Those of us who grew up in the seventies of the twentieth century have been exposed to information since childhood that capitalist industrial and commercial enterprises are set up with the capital class, and that they can take possession of the surplus value of the working class without any swaying or doing anything, and that they are a group of people who do nothing for nothing, and to put it mildly, they are "parasites" and "vampires". With these endorsements, as long as you hear the word "capitalist", it is like encountering a demon and a beast.
The practice of reform and opening up for more than 40 years has changed many of our cognitions, and a large number of entrepreneurs in the early years have grown into world-class entrepreneurs, such as Ren Zhengfei, Cao Dewang, Li Dongsheng, Zhong Sui, Ma Yun, Ma Huateng, Liu Qiangdong ......, they have all become billionaires, a hundred times more than we used to imagine for capitalists. In the face of their hard work and great contributions, we must not put the hat of "parasite" on their heads for nothing. Based on the practice of China's reform and opening up,We should re-examine the history of capitalist enterprises, truly understand what a capitalist is, what an entrepreneur is, and the real relationship between a capitalist and a business, only in this way can we recognize history and open up the future.
The first volume of Marx's Capital describes the capitalist in the production process of capitalist enterprise as follows: "As the conscious bearer of this movement[1], the owner of money becomes the capitalist. He as a person, or rather his purse, is the starting point and the return point of money. The objective content of this circulation—the multiplication of value—is his subjective aim;It is only when the increasing appropriation of abstract wealth becomes the sole motive of his activity that he performs his functions as a capitalist or as personified, volitional and conscious capital. Therefore, use value must not be regarded as the direct aim of the capitalists. Nor is his aim a single profit, but only an endless campaign for profit. ”[2]
This passage says that what the capitalist pursues is not the use value of commodities, but the infinite growth of profits, which is correct, but Marx believes that the capitalist is only the owner of money, only personified capital, that is, a money bag with will and consciousness, or the capitalist is the flesh of the money bag. Is there a problem with this judgment?
If the capitalist is only the flesh of the money bag, then the capitalist will not be able to work, that is to say, the capitalist will not work. Marx also confirmed this view in Capital. Marx wrote: "Did he himself [3] not work?".Didn't he engage in monitoring and supervising the labor of the spinning workers?Doesn't this kind of labor of his also form value?However, his overseer and manager shrugged their shoulders. [4] From this passage, it can be seen that Marx believed that capitalists do not provide labor except for the injection of capital into enterprises, and that even supervision work is done by supervisors and managers.
To sum up, the capitalist referred to by Marx is a person who purely provides material capital, and in the vulgar way, he is the one who pays the money, and in addition, he throws his hand away and only waits to receive the surplus value. Following this logic, it is necessary to conclude that the multiplicative value of the enterprise is created by the labor of the workers (including foremen and managers), and the capitalists contribute zero to it;And the multiplicative value, the surplus value, which exceeds the wages of the workers, is appropriated by the capitalists without compensation.
Therefore, the capitalists exploit the workers, and the capitalists get nothing for nothing. This view should be the natural conclusion of all those who have read Capital in the past, and this understanding is extremely far-reaching, and I grew up with this understanding. Since truth is not afraid of doubt, let us boldly question the correctness of this view today.
We do not use theoretical deductions to prove whether capitalists get something for nothing, but seek answers through the real corporate history revealed in "The Visible Hand". "The Visible Hand" tells the history of American enterprises for about 180 years from 1790 to 1970, involving countless enterprises, but almost none of them are the flesh of money bags - capitalists simply invest a sum of money, and then, retreat, sit idly by, just wait for the company to put money in their own money bags.
The Visible Hand begins with an introduction to the situation of traditional American enterprises, which are American enterprises before 1840. Most of these enterprises are family-controlled single unit enterprises, in general, traditional enterprises are managed by owners, enterprises owned by managers, ownership and control are completely integrated with the founder of the enterprise, the owner of the enterprise is the manager of the enterprise, and the manager of the enterprise is also the owner of the enterprise.
The United States was a British colony on the American continent in the early days, and British laws were enforced, so Britain, which had the most developed industry and commerce in Europe at that time, should have similar business forms to the United States. In other words, before 1840, the enterprises of the capitalist world were owner-owned. The owners are not only capitalists who inject capital into the enterprise, but also managers who inject labor into the enterprise, and they do not hand over the management power to the supervisors and managers who will shrug their shoulders, because at this time there are only a few people in the vast majority of enterprises, and there is no room for supervisors and managers, and the capitalists directly participate in the work, and at the same time they are also supervisors and managers. In these traditional enterprises, there is no place for the capitalist who only acts as the flesh of the money bag.
After 1840, modern enterprises developed from railroad companies, salaried managers appeared, and the ownership and management rights of enterprises began to separate, but this separation was by no means achieved in an instant, but after a process of seventy or eighty years, it was not until 1920 that modern enterprises completely dominated the United States. In the early stage of the development of modern enterprises, the founders of enterprises were capitalists, who performed the function of money bags - investing in enterprises, and on the other hand, devoted themselves to the operation and management of their own enterprises.
The Visible Hand tells the entrepreneurial history of many famous capitalists:
Cornelius Vanderbilt and William Vanderbilt, father and son, acquired and expanded the New York Railway Company into one of the three largest railroad giants in the United States
Junior S. Morgan with JPierre Ponte Morgan & Sons founded and made Morgan Bank the best investment bank in the United States
Roland Massey founded Macy's in New York in 1858;
George FGilman and George Huntington Hartford founded the first large-scale store chain in the United States, the Great American Tea Company, in 1859
In the 50s of the 19th century, Cyrus McCormick founded the McCormick Harvester Company, the founder McCormick replaced the regional ** merchants with a payroll manager, and by the end of the 19th century, the company became a leader in the harvester manufacturing industry
Rockefeller, who started as an accountant at the age of 16, founded Standard Oil, which monopolized 90% of the refining business in the United States
Andrew Carnegie, an apprentice, founded Carnegie Steel, the largest steel company in the United States
Alan Montgomery Ward with his cousin George AIn 1872, Sawn founded Montgomery Ward, the first multi-product mail-order company in the United States
In 1879, Cadwallad Colden Washburne created the first "automated complete mill, progressive mill mill";
In 1881, Gustavus FThe Swift Company, founded by Swift, employed Andrew J., one of the most prominent cryonics engineers of the timeChase designed a modern freezer truck to deliver processed fresh beef from Chicago to Boston, and established a sales and storage network throughout the United States, making it the largest meat processing plant in the United States
In the early 80s of the 19th century, Procter & Gamble, co-founded by Procter and Gable, adopted a new type of large-scale mechanical crusher to make soap, and became the tycoon of the American soap industry in one fell swoop
In 1883, Edwin Norton and Ow.The Norton brothers founded the first "automatic line" canning factory;
In 1884, George Eastman invented a continuous method of producing photographic negatives, and his company, Kodak, controlled the global photographic industry
1887, Henry OHavemeyer founded the American Sugar Company Trust, which in 1894 had a 75% share of the U.S. market
In the 90s of the 19th century, Andrew JThe Boston Fruit Company, founded by Preston, established a network for the distribution of bananas in the United States;
In the 90s of the 19th century, Candler of Atlanta, the founder of the Coca-Cola Company, became a millionaire;
In 1890, James Buchanan Duke and four of his peers formed the American Tobacco Company, which became the largest enterprise in the U.S. tobacco industry
Thomas Edison founded the Edison General Electric Company in 1889 and merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form the General Electric Company in 1892
At the beginning of the 20th century, Amur, Swift, Morris, and Cardassi each founded meat processing plants that bear their own names, which are the four largest companies in the same industry in the United States;
1904, William CDurant took over the Buick Motor Company and founded General Motors in 1908.
The founders of these famous enterprises have invested material capital in the enterprise, and they are all capitalists, but they are not hands-off managers, but devote their lives to working in their own enterprises. In fact, in the era in which Marx lived (1818-1883), the ownership and control of the vast majority of enterprises in Europe and the United States had not yet been separated on a large scale, and 100% of the people he called capitalists were immersed in the business and management of enterprises, and they had a large number of supervisors and managers under them, but these people rarely dared to shrug their shoulders in front of these capitalists, and always behaved submissively. That is to say,The early capitalists were all entrepreneurs at the same time, and the simple money-bag capitalists who broke away from the identity of entrepreneurs never founded enterprises at all, and there was no such money-bag capitalist in these enterprises.
The entrepreneur is the manager of the enterprise, the laborer and the most important laborer in the enterprise, so the early capitalists are all laborers, not simply the flesh of the money bag or the money bag. Since the early capitalists were laborers, the hats of "parasites" and "vampires" should not be worn, and capitalists who do not work for nothing do not exist like imaginary demons.
It was not until the twenties of the twentieth century that modern enterprises, led by the United States, which completely separated ownership and management rights, matured, and professional managers replaced the founders or their families as entrepreneurs, and the founders' families and other social investors were relatively close to what Marx called the money-bag capitalists. In fact, these capitalists are always trying their best to maintain and increase the value of their assets, and they do not lie on their money bags and sleep a lot, because those who sleep will lose their money bags.
At this point, we can conclude that the judgment that the capitalists get what they don't work for is wrong, or at least inaccurate. Many capitalists are also entrepreneurs, and they provide the labor to take care of the capital and run the enterprise, and a part of the surplus value is created by the capitalists themselves, and according to the principle of distribution according to work, the capitalists are entitled to this part of the surplus value. Therefore, it cannot be said that the capitalists earn nothing and live only on exploitation. Of course, in the course of history, there are many capitalists who often abuse their dominant position, and even do not hesitate to excessively squeeze out a part of the value that should be attributed to employees by cruel means. However, just because a capitalist eats more and takes more should not completely deny the remuneration he deserves as an entrepreneur.
In the past, the erroneous perception of people, including Marx, was to completely deny the entrepreneurial identity of capitalists and the value-creating function of capitalists. According to this understanding, a policy of total negation and elimination of the capitalist class is certain, but the facts of history tell us that the adoption of such a policy will not lead to real success. The fundamental reason for the vitality of the advanced capitalist countries is that they continue to play the entrepreneurial function of the capitalists.
The history of contemporary China's market economy is short, the vast majority of private enterprises belong to the owner-owned enterprises, the owners of the enterprise set ownership and control in one, they are not only capitalists but also entrepreneurs, are not unearned money bag capitalists, the vast majority of business owners are conscientious and hard-working.
Entrepreneurs are the most important workers in the enterprise, and their labor is related to the future and destiny of the enterprise, and is related to the major interests of employees, customers, partners and the country. It is a well-known truth that entrepreneurs create great value for society, and they must not be labelled as capitalists who exploit people, but should love and support them. If so, China's economy will be more vibrant and prosperous.
1] refers to the movement process of capital multiplication of "money-commodity-money (g-w-g')" -- author's note[2] Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, translated by the Compilation Bureau of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, People's Publishing House, 1st edition, June 1975, p. 174. [3] Referring to the capitalists - author's note[4] Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, translated by the Compilation Bureau of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, People's Publishing House, June 1975, 1st edition, p. 218.
To be continued. **The Visible Hand - The Management Revolution of American Companies" is the fourth in a series of articles after reading, which is continuously updated, so stay tuned!
Author: Qiu Qingrong, Chief Equity Designer of Beijing Zhiben Management Consulting***.