http://progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=102691#top

Interesting stuff; the transformation of the structure of capital & the players who are actually pushing it, & to what end, is my primary interest, & one of the reasons I research financial genealogies.

I've attempted to figure out the entities controlling present-day masses of capital (corps, funds, foundations, private equity, etc.) but it's daunting & labyrinthine without access to pay resources. But IMO, understanding the structure & players = an organizing tool.



1. Increasing casualization of first-world workforces, e.g. in Japan close to 30% of the labor force is "casual," part-time, no guaranteed hours or bennies, laid off at will, etc. In australia 27%, & in my neighborhood it sure looks the same here in the US.

2. For *real* production, the global shop, i.e. production moved around the world in response to economics, labor problems, etc. They board up the factory in the Philippines & re-open the one in Vietnam. When production is so efficient that a few facilities in one province in China can, for example, manufacture most of the world's shoes, this seems the logical consequence.

3. For management & control functions, an emerging "global" upper-middle buffer/controller class, just an extension of the trend within countries, e.g. where your local fire chief/bank pres/community college admin/saw mill CEO is hired nationally, not locally.

4. Extension of old-style "permanent" ghettoization of big cities to suburbs & countryside; this section of national populations survives on casual labor, minimal gov't benefits (UE, disability, SS, food stamps), past assets (i.e. parent's dilapidated house) & low-level crime; they pretty much stick where they were born & don't participate in the larger economy. This is about 15-20% of the population where I live, but if the gov't benefits go, they become migrants, homeless, etc. TV, drugs & social services = pacification programs.

5. The real "owners" of production hidden behind layers of contractors & financial corps. In re this, this (apocryphal?) JD Rockefeller's quote seems appropos:

"My goal is to control everything & own nothing."

The reservation I have about all this is it seems less & less like "capitalism" as control appears to be concentrating in fewer & fewer hands.

For example, when I look at the Chinese auto industry, every company is bound to western ones in some kind of arrangement. Is this really competition, or collusion?

& if many production corps aren't really "competing," then what's left of "capitalism"? Seemingly just a more naked competition between different factions of massed capital, which might not necessarily rely so much on consumer products, or workers, as in the past.

or - the 19th century revisted, but on a global scale?

something i read in some old tome circa 1900-1930 was that the house of morgan wasn't a power on its own, it was the representative & agent of some pots of old money from various regions in the us + some british money. this made sense to me but i lost the reference & forgot the details.

just random thoughts, i'll continue following at PI, I think this is pretty fundamental to the issue of resistance & organizing; both seem pretty daunting prospects at the moment given the huge power imbalance & lack of old-style leverage though production shutdown.

another random thought:

another thing that may mirror this structural transformation of capital = tv commercials & advertising generally.

phases:

1. buy this cause it's a good product (dawn of ads to circa 60s)
2. buy this cause it's what successful/elite/cool people buy (20s-80s)
3. no pitch, just evocation of some "lifestyle" or emotion juxtaposed with product (circa 80s to present)
4. no consumer product; i.e. the explosion of ads for corps like enron - remember these?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIQE3wGn9CI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pboh1SFk6TM&feature=related

i remember seeing them & thinking WTF? there was no product, no apparent reason for the spots to exist, yet the smarmy appeal to the "creative" who think "outside the box" had to be addressed to someone. i finally figured out it must be addressed to "investors", & realized the world was changing.

those ads creeped me out big time, they seemed so smarmy on a very deep level. I was right!! yet if you read through the comments in some of the video postings, you find there were evidently lots of younger people who found them very cool & edgy, like enron was the dawn of a new birth of freedom or something.

currently, i'm noticing whole categories of advertising are disappearing. how often do you see spots for consumer appliances these days, for example?

penis pill spots, insurance, investment corps, those seem to be big currently.

i think the changes in ads might mirror changes in the structure of capital.

Well, you've mixed quite a bit of different elements here (the stuff about Morgan and Rockefeller smells like stuff that comes from the deepest cesspools of the web)

But the 5 points in your OP are worth unpacking IMO

"from the deepest cesspools of the web"

I'm not sure why you read it like that. Morgan links to British capital are well-documented in mainstream sources, & obviously bankers manage/invest pools of capital; the interesting thing about the reference i lost was that it listed some of the pools, e.g. New England textile money.

The ref was something like Myers' "History of the Great Fortunes," Modern Library 1907, from the muckraking era, not some lizards & jews tome. There was a lot of such stuff published circa Gilded Age through Depression.

In light of the trend toward contracting facilities & labor rather than owning plant outright, as well as the Microsoft/pharma trend of leasing patents & brands & letting other people take the risk of production, I think the Rockefeller quote represents current directions big capital well.

I wouldn't be surprised Rockefeller he really said it; income streams with little risk, rentier-type arrangement which is what would seem to be logical when control of some forms of capital becomes partially or wholly monopolistic.

So please don't slur me with the "conspiracy theorist" tag. I do actual research.

Hiya HB... Interesting factoid, no?

I can attest to the fact that you do actual research which brings our number on the entire WWW to perhaps nine or ten.... A fact base if I've ever seen one.

As far as the PI thread goes, the private equity funds are key... but I haven't really figured out the advantage.

why the private equity firms?

why the private equity firms?


Not just the firms but the funds...

Because they cross the line between "passive" and active finance capital; because they are at the apex of the fund "movement"in LBO, Venture, and current PE forms; because they are often responsible for "ventures" removed from the shell of multinational corporations - often a single mine or plywood factory, or whatever (although admittedly on a titanic scale); because they seem to be the key to internationalization; because they are the primary vultures which feast on the bones of "uncompetitive companies"...

... and, because, they have been in at the center of 4 major commercial crises since their rejuvenation in the 1980s, each throwing a larger ring around all they touch.

I'm not just talking about Carlisle and operations of that type. The 1980s LBO vehicles also qualify.

"at the center of 4 major commercial crises since their rejuvenation in the 1980s"

Interesting.

"Private equity is an asset class consisting of equity securities in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange.

Investments in private equity most often involve either an investment of capital into an operating company or the acquisition of an operating company. Capital for private equity is raised primarily from institutional investors.

Institutional investors are organizations which pool large sums of money and invest those sums in companies. They include banks, insurance companies, retirement or pension funds, hedge funds and mutual funds. Their role in the economy is to act as highly specialized investors on behalf of others.

Institutional investors will have a lot of influence in the management of corporations because they will be entitled to exercise the voting rights in a company. They can engage in active role in corporate governance.

institutional investors may often participate in private placements of securities, in which certain aspects of the securities laws may be inapplicable. For example, in the United States, a private placement under Rule 506 of Regulation D may be made to an "accredited investor" without registering the offering of securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Institutional investor types
Pension fund
Mutual fund
Investment trust
Unit trust and Unit Investment Trust
Investment banking
Hedge fund

In various countries different types institutional investors may be more important. In oil-exporting countries sovereign wealth funds are very important, while in developed countries, pension funds may be more important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_investor