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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
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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
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