Thus far have we come through the natural growth of the company. If we
consider the nature and development of the company, we shall find that
it is not entirely undemocratic. The directors are, in principle at
least, elected and removable by the shareholders. And as the shares are
open for purchase by any one, a porter may be a shareholder in the
railway company of which he is a servant, with, so far, a voice in the
management. But in point of fact the companies are owned and controlled
by the capitalist classes, and are a development of capitalism. The
directors are usually large capitalists. Their main aim is to produce
dividends. The relation of the management to the employees cannot have
much of a kindly, human, and personal element.
On the other hand, the development of the company in a large degree
means that the real administration of the economic movement is passing
out of the hands of the owner of capital as such. The companies are for
the most part managed by paid officials, who may or may not have a
substantial holding in the capital. That is, the capitalists do not
really manage the companies in which their capital is embarked. The
manager, with a staff of paid officials, has become the pivot of the
industrial movement. Generally speaking, the large company is more
amenable to social regulation than a variety of small enterprises. And
now we see that the natural development of the company has prepared the
whole organisation necessary for its complete transference to social
ownership and control, if such a step were deemed advisable. A great
railway or system of water-supply can be transferred to State or
municipal control without any particular change in the organisation by
which it is worked. In fact, capitalism has prepared or is preparing the
mechanism by which it may be superseded. It has done its work so
thoroughly that it has been rendering even itself superfluous. We need
not add that preparatory steps towards the transformation of the company
may also be seen in the spread of the principle of industrial
partnerships or profit-sharing. In America, where the industrial
development is more recent, the founders of the great corporations still
to a large degree continue to control them. Yet we can see how the
constructive talent they have so marvellously shown has paved the way
for social control when the time may come for it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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