Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site tty3b.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!we13!tty3b!mjk From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Property (or Class Struggle? What Class Struggle?) Message-ID: <312@tty3b.UUCP> Date: Thu, 1-Mar-84 13:35:56 EST Article-I.D.: tty3b.312 Posted: Thu Mar 1 13:35:56 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 3-Mar-84 10:15:46 EST References: <685@ihuxq.UUCP> <308@tty3b.UUCP>, <601@bbncca.ARPA>, <6448@cornell.UUCP> Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill Lines: 54 fischer@cornell.UUCP (Charles Fischer) has a rather muddled reply to my note on ownership of property. My point was basically that our notion of private property is relatively new, and that the way it is maintained is through state support of the idea. If the state were unwilling to protect this system of organization, it wouldn't exist, as indeed it doesn't in many other nations, or it would exist in a different form, as it does in still other nations. That isn't to defend the structure of, say, the Soviet Union, as fisher immediately assumes ("...But wait! In that revered workers paradise, theft of state property merits the DEATH PENALITY.") Few people I know consider the Soviet Union a "revered workers paradise"; on the other hand, I don't know too many working people who consider the U.S. a workers paradise, either. My point on the factory owner is quite simple. There are conflicting interests in any workplace. There are the interests of the workers in a safe working environment and good wages. And there is the interest of the employer in profits. There is a zero-sum game to be played out here, and the employers understand that quite well. They attack unions, since unions tend to strengthen the workers bargaining position. They attack health and safety legislation, since this forces them to make investments which do not directly increase profits. And, whenever possible, they replace labor with machinery, which doesn't form unions or complain about unsafe workplaces. Yes, of course, we're all quite sophisticated now and don't use 19th Century terminology anymore. Why, there isn't any class struggle; we're all in this together. If corporate profits go up, well, eventually it will trickle down to the workers. Just wait; really, it will. And there aren't any big, bad owners. Corporations are all publicly held, "and the majority of all stock is held by institutions and pension funds (i.e., ordinary people)." Never mind that 0.5% of Americans own 25% of the net wealth of the U.S., including 49.3% of corporate stock. Never mind that the top 1% of Americas wealthy owned (in 1972) 60% of the corporate bonds, 52.7% of debt instruments and 89.9% of trusts. Not surprisingly, these figures are neither easy to come by or widely known. That's why they're somewhat old (although the study which reported them also noted that the concentration of wealth in the U.S. hasn't changed substantially since 1933). Source: Smith, J.D. and Franklin, S. "The Concentration of Personal Wealth in America." Review of Income and Wealth, Series 20, #2. And even if it were true that pension plans owned America, that still ignores the fundamental issue of control. Who controls pension plans? The fiduciary rules are so strict that any creative investment plan is almost automatically illegal. Basically, these are massive pools of capital which provide a large part of the working capital of American business, but very seldom are they invested according to the interests of workers. The pension plans of blacks are invested in companies which support apartheid in South Africa. Union pensions are invested in companies that shut down union plants and move overseas for cheap labor. The list could go on and on. Until control of investment priorities comes along with the pension, I don't believe in pension-plan socialism. Mike Kelly ..!ihnp4!tty3b!mjk