[PEN-L:33673] Re: coercive asymmetric information

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Enormously important question close to the legal and philosphical basis of
capitalism.

(BTW thanks for Ian for his persistently shrewed and thought provoking
clippings. All the more helpful because he is posting from the west coast
of the USA and has already caught the early editions ready for us in
London, and for later risers.)

The question in this article is close to the question of whether bourgeois
right can exist as an atomised right, separate from the social context, for
private ownership of the means of production.

The prediction at the end  that it will require more lawyers, is probably
true in the short term. But it will mean that finance capitalist companies
will have to build in various risk management policies to guard
pre-emptively against such a catastrophe. They will have to have a system
of quality control, amber, and red warning alerts. This is pretty similar
to how finance capitalism has to work anyway.

An enlightened and canny finance capitalist company will report an annual
audit, of its ethical and environmental profile as well as its compliance
with a number of pre-emptive financial control systems in order to retain
blue chip status.

Government will then have no difficulty in tweaking the guidelines and the
consensus.

Large finance capitalist companies will be better able to do this than
small speculative or adventure companies. This move will accelerate the
trend towards monopoly finance capitalism, with links with the state.

It is a recognition that in order to continue to accumulate surplus value,
companies will have to accept some qualification of their bourgeois right
to treat their ownership of the means of production as absolute and
socially unaccountable. A slippery slope.

Chris Burford

London


At 08/01/03 20:51 -0800, you wrote:
> washingtonpost.com
> Lawyers as Stool Pigeons?
> SEC May Force Attorneys to Blow Whistle on Corporate Clients
>
> By Kathleen Day
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Thursday, January 9, 2003; Page E01