From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Mon Mar 07 2005 - 15:55:41 EST
---------------------------- Original Message ----------- Subject: Corporate values From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@hetnet.nl> Date: Mon, March 7, 2005 3:47 pm ----------------------------------------------------------- Maybe this item I noticed on another errand is of interest for your list: a recent Aspen Institute study of "corporate values". https://www.aspeninstitute.org/AspenInstitute/files/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/000000001488/Value%20Survey%20FINAL.pdf Most leftists these days regard corporations as evil bogeys that are destroying the world, but from the perspective of realistically reconstructing an economy along socialist lines, the more interesting question is "what sorts of values would a socialist corporate organisation seek to promote, and why?". If it isn't "Mao ze dong Thought" or "Marxism-Leninism" or " Kim Il-sung Thought", what would it be? In his book "The Poverty of Philosophy", Marx commented: "M. Proudhon the economist understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc." So then if socialism is not simply (1) the state owning the means of production, and (2) the Marxist party owning the state (the old Leninist concept), then "social relations" could refer not just narrowly to "ownership and control relations" but also more broadly to "the forms of association" through which social co-operation is culturally accomplished, which are guided by certain socially accepted norms and conventions (of course, the corporate "values" Aspen mentions often conflate ethical principles with socio-economic priorities and desirable behavioural traits). We are talking here about large organisations employing tens of thousands of people worldwide, to produce a range of products for a mass consumption demand, in other words, the kinds of organisations that leftists dream of building, but rarely succeed in building. Jurriaan
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