Exploitation, Appropriation, and Subsumption

Roberts, Bruce

doi:10.1080/08935696.2011.583005

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…However, while collectives and cooperatives illustrate that resisting capitalist exploitation is not impossible – that corporate fundamentalism is not absolute – we must avoid treating these alternatives as anticapitalist strategies par excellence . 12 The existence of worker collectives does not negate the fact that, like capitalist enterprises, they must use a portion of their surplus values to make payments that secure the conditions of their existence (Roberts, 2011; Ruccio, 2011a), including payments to enterprises which still function as a ‘capitalist appropriator’ (Roberts, 2011: 246). What is more, Kasmir’s research on the Mondragon collective in the Basque region of Spain, which originated from a cooperative factory in 1956 and today includes thousands working in an ‘industrial complex’ (Kasmir, 1999: 384), suggests that workers were no more satisfied with their working conditions than when they were employed by private enterprises; that workers lacked the skills and knowledge to realize their democratic rights (1999: 389); and that workers were disillusioned with the collective’s investment in foreign capitalist firms (Kasmir, 1996, cited in Healy, 2011).…”

Section: Corporate Crime Law Reform With a Touch Of Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Corporate Fundamentalism: A Marxian Class Analysis of Corporate Crime Law Reform

Bittle

2013

Critical Sociology

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This article uses Marxian class theory to examine the state’s role in disciplining the modern corporation. Over the past decade, the Canadian government has enacted laws extending corporate criminal liability to safety crimes and stock market fraud, and considered, but ultimately decided against, legislation that would have made Canadian mining, oil and gas companies operating in developing countries liable under Canadian law. Using empirical data from Canadian parliamentary hearings, the author argues that efforts to punish corporations through law represent an important struggle over who should have the power to control the conditions for appropriating and distributing surplus value. At the same time, however, these struggles fail to address the fundamental exploitation that Marx identified in his surplus labour theory of class. The author concludes that we need to transcend the state’s law reform efforts to transform the manner in which surplus values are generated, appropriated and distributed.

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