I think it’s a silly obfuscation to divert any blame from capitalism by just proclaiming that the world currently isn’t under capitalist hegemony, but I wanted to see what others thought and if anyone knew anything that Marx or anyone wrote about the matter.
Someone said to me “Directors are not the same as shareholders. Directors, CEOs and fund managers are, well, managers. Managers are NOT capitalists. They do not invest their own capital in order to make money and gain influence, they just climb the ladder. They don’t have the same goals as owners and capitalists. They don’t value the same things and they don’t play the political game to get the same results. This is why the politics have also changed. They don’t value the same institutions and want to do politics in different ways. They don’t value political parties, individual rights, etc., they value rules, bureaus that enforce the rules that are non-partisan and continue to operate regardless of who’s in power. Managerialism is too deep of a rabbit hole to be contained in a reddit comment thread, I would point you towards James Burnham who described it in great detail and quite accurately predicted what the modern world would look like when he wrote 80 years ago.”
It’s a weird mix of nonsense and misinterpretation.
Oh? Then what are stock options? What is carried interest? Upper management is absolutely invested in the company.
It doesn’t matter what goals you have as an individual. If you want to write poems but you’re paid to write code, you write code. The professionals and lower managers paid by the owners serve the interests of those owners, not the other way around.
What this person misses is why the politics changed. Liberals think of capitalism as a thing, not a process.
But capitalists compete so that one can win. The winner collects their prize, which is to buy/bankrupt their competitor and grab their market share.
Over time, capital accumulates and concentrates. Small businesses grow into national and multinational corporations too large to be run by the founders, so they hire layers of management. In the era of monopoly finance capital, competition is not just about out-producing your competitor, it’s about imperialism: controlling the government, writing trade deals in your favor, monopolizing the important raw materials, etc.
Corporate capitalism (monopoly finance capitalism, imperialism) is not some perversion of capitalism that we can cast off to return to laissez-faire capitalism. It’s the next stage in the evolution of capitalism.
That differs from state Capitalism where the state (using the original definition and not the modern American redefinition) contain Capitalism in the early stage of the economy until the material condition become favorable for Socialism so Capitalism does not devolve into a plutocratic command economy of late stage Capitalism.
Thanks for the write up! I read what they said and it just made no sense. He earlier brought up JP Morgan and pointed out how there is no longer a JP Morgan running the company and reaping the vast majority of the profits, so this is somehow not capitalism. Like huh? The class characteristics of the people who inherited the company didn’t just suddenly change because it wasn’t their money specifically put in. Secondly, it’s silly to think the people who inherited JP Morgan’s company didn’t put in their own money to invest into the company, after all, why would they take on the business?
The point about directors not having the same aim of capitalists was especially stupid. Like they report directly to the capitalist if not a board that reports to the capitalist. Anything the capitalists deem unsatisfactory could result in the director being sued/ going to jail/ fired.
Again, thanks for the write up. It was a weird argument and just sounded like another version of the “not muh real capitalism” talking point. I couldn’t find a concise way to respond, so this definitely helped, comrade :).