>Though Galbraith does not advance your straw man-- >that ownership is totally irrelevant--he does discuss >the formation of power based upon bureaucratic >functions. There is a wonderful discussion of Drucker, Galbraith, Berle and the managerial thesis generally in Scott R Bowman, The Modern Corporation and American Political Thought: Law, Power and Ideology (Penn State Press, 1996). One learns much about the fascinating Veblen-Galbraith nexus and the contributions Galbraith makes to the theory of the autonomy of the technostructure, though one indeed doubts whether the technocrats have been successful at sacrificing profitability to economic growth. Perhaps more importantly if one does not share John Galbraith's faith in the intellectuals as the only class capable of spearheading liberatory movements in a technologically determined world (Max would doubtless think that Galbraith exaggerates the inflexibility of the industrial system as well), then what is the alternative? From the *New Industrial State* to *Industrial Society and Its Future*? He does not go so far as to say that >only "performance" matters, but he does describe >to good effect the ways in which real business firms >depart, not necessarily in beneficent ways, from the >profit-maximizing model common to both Marx and >Milton Friedman. Talk about straw men, as if Marx did not theorize the maintainence of profitability through centralization at the expense of capital accumulation. I have transcribed long quotes from Mattick in his last book on this. Another Marxian approach is of course E.A Preobrazhensky, The Demise of Capitalism, ed. Richard B Day (ME Sharpe, 1985). >The Marxian/Friedmanite model of the firm flatters >capitalism with the advantages which it claims for itself >and celebrated by Drucker, namely efficiency and a >kind of ideological neutrality. How ideologically neutral "the new spirit of efficiency" really is the subject of a collection of essays edited by Tilla Siegel, International Journal of Political Economy, vol. 25, no4 (Winter 1995-6). Translated from the German, Siegel's "Lean and Flexible into the Future? Considerations on the Relationship between Industrial Rationalization and Societal Change" is based in part on the relationship between efficiency and the turnover of capital, as theorized by Marx. Best, Rakesh
