Corporatism

Uncle M.Z., will GE go to heaven?
No my dear, GE will never die – even if she someday goes bankrupt – but we need to treat her as a person just the same.

Communism is richly mocked for its centralized companies. Yet when we look at the American corporation we see the epitome of freedom. Communism is condemned for making people dependent upon the State by expecting the State to provide employment and ensure shelter and food. We look to corporations to provide us with employment. We look to Monsanto and ADM to provide us food. If you think I jest, then explain to me all the re-training centers popping up around the country. Nearly every State has a department of workforce development. Large companies and dioceses run Section 8 and elder housing to provide subsidized shelter. Explain to me the proliferation of Technical Colleges that often function as little more than State sponsored training programs for local companies. Need more machinists for your shop using your technology? Ask the local technical college to develop a class for it.

Some will claim that corporations are a partial fulfillment of the distributism ideal of broad ownership. In theory that is silly. Distributism is about the person who uses the tools of production owning the tools of production. It is not a theory about titles. It is the equivalent of renting a house and owning another home that you rent. Such an arrangement doesn’t approximate the ideal of home ownership anymore than owning stock in a company you contribute little or no labor constitutes the ideal of distributism. In practice, it is simply a fraudulent claim. Wealth Gini coefficient – the Gini coefficient measures distribution across a group. A Gini of 0 is a perfectly equal society; 1 is a society where all the wealth is amongst a minority – for the US is 0.82. To put it in everyday terms, the richest 10% own 85% of all stocks and 90% of all business assets. This is supposed to epitomize freedom. (See also here. You may also have interest in the Levy Institute.)

Corporatism is not unique to our time. It is a relatively recent phenomena. The first places that really acted as corporations were the monasteries. You can still find monastic breweries and distilleries. Specialization of course isn’t a bad thing. Yet ever since the first corporations were formed we have had issues. Many of the problems of the past, we list as accomplishments of modernity. For example, ridding ourselves of slavery and child labor are often cited as accomplishments of modernity. This is commonly accepted despite slavery at its most prevalent time was more an organizing mechanism for the propagation of society than a labor force. Additionally, we assume that the idleness of children is a good thing today. Personally, I don’t see children working the family farm or shop as a bad thing. Separating them from the family of course was a bad thing.

Today we are confronted with several issues: off shoring, immigration and diaspora, and poverty. In a heavily corporate environment, men become commodities, as would be expected. A man with 8 children is seen no differently than a man with no children. If we were in a small shop situation, the man with 8 children would set his prices with the provision of his family in mind. In a healthy society with many large families, disparity would naturally close. Prices would be set accordingly. History largely establishes this. The economics of the Middle Ages were scaled to the family. For 2005 we have a children’s poverty rate of 17.6%. This compares with an overall poverty rate of 12.6%. Our business climate is obviously anti-child. Current estimates are that it costs about $11,000 a year to raise a child. This is without including college.

Immigration, legal or otherwise, is really just part of a larger phenomena. I don’t live close to my own parents or my wife’s parents. When I received my invitation for my latest high school reunion, the return address was to some place in Minnesota, somewhere over 6 hours from where I graduated high school. Amongst my uncles, 2 live in the same town as my grandparents, 1 lives 4 hours away, and 1 died in California having lived there most of his life. Among my cousins, they live all over the State. Needless to say, there are very few jobs where I grew up, and I and my extended family members have had to move where there are jobs. We live in a corporate world with no connection to place. America isn’t the only place facing massive immigration. As is widely reported, there is massive immigration to Canada and Europe. China is in the midst of a massive migration from the countryside to the cities. Until we establish stable communities, these trends will persist.