[AUT] the "socio-commercial enterprise"?

[john duda <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've just finished an interesting book called "The Choice: The Issue
of Black Survival in America," written in 1971 by one Samuel Yette, a
journalist who had also worked as a civil rights coordinator for the
US Office of Economic Opportunity.  The basic thrust of the book is to
re-evaluate social programs aimed at the black inner cities in the
1960's as forms of pacification, which Yette does by placing these
measures within the context of the alternative he claims was on the
table at the same time: wholesale genocide against the
African-American lower classes.  Yette frames his story with a 1968
House Un-American Activites Commission report which lays out a stark
plan for urban counterinsurgency in the US:

	Once the ghetto is sealed off ... the following actions could
	be taken by the authorities: 1) A curfew would be imposed in
	the enclosed isolated area.... 2) During the night the authorities
	would not only patrol the boundary lines, but would also
	attempt to control the streets and if necessary, send foot patrols
	through the entire area ... 3) Most civil liberties would have
	to be suspended, search and seizure operations would be
	instituted during the daylight hours, and anyone found armed
	or without proper identification would immediately be arrested
	... 4) The population of the ghetto would be classified
	through an office for the 'control and organization of the
	inhabitants'[1]... (p32-33)

By point 6 in the reccomendation, "detention centers" for enemy
combatants are on the table as well.

As alarming as this history is, what caught my attention and what I
thought might be interesting for this list, is the corporate
strategies Yette highlights.  The basic idea here is that what Yette
views as countersurgency-by-other-means(the example Yette focuses on
in this particular section of the book is the Job Corps, which was a
program half way between a workhouse and a vocational school) gave
major coporations the (profitable) opportunity to commodify the
service sector of the economy.  He writes: 
	
	The educational-industrial complex developed as a fallback
	support for the producers of military hardware who saw the end
	of the Vietnam War an eventuality, and who, therefore, felt
	the need to diversify.  The fallback was rationalized as a
	need to accomodate the government by becoming involved in what
	George Champion, chairman of the board of directors of the
	Chase Manhattan Bank, antisepticall describe as the
	"socio-commerical enterprise."  The socio-commercial
	enterprise, or educational-industrial complex, was rooted
	deeply in the earliest strategies of the Job Corps and the
	so-called war on poverty. (p. 51)


Champion's term is taken from the May/June 1967 issue of the Harvard
Business Review, in an article he titles "Creative Competition", where
he writes:

	One way of describing this concept would be to use the term
	"sociocommercial enterprise."  For what we are considering
	here is an entirely new view of the true "business' of
	business and its role in the so-called "public" sector of the
	economy. In essence, sociocommercial enterprise is based on
	the theory that if we are going to be successful in solving
	such crucial problems as water and air pollution, race
	relations, unemployment, and education, we must commit the
	vast resources of private business on a businesslike
	basis. Thus, such an approach is partially social in
	motivation and goals; but it is also partially commercial in
	that it is helping to shape an environment in which business
	can continue to operate profitable five or ten years from now.

The essential idea Champion has is that it's not enough for private
capital to cooperate with the government, but that corporations have
to actively _compete_ with the government in this new field of
accumulation.  A promising field for Champion is the new electronic
computers, which offer the chance for private capital to preempt the
government monopoly on education - but he also spots opportunities in
slum clearance, student loans, managing pollution, and producing
low-grade food for the global south.

It seems to me that there's something really interesting going on here
- it's been my vague impression that this sort of corporate
colonization of the life-world was a much more recent phenomenon - I'd
be interested if anyway knows of any substantial work done on the
"socio-commercial enterprise" or has any other suggestions for
following up on all this. 
	
-john


[1] Quote is from "Modern Warfare: A French View of
Counterinsurgency", published in 1961.  English translation online at
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/trinquier/trinquier.asp

-- 

this is where my public key can be found:
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 03817826
Key fingerprint = 6C11 8D70 2ADE EFA9 498D  72CB 77EA 391A 0381 7826


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