgeoisie, under capitalism, have the necessary personal wealth to invest. Therefore, only the bourgeoisie have the financial clout to actually wield power through the stock market. Workers can buy shares of a corporation, but the amount of money they can muster to do so will always be so miniscule that they can't hope to wield much influence at all within a corporation.

Really, corporations and stock markets have been a key aspect of capitalism since it's rise out of feudalism. They're tools of financial development and ownership, so they can't really be called the bourgeoisie themselves, as it is still the people who make up the capitalist class who have the money and pull the strings. If corporations are persons, it's only because they serve as marionettes to the wealthy.

[BAM]

The formation of the joint stock company is an example of what Marx termed the abolition of private production within the capitalist mode of production itself. These corporations not only centralise idle money. Ownership in the form of shares is a move away from the single capitalist factory owner, ie away from private ownership to social ownership (although shares still exist of course as titles to property). Thus we can say it is an inverted prefiguration of socialism under capitalism.

It's not quite so simple of course. The capitalist is now a superintendent of other people's capital, and indeed these shares are themselves fictitious capital, only paper claims to a future revenue stream. There is a total separation of the owners of capital from the daily production process of capital itself. This separation is merely physical, but in reality there is a more diffuse control over social labour than ever before. The fetishistic nature of the capitalist mode of production is more apparent as more and more the system of surplus value production seemingly has a life all of its own quite apart from any human interest.

[anticap]

Is it safe to say that the bourgeoisie aren't really even living, breathing, human beings anymore? Given that there is corporate person-hood, are corporations now in and of themselves the bourgeoisie?

I'm a real stickler about avoiding personification. I cringe every time I hear, e.g., "the US signed a treaty," or "the White House briefed reporters," etc. So for me, no, it will never be safe, as you ask, because it will never make a lick of sense. Neither states, nor corporations, nor any other abstract idea, will ever commit any act. There will always be a human behind the curtain. (Even in the hypothetical case of a computer, or a robot, or a computer built by robots, or a robot programmed by computers, there will always be a human actor somewhere up the chain to whom we can point). Don't fall for the nonsense of personification.

[A.R.Amistad]

BAM

The formation of the joint stock company is an example of what Marx termed the abolition of private production within the capitalist mode of production itself. These corporations not only centralise idle money. Ownership in the form of shares is a move away from the single capitalist factory owner, ie away from private ownership to social ownership (although shares still exist of course as titles to property). Thus we can say it is an inverted prefiguration of socialism under capitalism.

It's not quite so simple of course. The capitalist is now a superintendent of other people's capital, and indeed these shares are themselves fictitious capital, only paper claims to a future revenue stream. There is a total separation of the owners of capital from the daily production process of capital itself. This separation is merely physical, but in reality there is a more diffuse control over social labour than ever before. The fetishistic nature of the capitalist mode of production is more apparent as more and more the system of surplus value production seemingly has a life all of its own quite apart from any human interest.


Great post, comrade. I was wondering, do you think we could get into the details, particularly on how the bourgeoisie control the sales of stock to workers and give the illusion of mass control of the means of production? Seems like you understand this phenomenon pretty well, better than I do.

[BAM]

do you think we could get into the details, particularly on how the bourgeoisie control the sales of stock to workers and give the illusion of mass control of the means of production?

I think your question touches upon a vital issue: namely, with the extension of share ownership, can we say that the line between working class and capitalist class is now blurred, or indeed, are the two separate definitions meaningless?

It's an old argument, actually. If you look at the writings of the German Marxist Eduard Bernstein from around the turn of the 1900s, he argued that, indeed, conditions had changed. Affluent workers now owned stocks and could be said to "share" in the interest of capitalism directly. And in more recent times, both Mrs. Thatcher and George W Bush believed in share-owning "popular capitalism". The extension of share-ownership is explicitly seen by all of today's policy makers as entrenching a common sense of identity with the prevailing economic order among society at large.

So what are stocks and shares? They are fictitious capital. They entitle the owner to a share in the surplus value produced by a firm (a "dividend"). They are traded as if they have real value (and hence can command prices way in excess of a company's actual earnings and assets) but this is totally illusory and subject to speculation. You can of course make huge "profits" by trading in this way. But this is a merely a form of arbitrage (buying cheap, selling dear).

I myself own shares from when my "building society" (a savings and mortgage institution) de-mutualised and became a bank. You probably do too, indirectly, if you have a pension, as a good proportion of those funds wind up on the stock market.

So if we own a few shares does that make us capitalists? No. In short, I still have to sell my labour every day, year in year out, in order to earn a salary in order to be able to buy the commodities I need in order to live. The dividend I receive from my shares is negligible: a few pounds per year (more than cancelled out by the various charges I accrue over the year by going overdrawn!)

If I were able to live off the income from my share ownership, I would indeed cease to be a proletarian. There may be the odd case of an individual who got lucky and made a lot of money at the right time and is now able to live without selling his own labour and live off the surplus labour of others, but these incidences are few and far between.

[A.R.Amistad]

I also had a little theory of my own. The way that stocks are sold nowadays, its as if stocks are a product themselves. The labor aristocracy in the industrialized and advanced nations can buy a small amount of stocks in the same way they can buy an apple or a cell phone. My theory is that the capitalists own so much surplus value that they can afford to sell that surplus value for a profit. Your average proletarian stock owner is nothing more than a 'consumer' of a false product, stock, and the capitalist owns the very means of production of stock itself, thus turning the process of buying and selling stock into an industry itself. Just a thought, though, I don't claim to be an expert.

[BAM]

I also had a little theory of my own. The way that stocks are sold nowadays, its as if stocks are a product themselves.

Yes. Stocks - or more broadly "securities" including things like bonds - are bought and sold as if they were commodities. They all entitle their owners to a stream of income, but stocks in themselves do not produce any income. Buying stock is not the same as actual investment in the means of production, ie, buying machines and factories. When stocks are bought and sold, this represents changes in ownership of claims on income to different parties.


The labor aristocracy in the industrialized and advanced nations can buy a small amount of stocks in the same way they can buy an apple or a cell phone. My theory is that the capitalists own so much surplus value that they can afford to sell that surplus value for a profit.

Well, as I said in my last message, many ordinary workers will own shares, even if this is indirectly through a pension fund. Formation of stock companies helped free up idle capital and also promote mass industry. Also, I don't think that capitalists do have "spare surplus value" that they can "sell". If anything, the rate of profit has been in decline since the 1970s (according to recent empirical research by Andrew Kliman). The expansion of fictitious capital - especially in the form of debt securities like repackaged sub-prime loans - is a direct consequence of the problems caused by this fall in profitability, as the system tries to make up for this by feeding on itself through the expansion of debt.


Your average proletarian stock owner is nothing more than a 'consumer' of a false product, stock, and the capitalist owns the very means of production of stock itself, thus turning the process of buying and selling stock into an industry itself. Just a thought, though, I don't claim to be an expert.

Again, stock is "fictitious capital" - it is traded as if it were capital, but shares are not the actual capital that a firm consists of. It is true that your average worker cannot hope to accrue enough stock to provide him/her with anything other than a modest supplement to the household income.

[A.R.Amistad]

It could be said that when a worker buys stock, it is no different than when a worker goes to a casino. The worker could conceivably strike it rich at the casino, or at least make few bucks, but it is highly improbable. The casino also has a regressive impact on the worker. Just because the proletarian goes to a casino, or can afford to go to a casino, doesn't mean their still not a worker.

However, the analogy is different for the capitalist. For the capitalist, its as if they never have to work a day job, they can afford to spend their time at the casino and the odds are unfairly stacked in their favor to always win. They can live off of the casino alone. The worker cannot.