From: m.lepore%genie.geis.com@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu
Subject: "Corporations and Capitalists" (1909)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 03:43:02 GMT



  Daniel De Leon (1852-1914), a North American socialist, was the
  editor of _The People_ and _The Daily People_.  From time to time,
  I will be posting De Leon editorials on various computer networks.
  One of these is reproduced below.  (I don't know the source of the
  quotation De Leon cites in his second paragraph.)

  The Marxist-DeLeonist perspective is one of several viewpoints
  represented in ORGANIZED THOUGHTS, a new electronic publication.
  The purpose of O.T. is to discuss various programs which have been
  suggested for establishing collective ownership and democratic
  control of the industries, in a way that prevents the rise of a
  dictatorship by a so-called "workers' state".

  Anyone who would like a free subscription to ORGANIZED THOUGHTS
  (or to contribute articles) should send e-mail to:
              Mike Lepore       m.lepore@genie.geis.com
      __________________________________________________________



                   "CORPORATIONS" AND "CAPITALISTS"
                          by Daniel De Leon
                   _The Daily People_, Dec. 6, 1909


       As the best testimony against a person is what he utters
against himself, this recent statement of a mining company constituent
of the capitalist class may be taken as fairly representative of the
situation:

       "Nine-tenths of the corporations of the United States", said
this one of them, and it ought to know, "simply exist as subterfuges
to shield somebody from the consequences of ownership in the event of
disaster."

       That the corporate body is a "legal fiction" is well-known.
That a corporation enjoys, in matters of law, all the advantages that
a disembodied spirit would have in evading barbwire fences, is a
matter of common observation.

       A corporation can do as it pleases.  If caught, a little
juggling of stock holdings, a holding company organized,
wheels-within-wheels fashion - and there you are.  Your corporation's
as bland and invulnerable as an oyster in its shell.

       And if worst comes to worst, all that can happen is a fine upon
the corporation.  The individuals who compose it go scot free,
unfinable, unimpeachable, ready to do it all over again.

       In this way, it may well be true that nine-tenths of the
corporations of the country have no reason for existence other than
lifting someone above the law.

       It was not always so.  The corporation in its origin had a
legitimate, a valid basis for being.  It was a progressward
combination of previously competing concerns; it introduced harmony
for industrial antagonism; economy for productive waste.  This purpose
it still partakes of today, but another, an extraneous purpose - the
dodging of the consequences of its own illegalities - has grown up and
overlaid its original cause to such an extent that, even in its own
camp, the charge is made that nine-tenths are merely law-evading
devices.

       So it is with the capitalist.  Taking his rise - albeit with
crime and violence - in the necessity for systematized and economic
production, he, at first, filled a useful place as a captain of
industry.  Correlative with this function came the minor one of
keeping down the forces that would have overthrown him.  Today,
however, the palm of captainship of industry having passed from the
capitalist - he having himself handed it over to his skilled managers
and superintendents - he retains, in the overwhelming majority of
cases, merely his function of coercion, of repressing all society into
acquiescence in his plunder of it.

       As with the corporations, it is perfectly safe to say that,
with nine-tenths of the capitalists, their only reason for living is
not their legitimate one of assisting, but their wholly illegitimate
one of victimizing and laming the arm of society.

       "Corporations" and "capitalists", both throw light on each
other.  Both are ripe for the change.


Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive