Re: new immanence in danger

In a message dated 2/27/2003 3:06:54 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
ibnsubhi@yahoo.com writes:

> Steve, thanks for your extremely powerful rebuttal of
> Hardt's weak argument.  The only part I did not
> understand was your last couple of sentences
> distinguishing capitalist ruling class from
> corporations.  What do you mean?

Capitalists are the individuals who control large amounts of capital (how 
large? 10, 30 million, at least?  I'm not sure.  Enough that they don't think 
with the same logic as members of the salariat).  Corporations are economic 
enterprises.  There is a difference.  There is also a difference between 
corporations and states, which are organizations that control (or claim to 
control) territory.  We often hear how 20 of the 50 biggest economies in the 
world are corporations (or whatever the figure is) but corporations are very 
different than states.  Corporations are constantly merging, liquidating 
themselves, buying each other out.  Blair will never be at the helm of any 
other state in his entire life, but CEOs frequently jump from corporation to 
corporation.  I would say all of these features are  because capitalists (and 
most CEOs belong to the capitalist class) have sufficiently weakened other 
stakeholders' (workers, communities, consumers, etc) hold on corporations that 
they (the capitalists) can basically use them as their playthings.  Capitalists 
don't latch themselves onto one corporation; they diversify, and look out for 
their general interest nationally and globally. Warren Buffett, executive of 
Berkshire Hathaway (?) may well be a more characteristic capitalist than Bill 
Gates; he's barely known to protestors because he makes his money strictly 
through investing, rather than overseeing some corporations image. A Brazilian 
capitalist doesn't necessarilly depend on the well-being of brazillian 
corporations; he can always move his investments to other places (not 
entirely--some parts of the world economy are much less transparent and fluid 
than others--but still).  Enron demonstrated that in some situations a 
corporation can altogether implode and capitalists can still walk away with the 
money.  Capitalists also have an interest, independent of the well-being of 
corporations, in being able to live the lifestyle they'd like to, consuming the 
resources they desire, protected from the masses etc.  The WEF is pr
obably the most direct expression of the global capitalist class, although they 
invite some intellectuals, artists, activists, etc to give themselves some 
prestige and perhaps to hear a variety of viewpoints.  It is something 
different from both states and international organizations which are organized 
through states like the UN, the WTO, and the IMF.  By the way, sentiment at the 
WEF this year was strongly against the American juggernaut toward war.

Steven Sherman