There is a growing literature on America's postcapitalist society, an intellectual tradition that runs from Veblen, its prophet, through Berle and Means to Burnham, Drucker and Galbraith. Its shared thesis is that America's corporations are controlled by a new class of managers and professional, but it cavalierly assumes that capitalists are still the main beneficiaries. The author disputes this assumption. In a major revision of economic theory, the author argues that there is an unacknowledged element of surplus concealed in employee compensation. Having identified it with returns to skill over cost, he shows how today it increasingly overshadows the returns to capital. The political significance of this startling conclusion is that socialists are no more necessary to socialism than is public ownership. Socialism requires only that employers manage the economy and that they siphon off most of the surplus. Although not socialism in ideal terms, the author concedes, managerial socialism is here to stay.
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Zielgruppe
Für höhere Schule und Studium
Für Beruf und Forschung
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Maße
Höhe: 159 mm
Breite: 225 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-85972-335-7 (9781859723357)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Part 1 Socialism without socialists: unwitting socialists; pragmatic socialists under another name; socialism by default; socialism without illusions. Part 2 Threshold to a new order: the managerial revolution as social revolution; Marxist theory and the managerial revolution; the thorny problem of surplus wages; calculating the surplus concealed in wages. Part 3 Postcapitalist society: surplus wages and the "new class"; managerial socialism as postcapitalist society; possible counterarguments. Part 4 Managerial imperialism: imperialism, the highest state of capitalism; managerial imperialism and the state; the multinational corporation - a case study; America in the new world order. Part 5 The condition of labour: managing labour discontent; political agents of despair; the turning point in managerial unionism; a surplus labour society; three "working classes"; the merger movement; professional unionism. Part 6 What happened to the social question?: the Marxist formulation; why the Marxist formulation lost out; the social question ceases to be class oriented.
