7. The principal judicial body of the company is the general assembly
in which every member has the same right to speak and exercise the
same active and passive right of choice. The general assembly makes
its determination by simply counting the majority of votes. A majority
of three quarters is necessary for changing the statutes and for a
dissolution or liquidation of the company.
8. The general assembly practises its right either directly or by means
of chosen officials, who are answerable to it for their actions.
9. The business of the society is managed by a directorate of three
members who hold office at the will of the general assembly. The
subordinate functionaries are chosen by the managers.
10. The general assembly selects every year a committee of inspection
which consists of five members. This body has to control and make a
report upon the books and the manner in which the company is conducted.
Now, as a member of the company, our visitor would have the amount he
has earned credited to him at a Central Bank, which keeps his accounts
and sends him an abstract every week; and through this bank he would
make the larger part of his disbursements. The products of the company,
moreover, are valued, stored, and sold by a Central Warehouse, in much
the same fashion that under the present regime a manufacturer’s whole
output may be disposed of through a big department store or a mail
order house.
Let us now sum this up. The collection and disposition of capital
belongs to the community; and the total capital available for
further production each year is based directly upon the productive
capacities of the community, without the waste and leakage that arises
in present-day society though what Mr. Thorstein Veblen calls the
conspicuous waste--the futile expenditures--of the leisured classes.
That this collection of a capital tax upon income would be any more
difficult than the present corporation tax or private income tax,
which is now dissipated to the extent of some 90 per cent. or so upon
armies and navies, is seriously to be doubted. In addition to this, the
process of open book-keeping enables the Central Bank and the Central
Warehouse to have an accurate knowledge of potential production, and
thus there exists an accurate basis for apportioning credit. At the
same time the value of commodities comes by this means to have a direct
relation to the costs of production rather than to what the traffic
will bear.
On all these heads the trained economist will doubtless have many
points to contest; but in their broad outlines there is no abrupt
departure from current practise in any of these items, and not much
reason, perhaps, why they should not be more thoroughly instituted.
With the various ramifications of Edendale industry and corporate
finance it is not my business to deal; we have gone far enough to see
that very little indeed remains when the question of means has been
gone into.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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