shady business practices

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

Ron writes:
| On Wed, 11 Apr 2001 ccb at valinux.com wrote:
| > > > That's capitalism.
| > >
| > > That's disgusting.
...
| I also resent any implied association between this particullarly base
| concept of capitalism and American patriotism: the notion that if you
| don't exhalt the almighty dollar, you must be a communist.  (I'm
| responding to a whole bunch of comments at once, nothing personal about
| this one...)

A few years ago, I  read  an  interesting  comment  on  this  from  a
historian.   In  describing  the  idea  that  the  primary  goal of a
corporation should be profit for its officers  and  shareholders,  he
said that the first known expression of this idea in print was in the
mid-1800's, and the writer was none other than Karl Marx.

Marx intended this as  a  serious  negative  criticism,  and  it  was
understood  as such at the time.  The idea then was that corporations
were permitted some  of  their  freedoms,  in  particular  limits  to
liability  for  the  actions  of officers, in exchange for the social
good  that  corporations  produced.   Marx's  claim  was  that   most
corporations didn't work for the public good, but only for profit. He
argued that instances of public good from corporations were  few  and
accidental, and that they were more likely to do public harm in their
search for profit.  This was a real contrast to the ideas put forward
by Adam Smith and other earlier economic analyists.

The point of this bit of history was the suggestion that, contrary to
widespread belief, Karl Marx has been far more successful than people
generally admit.  In this case, his attack on corporations  has  been
turned  around  and  adopted  by  the corporate world as not just the
truth, but is actually proposed as ethically desirable. So, while the
former  Communist  world  has  rejected  his writings, the Capitalist
world has openly embraced at least some of his ideas that  were  wild
and outrageous when he wrote them.

Around the same time, an economist friend remarked that  one  of  the
real  embarrassments  in  his  field is people they are more and more
trying to pass for scientists, which means that they are being judged
on  how  successful  their theories are at making predictions, but by
far the best record in this regard so far has  been  from  economists
who call themselves Marxists.  I won't go into the explanation of why
these economists have the most predictive success.

(Ideaological trivia test question: Name some more Marxist ideas that
are now considered correct in the Capitalist world.  No cheating now;
try answering without rereading your Marx.  Stay on topic  by  giving
example in the computer industry. Turn in your answers by Friday. ;-)

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