Elizabeth Warren Plans To "Destroy Capitalism" And "Nationalize Everything"

Elizabeth Warren has proposed one of the most important bills of the decade - the Accountable Capitalism Act.

Company directors would be explicitly instructed to consider the interests of all relevant stakeholders — shareholders, but also customers, employees, and the communities in which the company operates — when making decisions.
40 percent of the directors would be elected by the company’s workforce, with the other 60 percent elected by shareholders.
Corporate executives would be required to hold on to shares of stock granted to them for at least five years after they were received and at least three years after a share buyback.
Corporate political activity would require the specific authorization of both 75 percent of shareholders and 75 percent of board members.

These are badly overdue reforms, and the ideas behind them have long histories.

In the early 19th century, state legislatures issued corporate charters on a case-by-case basis to corporations that demonstrated that the special privilege of a charter was essential to the public good.

"The public good". Even the federal government doesn't do that anymore, much less corporations.
As for putting workers on the board, this already done in Europe.
In Denmark, any company with 35 employees needs worker representation on the board. In Germany, any company with more than 2,000 employees needs a board that is half elected by workers.

Imagine that, workers having a say in things like how a factory is run, executive pay, and whether to offshore their jobs.
As proof of how needed these reforms are, check out the reaction.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) thinks she knows what ails capitalism: There aren't enough people telling the biggest businesses what to do.

Try to contain your surprise that Warren believes the profit motive is ruining capitalism. She wants the largest corporations in the United States to be legally answerable to people other than their shareholders, and she's introducing a bill to force it.
...
Warren says she wants American corporations to be looking out for "American interests." They are. They're just not always the same as Warren's political interests. She doesn't grasp the difference.

The hubris reminds me of how the aristocrats viewed the demand of the peasants of a republic.
Or African colonies wanting independence. Or women wanting to vote.
"They are like children. They can't control their own lives."

And it gets worse.

Warren’s proposal is dishonestly called the “Accountable Capitalism Act.” Accountable to whom? you might ask. That’s a reasonable question. The answer is — as it always is — accountable to politicians, who desire to put the assets and productivity of private businesses under political discipline for their own selfish ends...
Senator Warren is many things: a crass opportunist, intellectually bankrupt, personally vapid, a peddler of witless self-help books, etc.

Liars never believe anyone. Thieves think that everyone steals.

Senator Warren’s proposal entails the wholesale expropriation of private enterprise in the United States, and nothing less. It is unconstitutional, unethical, immoral, irresponsible, and — not to put too fine a point on it — utterly bonkers.

Nothing less than the wholesale expropriation of private enterprise in the United States? Did this guy even read the bill? It seems unlikely.

But the best reaction of all is "We are doing an excellent job. Just ask us."

In principle, Warren's ideas sound good, but they are based on a flawed premise. She contends that CEOs and boards are following Nobel-Prize winning economist Milton Friedman's philosophy of maximizing shareholder value.

Warren's proposed legislation would require corporations to be federally chartered and consider the interests of all major stakeholders....Warren's Op-Ed piece and her legislation are based on the belief that CEOs have abandoned all stakeholders other than shareholders.

Gee, where would Warren get that idea? Hmmm. It sure is a puzzler.

Why would we fill boards of directors with front-line employees with limited experience in corporate governance?

Most public company board members are former CEOs or executives who have run major companies with thousands of employees who recognize the importance of a healthy culture and committed employees that are treated fairly. Annual employee surveys give them data to assess the health of the culture. They are accustomed to making complex decisions involving tradeoffs, especially when a crisis arises.

"Annual employee surveys give them data"?
These executives have absolutely no contact with their employees, and thus no idea how their companies actually run.
I think we all know what "complex decisions involving tradeoffs when a crisis arises" means.
Layoffs leading to executive bonuses.

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Jacobin

But why let all this runaway inequality color our view of capitalism writ large? Why not, as Elizabeth Warren has attempted with her new bill proposed this week called the Accountable Capitalism Act, merely rein in the excesses of capitalism — to save capitalism from itself?

Well, because the distribution pattern we see now is no accident. It’s what capitalism trends toward, even when we try our best to contain it.

“The distinctive and dominant characteristic of the capitalist market is not opportunity or choice,” wrote Marxist political economist Ellen Meiksins Wood, “but, on the contrary, compulsion” — in particular, the compulsion to compete on the market. To survive, workers are compelled to compete with other workers to sell their labor on the open market, prompting a race to the bottom.

Meanwhile, in order for their enterprises to stay afloat and to keep from becoming workers themselves (a stressful prospect under capitalism), bosses are forced to compete with other bosses to maximize profit, which requires them to squeeze as much labor from workers for as little cost as possible, while also pressuring the state to deregulate industry, cut taxes, and so on.

This compulsion builds inequality into the system and sets capitalism on the road to excess from the start.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

She knows the pigs will never allow debate on this shit. Even if they do, they'll make sure no real policy that benefits workers ever sees the light of day.

If the Democrats were really as socialist as the far-right reactionaries claim, then the Dems would be working toward the abolition of class, not class collaboration with an IdPol overlay that capitulates to the bourgeoisie on economic issues.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Cassiodorus's picture

Destroying capitalism and nationalizing everything, that is.

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"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati

lotlizard's picture

@Cassiodorus  

Elizabeth Warren Plans To "Destroy Capitalism" And "Nationalize Everything"

(1) And this is bad how?

(2) Oh, she does, huh? Ha! If only.

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If this is a piece of controlled opposition, it is one that gets into circulation a bunch of ideas which all sectors of the oligarchy would rather not have see the light of day. Anytime. Ever. Especially during an off year national election when all of us deplorables and eccentrics and assorted other nobodies can be asking congressional condidates and their staffs if the candidate will promise to co-sponsor the Warren bill. I suppose there is or soon will be a House version.

What occurs to my vulgar, suspicious mind is that this is the price Warren exacted for endorsing and campaigning for Shillary. I think she is not supposed to introduce a bill unless Schemer allows it, right? And then I am thinking that she waited to collect on the promise until the Dims have their hands full with the Progressive insurgency.

Please note, the proposed bill is not a direct blow or challenge to any cherished Dim issue, such as immigration reform, DACA, Israel, Russia, Russia, Russia, or any other announced Dim priority.

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Mary Bennett

Warren is an expert on bankruptcy and the ways low income people are forced into it and abused by it. So she could have easily proposed major reforms in bankruptcy law (which, by the way, is already federal law, unlike corporate law). This would have been much harder for the powers that be to treat as “dead on arrival”.

In light of that alternative, it is hard not to suspect that a goal of Warren’s bill is to stake out a position to Bernie’s Left, and position herself to peel away some of Bernie’s electoral support for another Presidential campaign.
Clearly many powers that be have been encouraging her to play this role, but she would be smarter not to compete directly with Bernie. Even if she drives down Bernie’s primary votes enough to enable somebody like Kamala Harris to eke out a majority in the Dem Convention, Warren’s role in doing this would disqualify her as Veep-nominee-to-mollify-Bernies’-supporters.

In contrast, she might be qualified for such a nomination if she stays out of the anybody-but-Bernie game during at least the early primaries. If she jumps in early, I think Bernie will humiliate her in the New Hampshire primary. Even if she has helped the powers that be to split off some of Bernie’s supporters, they will never trust her because she made her name confronting the big banks.

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@emorej a hong kong how much Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are doing together these days? Rallies, streamed town meetings. You don't see them on the MSM, but I expect most people here come across them.

It may be that Bernie has reached a stage in his life where he thinks the leader of the left in the senate is the place for him. Maybe he's passing the torch. Bernie is smart enough not to help anybody undercut him.

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GreyWolf's picture

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thanatokephaloides's picture

@GreyWolf

decent commentary on Warren's weak tea n/t

It wouldn't be weak tea if it had a snowball's chance in the Christian Hell of passage.

But it doesn't, and Warren knew it didn't before proposing it.

And while we're on the subject, I'd like to see something like Warren's bill applied to Congress itself. We desperately need a working-class Congress, but have never had one.

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

GreyWolf's picture

@thanatokephaloides ... and then edited it and afterward saw you'd already commented. sorry.

your comments are some of what my thoughts were, and why I changed it. plus my jeering at the 30%

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snoopydawg's picture

@thanatokephaloides

Warren is called the pit bull of the senate because of all of her fiery speeches against the big banks and others that take advantage of we the people, but why hasn't she once lambasted congress for covering up and protecting those enemies of we the people.

She is doing the same things that Schumer, Pelosi and others have done. Submit legislation when the GOP won't bring it up for a vote. Funny how no democrats think of doing this when they are the majority isn't it? Actually it's a see through ruse, but many people fall for it.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

It needs discussion.
Bernie's rants on income inequality needed some fleshing out & this is a good start.

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chuck utzman

TULSI 2020

Even so, I agree with chuckutzman. These ideas need open discussion. What, a corporation, far from being a "person" needs a charter? And that charter can, in theory, be denied or revoked? A corporation is not a force of nature or history? We get to choose if we want them or not?

No wonder the screams of "socialism"! Actually, it is all the fault of the cute Russian agent who lives in my basement. He gave me the plan and I sent it to Sen. Warren.

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Mary Bennett

A corporate charter for large corporations makes a lot of sense. Setting aside the fact that her bill will likely go nowhere, large corporations take extreme advantage of the citizenry starting with the notion that they have state charters, many of whom, like Delaware, give a rats ass as to where the corporation's actual principal place of business is or where they conduct most of their business.

In today's world state charters make very little sense. They allow corporations to dodge all kinds of things, one important one being where a suit can be filed against it. Often a state charter elsewhere may mean that the harmed individual or business has to go to that inconvenient state to sue the corporation.

The concept of intrastate commerce is pretty much gone. It is no longer even interstate commerce; it is global commerce.

This is a step in the right direction but probably fifty years too late.

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lotlizard's picture

@davidgmillsatty  
when the elites, abetted by neocons and liberal interventionists, invoke “responsibility to protect” (R2P) and summarily set out to destroy countries like Syria and Libya —

— yet “sovereignty” and local law and jurisdiction are sacred and insurmountable barriers when it comes to tax havens keeping the elites’ crown jewels and corporate secrets. Delaware. Luxembourg. Malta. Jersey. Nevis. Etc.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/12/nevis-how-the-worlds-most-s...

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Pluto's Republic's picture

Anyone who watched the Democratic National Convention knows that and filters her and her preemptive poison pills out of the news feed.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic Her ideas sound good, right? But when you look closer, it becomes obvious she’s making a safe play to keep her “progressive” cred while not actually moving anything forward. All show and no go. I’d be much more impressed if she suggested this when it had a chance of going anywhere.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

@Dr. John Carpenter
said exactly the same thing about Bernie Sanders for 25 years.

Somebody has to keep these ideas before the public.

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