Extending and Entrenching the Corporate Form
In 1995 I was on the accredited Masters European Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management. My written work was on the prospects for industrial strategy within the European Union (then the EC) in the context of a globalised economic environment. I expanded that thesis by writing up the entire course notes on the emerging global political economy, publishing it under the title of Industry and Europe: Problems and Uncertainties in a Global Economic Environment.
Befitting its origins as an academic monograph, it is not the most exciting of titles, and large sections contain some extremely dense economic analysis. Contained within those 762 pages, however, are some extremely pertinent and insightful arguments. One in particular is of contemporary significance – the extension and entrenchment of the corporate form. The analysis of the ‘transnationalisation of the economy’ sets the stage for the analyses of the second half of the text, after assessing the (meagre) prospects for a Europe-wide industrial strategy. I set the argument up in terms of the old Monopoly Capitalism taking shape as a ‘Transnational Corporate Capitalism.’ I assess the arguments that this constitutes the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production, ushering in an age of techno-bureaucratic managerialism. I argue that the system remains capitalist in that the new managerialism has as its task the organisation of accumulation. But the notion of accumulation is broadened to encompass capital and power, a power of control and regulation that is embedded and institutionalised within a new international division of labour. That the system remains capitalist means that the planet as a whole comes to be subject to the contradictory dynamics of the accumulation process. Part of those contradictions involves the drive on the part of the capital system comes to concentrate and centralise capital, power, and resources, impairing the competition of capital, bringing about pronounced stagnationary tendencies that justifies increasing political intervention and institutional regulation and management. It’s the capital system, but not as we know it. I then address the neo-liberal revolution as less an attempt to recover free trade and the free market than as competitive capitalism’s last gasp. In its most immediate political sense, the privatisation and marketization strategies of neoliberalism appear as a reaction against the forces of encroachment in the form of socialist state collectivism. I argue at length that this capitalism versus socialism, market versus state, private property versus public ownership is a phoney war that conceals the nature of the developments underway. The only thing is to decide whether the main protagonists of the neoliberal revolution were true believers in the free trade gospel or were conscious strategists and rationalisers of a corporate takeover. Either way, as Left fought Right in the political arena and socialists and capitalists slugged it out, the corporate form extended and entrenched itself throughout the business culture, appropriating public business to itself, eclipsing private property and erasing liberal society in the name of a capitalist free trade triumph over socialism! Which is to say that it was not only socialism that got shafted but capitalism.
I warned of ‘the new corporate money mandarins,’ the corporate control and manipulation of stateless money, debt as the road to the ruination of the old economy, ushering in a new economy of the endless manipulation of symbols, people, and resources. I showed that growing international economic independence would actually entail the totalising dependence of all upon an abstract system of external management and control. The rationale behind this system is perfectly logical. The growing interdependence of business required a global planning authority, one which is denied by the nature of the capital system as an inherently irresponsible and anarchic – ‘free’ – system of production. Either anarchy, crisis, and stagnation or planning. I argued that there would be an attempt to institute a global planning agency, but that the internal contradictions of the capital system would prevent its effectiveness. Here, political optimism overtook cool analysis, leading me to speculate on the possibilities for international socialism. Some big old dreams are a long time dying. Jerusalem tomorrow!
It is sobering to record that my most optimistic theses are the ones which have aged least well, whereas the warnings of the corporatisation of public business, the corporate capture of the state, the emergence of post-society industry and the social factory, the erasure of liberal society, the hyperreality of economic transactions – and culture generally – and the emergence of ‘corporate society’ – all accompanied by increasing indebtedness and, with it, dependency upon totalising forces – have proven all too true. I warn explicitly of the continued ‘management and manipulation of crises’ in the aftermath of a privatisation strategy which, deep down, was about the extension and entrenchment of the corporate form.
If I may, I called it right. I also speculate on the extent to which the Left, or what remains of it, would also be swept up within the corporate takeover, mistaking collective control, constraint, and regulation for socialism. This is socialism only as a managerialism, something which does indeed appeal to the professional, educated, trained ‘classless’ class of technocrats. Technocracy is not socialism! It is its very antithesis! The need for a global planning agency and authority has been appropriated by decidedly non-socialist forces. One section of my thesis is entitled ‘Whose trade unions?’ followed by ‘Proletarians and After.’ Everything is being corporatised. Is it still capitalist? I would say so. The accumulative dynamics and capital logic remain in place. It is capitalism but not as we know it, the same with respect to socialism. As the old capitalists and socialists were fighting it out, corporate forces stole a march to triumph over both of them. (Again, I pose the question of the extent to which the neoliberal, pro-free trade capitalists were the strategists and rationalisers of the corporate form all along. Follow the money, examine the connections).
My argument for international socialism was premised on the need for a global planning moment in light of the globalisation of economic relations. Without that regulatory agency the world economy would be subject to chronic, ongoing crisis, instability, and stagnation. I argued that the capital system calls forth this planning agency but, as a competition of capitals, denies its effectiveness.
I speculated on socialism, instead we get the World Economic Forum.
This is decidedly not the socialism and Rational Freedom I have spent a quarter of a century arguing for. But if the argument I set out in my economics masters of 1995 is cogent, then something like this global regulatory framework was always going to emerge. It stands to reason that with increasing economic interdependence in the globalised economic environment, some form of coordination between business leaders, financiers, and politicians would be required. It’s not so much the fact of that global agency that is the issue as its nature and purpose.
I’ll nail my colours to the mast clearly. As a socialist, I dislike the corporate form intensely as a decidedly undemocratic and anti-social socialisation, the culmination and consolidation of capital’s tendencies to concentrate and centralise power in totalising form.
I am saddened but not surprised that so many supposed leftists have been silent on this issue, or have been quick to shout ‘conspiracy theory’ at critics. These leftists abandoned the working class for academia a long time ago. They see themselves as constituting an enlightened vanguard. I see fully paid up members of the emerging corporate order.
You will own nothing and be happy? You must be joking! You will own nothing, be subject to endless management and manipulation through impossible debt, and be thoroughly unfree, unhappy, and under-the-thumb. Your future has been mortgaged at a price you can never pay. Mortgage means the grip of death. This is ‘the end of society’ (another section heading in my 1995 thesis) and the end of freedom. I didn’t anticipate the extent to which those identifying as leftist or progressive would be party to this gigantic asset and freedom grab. The enclosure of the global commons and the transfer of resources from labour to capital is part and parcel of the normal operation of capitalist political economy. But we are now witnessing an added dimension to this process of expropriation in the way that it is being cloaked in progressive and environmental virtue. It is hard to credit leftists who seriously think that a substantial societal transformation restructuring power and resources democratically would proceed under the auspices of the UN and other such bodies. Do people really think that revolution is achieved by way of a managerial process from above?
It is significant that such political initiatives have zero connections to the working class. As part of the global asset- and freedom-grab there is a concerted class war being waged from above against the people who make, move, build, and grow things. This is a struggle for control over the means of life, a struggle that socialists used to wage from below in alliance with the working class. Where are they?
We have seen the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in the last two years – years of state control, direction, and regulation. At the same time, society is having to endure the war of attrition being waged by environmantal activists demanding extensive and expensive climate programmes on the part of ‘government.’ There are explicit arguments being made for climate lockdowns. This is a strategy for climate-controlled polities under the corporate form. Technocratic and corporate agendas are being prepared behind virtuous smokescreens, facilitating a massive asset, freedom, and power grab and culminating in complete top-down control.
The working class have been abandoned; politically, they are disinherited, without a home. There is no political movement or party representing the interests of ‘ordinary’ people, and no political vision or programme for the democratic restructuring of power and resources that is practicable and feasible. Who is doing it? When the working class vote for family, community, and stable order and identity they are condemned by leftists as dupes and fascists. And leftists offer in return? Borderless nations prey to corporate control.
It is clear what is happening. Under the pretence of general health and welfare, the state is accruing more and more power to itself, the technocrats are gaining more and more power to manage and regulate the economy and society, and the corporations are getting wealthier and wealthier as they embed and institutionalise their pwer. As people and society come to be increasingly regulated, no one is effectively regulating corporate power. There has been a massive transfer of wealth during the pandemic, of a scale which dwarfs old social democratic political dreams, and which has come in a very different direction.
And leftists, progressives, and liberals are looking elsewhere. They are bereft of political economy. This is a direct consequence of the switch that occurred in leftist politics from class to identity, from socio-economic issues to ideology, from politics to culture, from production and the coal face to academia. This left is all vanguard without social content. Lacking the structural capacity to engage in transformative action, it is all activism and ideology, defaulting to the corporate interests whose form it inhabits and is parasitic upon. The same with respect to that environmentalism which proceeds through the ‘not-for-profit’ organisations and the NGOs. They lack the capacity to autonomize themselves from the corporate form, for the reason they are embedded in it.
Everything in this politics is surface level appearance and spectacle, everything is performative - nothing is about meaningful, substantive transformation involving the practical restitution of power to the social body and its concomitant democratisation.
It is in light of these developments I note the constant shouts of ‘fascist’ and ‘far right’ from leftist voices towards anything, well, conservative. Faith, family, law and order, stability, patriotism, secure national borders, hard work, paying your way, anything other than a free-for-all is condemned as fascist. As this shouting takes place, the real takeover of society proceeds apace without barely a squeak of protest. I had the temerity to ask Green friends as to who had the power, resources, and capacity to push technology to the scale their climate demands required. I have been unfriended and blocked merely for asking that question. They know the answer and either a) don’t like it or b) would prefer it not to be made public until it is a fait accompli. Either way, we are in the presence of a corporate kind of Green that is profoundly anti-ecological to the core. And people are going down with a whimper.
The presentation of conservatives as fascists and far right is politically valuable when a political movement lacks a positive vision and ideal in itself and is thereforce incapable of attracting support to a worthy cause. Instead, it demonises political opponents as irredeemable enemies of all that is good, galvanising and mobilising a base through fear and division. This is a very low politics. Indeed, it is an anti-politics, one that is a menace to a free society. Politics is dissensus and disagreement. It is also dialogue. It is impossible to discuss and deliberate with those whom you consider demonic. This anti-politics poisons public life and separates members of the polity from one another.
The healthy and sane thing to do is to create and sustain a political movement which raises the hope and possibility for a better nation and a happier future by instituting fairer ways of spreading the social wealth, extending participatory structures throughout the civic realms, seeking out bold and democratic ways to implement our most cherished political principles. Instead of acting at the behest of the transnational corporations, power is to be restituted to the social body from which it originated, bringing about the political investment of civil society in furtherance of democratic self-governance. That is socialism.
Instead of this, there is the deliberate spreading of division. Everything is reduced to power and to struggle, everything is weaponised. This is leftism? This isn’t leftism at all, at least not a leftism that has any connection with working people. This a leftism that revolves around the very excited dreams of activists and ideologue, people who are vanguardists to the core and who always resented the fact that the working class were never with them. This is the degeneration of the Left, dividing people as a deliberate political strategy rather than seeking to unite them in common constructive endeavour. The old socialists sought to overcome division by exploring practical ways of bringing people together. Now, divorced from ‘ordinary’ people they openly despise, abandoning pretensions to represent their ‘true interests,’ they employ tactics of division and demonisation, making problems seem so much worse than they actually are, stoking fear and feeding off hatred. There are big problems in society, no question. But there is no constructive purpose to be served by making these problems appear worse than they actually are. That actually sends the progress that has been made in many areas into reverse. The pernicious doctrine of ‘the worse the better’ has raised its destructive head again. It is to be rejected and resisted in all its forms. It is much more prodcutive to work to create a society in which people accept their different outlooks on life, their different interests and different ways of approaching issues. Who knows, in easing up on the pressure and appreciating that there are all manner of ways to be human, we may even reach a situation in which people may actually come to love one another. Idealistic? No, that is hard-headed realism, the harder path to tread. Let me quote the wise words of Middleton Murry:
It can be no cause for astonishment to the Christian mind that, in an economic order of which the characteristic is that the physical energy at the disposal of society has been multiplied a thousandfold in the last hundred and fifty years, the natural man by his natural actions should be preparing to bring moral degradation and universal catastrophe upon himself. ... It is not enough to admit that the history of postwar Europe has plainly shown that the working-class has no intention and no power to dictate, and that what happens when it is foolish enough to say that it intends to do so is that it is dictated to by a satanic nationalism. It is imperative to realise why this happens and why it must happen. It happens and must happen because, by no conceivable operation of the 'ordinary self of mankind, or any class of mankind, can the 'classless society' imagined by Marxist Socialism be brought into being. Such a society will be brought into being by Christian love - 'that seeketh not its own' - or not at all.
Middleton Murry, The Price of Leadership:
Or, as Leonard Cohen put it in The Future:
You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
But love's the only engine
Of survival
There is a real need to get beyond the constant stoking of division and the feeding off the hatreds incited to start focusing on what the real problem is. We should have learned by now that all concentration of power is baneful. Why is the current process of concentration not being resisted by a vigorous counter-movement in favour of democratisation? Where are the conservatives in favour of the ‘little platoons’? Where are the socialists fighting for the common folk? Why are the main players on Left and Right all in hoc to corporate forces? Why can’t we switch the focus to the practical restitution of power to the social body, creating the ‘Big Society’ that both conservatives and socialists can support? Because in attaining what Marx called ‘true democracy’ for real people it would screw up the gig being worked by the hard-faced, hardball operators who are swarming all over politics at present. We are being gamed, groomed, played, trolled, and triggered by the masters of the dark arts. It takes some nerve to break ranks. People don’t like to be exposed and isolated. To which I say: if the Biblical text is right in saying that one should never follow a multitude to do evil, we should remember that we are talking not about the masses here, but about well-connected, well-placed, and well-resourced elites who use their power to conjure up mindless mass constuencies.
We need to find the courage to extract ourselves from this parasitic politics we are being inveigled into becoming complicit with and see the horrible truth of our political institutions and its divisions, loyalties, and commitments. I had the courage to stop voting for the Labour Party in 1992. I had the courage to let my membership of The Green Party lapse in 2018. I saw too many questionable positions being taken, too much conformism, too little interest in the common good. I am now without political allegiances and loyalties. I am loyal to principles and ideals, to the true, the good, and the beautiful. More than anything I am committed to creating the moral, social, and intellectual conditions for doing politics well. Only with these conditions in place will the legitimate divisions of political loyalty be restored to the nature of healthy discursive rivaly.
Is it really beyond our collective wit and will to envisage new systems, articulating more positive images of ourselves? Or are we now really too cynical, too mean, too embittered and beaten, too drained by the empty struggle?
There are reasons enough for cynicism. It’s patently clear that the political system is now concerned above all with political parties, removed from the people they represent, serving their own interests in light of their close and continuing relationships with lobbyists and corporate funders. That, I would argue, should be a point of criticism inciting the attempt to reclaim politics for the people. Cynicism is the best friend of the powerful, breeding apathy and confirming the hopelessness of the situation.
One final point with respect to the activists engaged in a process of civil disobedience. They make a fetish of law breaking that cultivates precisely the wrong kind of citizen identity. Forget the cause and instead focus on the dangers of bad process. Everyone in politics believes that their cause is good. Whether it is as good as its adherents claim is something that is tested in the political arena. When people assert their cause is so good as to be imposed on others without debate and dialogue, then we are looking at the end of politics. Beware. Democracy has never been popular among the rich and powerful. In the nineteenth century, democracy was equated with communism, positively by the likes of Marx, negatively by conservatives and liberals who thought that the newly enfranchised people would vote to help themselves to the private property and wealth of others. Many would gladly bring the curtain down on democracy. The activists who justify their actions by reference to the Suffragettes need to be checked and quickly. The Suffragettes were democrats who sought the franchise they were denied; the eco-activists are anti democrats who openly disdain the vote they have. The reasons are not hard to find – their arguments and mode of argumentation are not persuasive, they are politically inept, and they don’t have popular support.