Corporate Communists
Corporate CommunistsCorporations don't use any kind of capitalism to control their internal resources. Ergo they're not RealCapitalists - they're CryptoCommunists?. And like anyone who intends to practice communism (see WhatIsCommunism?), they set up a DictatorshipOfTheProletariate?, which is to say a management hierarchy, which invariably falls back into feudalism, nepotism, and AntiSocialism.
Don't believe that? Go read Dilbert.
or read SlackByTomDeMarco. ManagementByObjectives has an eerie similarity to a controlled economy's quota system, including the bogus rewards and distorted results.
Not "Ergo". Not having "pure" capitalism everywhere does not imply socialism is desired, no more than a color not being black implies it must be white
Socialism? Desired? Where do you see those words in the statement above?
Sorry, socialism was a typo for communism - and desired comes from Crypto-Communists (which it looks like you wrote): People who give lip service to capitalism but intend communism.
Ah, yes. Dilbert describes corporations. These corporations are dysfunctional, therefore they must be communist. Why is that? Because only communism creates dysfunctional organizations. quod erat demonstratum!
Has anyone ever seen a functional corporation? Speak up now - don't be shy! Dilbert cartoons are everywhere, ring bells with everyone, because they're true to life. Feudalism, nepotism, AntiSocialism, bureaucracy, greasy-poles and arse-covering - that's what corporations are all about. Every once in a while some misguided young fool creates a product or service of value despite such nonsense - for which he is immediately pilloried - qua Dilbert.
Strictly speaking this is communism more in the sense of Stalin than the sense of Marx ... but either way it's far from capitalism.
They exist. Consider all the companies listed in the Wall Street Journal - Capitalist Newspaper. They must function, They employ people, they make profits, they produce products which consumers buy - I would call that functional. Now Dilbert, that is another story - have you ever found him to be functional. Not!! You can follow his dysfunction daily at http://www.dilbert.com
You haven't seen one, but you insist they exist because you've seen their tracks. Sounds like the AbominableSnowman. Really - you might recall that even Hillary discovered AbominableSnowman tracks up on Everest. Great big bipedal tracks, clear as day. Except that they discovered later these tracks are actually made by mountain goats leaping through deep snow. The goats spring up into the air, then land with all feet together. They leap diagonally across their axis of forward motion. After a day's thaw and a night's refreeze, the result is AbominableSnowman tracks.
Here, the goats are the good intentions of the employees of the corporation, and the advantages provided by the corporation's resources and technologies. Corporations turn profits and produce products in spite of the CorporateCommunists, not because of them. Just as the old USSR stayed on its feet for many decades despite rather than because of its hierarchy of henchmen. Dilbert describes the status quo - and until we come up with a MoreEfficientFormOfOrganization, it describes our future.
Most corporations are communist regimes existing inside a capitalist regime. They control resources from a high central control, and per Marx: "To each according to one's needs, from each according to one's abilities." Actually, I take that back. Companies that actually did that would go far. All to often, petty power struggles get in the way of that. Nonetheless, most companies are totalitarian in internal structure.
Not always in practice. Partnerships often have mich more distributed control - or at least a much bigger group at "central control". Mintzberg has a lot to say about this sort of thing.
But a corporation is not a government (yet!). A company being internally communist isn't always a bad thing, certainly not in the same ways a communist government seems to be.
The economist Ronald Coase, who won the 1991 NobelPrize in Economics (http://www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/1991/coase-autobio.html), became famous for his analysis of why people organize themselves into corporations. Basically, the answer is "transaction costs". His famous treatise on the economic rationale behind corporations is called "The Nature of the Firm".
My office could be organized as a group of independent contractors, each of us responsible for paying rent on our own cubicles, buying our own computers and office supplies, hiring a janitor to empty our own wastebaskets, etc., etc. But to have every worker negotiating all these little details would waste a lot of effort; it's more efficient for all of us to work for one company and make the company responsible for the building, office supplies, and maintenance.
So the size of any corporation is roughly bounded by the inefficiency of duplicated effort on the bottom, and by Dilbert-like inefficiencies of centralization on the top. --SethGordon
Excellent point Seth. Corporations exist because, despite the horrible things they do to humans on the inside and on the outside, they're still a lot more focused and effective than a commons. So they eat the commons alive. Just look at how MS polished off the whole software industry ... all except for OpenSource stuff. It would take a horribly restrictive totalitarian governmental regime to prevent corporations from forming themselves as horribly restrictive totalitarian regimes ...
So we seem to be stuck with these things. Unless we can think up some MoreEfficientFormOfOrganization. What would that look like?
That's easy. Technoanarchy. No middlemen. Group by collective desire. Actively generate infrastructure. Basically where we're heading once the ideological dinosaurs eat meteor.
Ah, if only it were true. But it ain't - it's just wishful thinking. Anarchy means a commons, and all commonses experience the TragedyOfTheCommons, which puts you right back into your 8x5 cell in the bowels of the CorporateCommunists. We need a MoreEfficientFormOfOrganization, not a LessEfficientFormOfOrganization.
I disagree with Seth's boundary conditions. Keep in mind that, the larger a company gets, the more crucial it seems to the government, so the more likely it can get corporate resources to back it up. Sometimes this is in the form of direct help (CorporateWelfare), other times it is in the form of friendly legislation (which is why corporate lobbies exist). The upper boundary expands a bit when you have access to the guys with guns. --RobMandeville
Wow! Can it get any worse before it gets better, Corporations are bad, Governments are bad, and to bring in the guys with the guns!
Really, you're being unfair to communist theory: The corporations you're describing would better be described as insane, not as following any particular political philosophy.
Might it just be AmericanCulturalAssumption to bash anything with the word communism (both senses)?
Read RicardoSemler to see examples of 20 years of successful DemocraticWorkplace? in Semco - self-organizing like Agile methods, but used everywhere in the company.
I'm not sure you can equate a corporate or other organized body with a political system. Now, if you could be jailed for quitting or failing to meet quotas, there might be something to it.
Companies are "groups" in the "going somewhere together" sense, but since membership is voluntary I'm not sure that viewing it as a political system works.
It's clear that OrganizationTrumpsIndividuals, but it's not clear that any collection of individuals who organize for some common purpose is necessarily political. The dymanics are different.
Well, I don't think I can be jailed for wanting to leave my country, or failing to meet quotas. On the other hand, I'm quite certain I can be 'deported' from my company quite easily. --cwillu
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