Post by Admin on Apr 12, 2020 10:37:18 GMT
"Excellent overview of "stakeholder capitalism", the radical new form of capitalism outlined last year by Davos, The World Economic Forum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Business Roundtable (which included JPMorgan, Mastercard, Deloitte, Salesforce, RBC, Royal Phillips, PayPal, Henry Schein, Dow Chemical, Occidental Petroleum, Novartis, andHP Enterprise), and explored in detail at in the World Economic Forum's remarkable 'Event 201' last October, which modeled a global coronavirus pandemic and discussed how huge multinational corporations and big business could utilise this "opportunity" to restructure the entire world economy itself.
Another name for “stakeholder capitalism” is of course “the corporate state” - i.e., when the huge transnational corporations take over the running, resourcing, function, and cultural status of previously “public sector” and even governmental roles and arenas.
As Naomi Klein acutely notes in 'The Shock Doctrine': "Far from freeing the market from the state, these political and corporate elites have simply merged, trading favors to secure the right to appropriate precious resources previously held in the public domain— from Russia's oil fields, to China's collective lands, to the no-bid reconstruction contracts for work in Iraq. A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business", she observes, "is not liberal, conservative or capitalist but corporatist. Its main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands, often accompanied by exploding debt, and an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor. For those inside the bubble of extreme wealth created by such an arrangement, there can be no more profitable way to organize a society."
It is this long-term aim and agenda of "corporatism", combined with the growing mass unease with capitalism itself in the last decade, that lies behind this radical new "reformulation" of the economic project in terms of "stakeholder capitalism", strikingly illustrating Klein's thesis of how big business always takes advantage of crisis such as natural disasters to push forward and radically extend its agenda and interests.
We can see exactly this movement happening at the moment, with the government increasingly simply acting as a conduit or channel for vast multinationals - Mercedes, BAE Systems, Dyson, Babcock International, Airbus, Ford, Rolls-Royce, Siemens, ThermaFisher, Randox, Burberry - to flood into the national health service, under the guise of "stakeholder" capitalism, and "partnering" with previously public sector systems and operations.
"The next stage is to bring in the private sector companies”, confirmed Health Secretary Matt Hancock two weeks ago, “and then to bring in the wider pharmaceutical industry". It's not this might happen, or is happening now - it's already happened, and "stakeholder capitalism" is the formula used to sell it to us.
"Capitalism, as we know it, is dead", noted billionaire Marc Benioff, Chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce at the prestigious Business Roundtable event last August. "We’re going to see a new kind of capitalism—and it won't be the Milton Friedman capitalism. The new capitalism is that businesses are here to serve their shareholders, but also their stakeholders —customers, public schools, homeless and the planet."
Davos's remarkable new Manifesto, launched in January this year, similarly outlined a radical reframing of what the entire nature and purpose of capitalism is, following the dramatic challenge to it from the likes of Sanders and Corbyn, and a sense that globalisation and capitalism itself are under attack and that its days - and therefore its huge profits and control of the system - might be numbered. “People are really dissatisfied with capitalism,” observed Andy Green, managing director for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think-tank.
"I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance”, noted Larry Fink of BlackRock somewhat prophetically in late 2019, the world’s largest investor with $7 trillion in assets.
Amongst those signing up to this brave new corporatist state world were the "CEOs of Microsoft, UPS, Workday, Mastercard, Deloitte, Salesforce, RBC, Royal Phillips, Genpact, PayPal, Henry Schein, Dassault, Dow Chemical, Occidental Petroleum, Novartis, HP, HP Enterprise, Sanofi, A.P. Moller-Maersk, and extra."
In particular, they saw that although popular trust in huge transnationals was low, popular trust in their own governments was even lower, and could therefore be exploited. People might despise the hypocrisy and vacuity of politicians, but they still like their Apple iPhones and MacBooks. "Recent surveys from Edelman, the public relations group, show that there is now more trust in business as a source of social solutions than government. 'People are not asking necessarily any more for politicians [to lead on these projects],' says Mr Schwab, founder of the WEF. 'That is interesting.' 'So what we are doing now is to put much more emphasis on this, creating platforms where a business can co-operate with governments and civil society'."
In August 2019, 'Business Roundtable' released a new "Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation" which said all its member companies share a fundamental commitment to all their stakeholders. “The American dream is alive, but fraying,” said Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and chairman of Business Roundtable, in a statement. “Major employers are investing in their workers and communities because they know it is the only way to be successful over the long term. These modernized principles reflect the business community’s unwavering commitment to continue to push for an economy that serves all Americans.”
For anyone who's read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine and seen what JPMorgan have done in Argentina and Asia ("Argentine's entire early-nineties shock therapy program was written in secret by JPMorgan and Citibank, two of Argentina's largest private credits") will be surprised by this concern for the world's "workers and communities".
"This approach is neither status quo nor abandoning capitalism altogether", noted Paul Tudor Jones, founder of Tudor Investment Corporation and The Robin Hood Foundation, Co-Founder and Chairman of JUST Capital, earlier this year at Davos. "It's simply recalibrating the system to take a deeper view of business, and ensure an economy that works for all."
As even the Harvard Business Review observed, "Naysayers will call stakeholder capitalism a PR stunt. Window dressing designed to placate protesters and pretty-up corporate images" (January 2020), before observing that in the same month, Larry Fink of BlackRock, the world’s largest investor with $7 trillion in assets under management, sent his annual letter to CEOs. “Awareness is rapidly changing,” Fink writes, “and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance…It’s time we get serious about writing a new chapter on capitalism, before it’s too late."
“It’s not a ‘versus’,” agreed James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola. “The Coca-Cola business has been set up under a simple idea for a long time: it can’t be a viable business without a viable community.” (! Coca-Cola!).
The Davos manifesto included its 7 key new principles or "pillars": “Governance mechanisms” , “Governing disruption” (!!!!); “Long-term vision, short-term needs”; and “Regulation and corporate adaptation”."
www.investopedia.com/stakeholder-capitalism-4774323
Another name for “stakeholder capitalism” is of course “the corporate state” - i.e., when the huge transnational corporations take over the running, resourcing, function, and cultural status of previously “public sector” and even governmental roles and arenas.
As Naomi Klein acutely notes in 'The Shock Doctrine': "Far from freeing the market from the state, these political and corporate elites have simply merged, trading favors to secure the right to appropriate precious resources previously held in the public domain— from Russia's oil fields, to China's collective lands, to the no-bid reconstruction contracts for work in Iraq. A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business", she observes, "is not liberal, conservative or capitalist but corporatist. Its main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands, often accompanied by exploding debt, and an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor. For those inside the bubble of extreme wealth created by such an arrangement, there can be no more profitable way to organize a society."
It is this long-term aim and agenda of "corporatism", combined with the growing mass unease with capitalism itself in the last decade, that lies behind this radical new "reformulation" of the economic project in terms of "stakeholder capitalism", strikingly illustrating Klein's thesis of how big business always takes advantage of crisis such as natural disasters to push forward and radically extend its agenda and interests.
We can see exactly this movement happening at the moment, with the government increasingly simply acting as a conduit or channel for vast multinationals - Mercedes, BAE Systems, Dyson, Babcock International, Airbus, Ford, Rolls-Royce, Siemens, ThermaFisher, Randox, Burberry - to flood into the national health service, under the guise of "stakeholder" capitalism, and "partnering" with previously public sector systems and operations.
"The next stage is to bring in the private sector companies”, confirmed Health Secretary Matt Hancock two weeks ago, “and then to bring in the wider pharmaceutical industry". It's not this might happen, or is happening now - it's already happened, and "stakeholder capitalism" is the formula used to sell it to us.
"Capitalism, as we know it, is dead", noted billionaire Marc Benioff, Chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce at the prestigious Business Roundtable event last August. "We’re going to see a new kind of capitalism—and it won't be the Milton Friedman capitalism. The new capitalism is that businesses are here to serve their shareholders, but also their stakeholders —customers, public schools, homeless and the planet."
Davos's remarkable new Manifesto, launched in January this year, similarly outlined a radical reframing of what the entire nature and purpose of capitalism is, following the dramatic challenge to it from the likes of Sanders and Corbyn, and a sense that globalisation and capitalism itself are under attack and that its days - and therefore its huge profits and control of the system - might be numbered. “People are really dissatisfied with capitalism,” observed Andy Green, managing director for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think-tank.
"I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance”, noted Larry Fink of BlackRock somewhat prophetically in late 2019, the world’s largest investor with $7 trillion in assets.
Amongst those signing up to this brave new corporatist state world were the "CEOs of Microsoft, UPS, Workday, Mastercard, Deloitte, Salesforce, RBC, Royal Phillips, Genpact, PayPal, Henry Schein, Dassault, Dow Chemical, Occidental Petroleum, Novartis, HP, HP Enterprise, Sanofi, A.P. Moller-Maersk, and extra."
In particular, they saw that although popular trust in huge transnationals was low, popular trust in their own governments was even lower, and could therefore be exploited. People might despise the hypocrisy and vacuity of politicians, but they still like their Apple iPhones and MacBooks. "Recent surveys from Edelman, the public relations group, show that there is now more trust in business as a source of social solutions than government. 'People are not asking necessarily any more for politicians [to lead on these projects],' says Mr Schwab, founder of the WEF. 'That is interesting.' 'So what we are doing now is to put much more emphasis on this, creating platforms where a business can co-operate with governments and civil society'."
In August 2019, 'Business Roundtable' released a new "Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation" which said all its member companies share a fundamental commitment to all their stakeholders. “The American dream is alive, but fraying,” said Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and chairman of Business Roundtable, in a statement. “Major employers are investing in their workers and communities because they know it is the only way to be successful over the long term. These modernized principles reflect the business community’s unwavering commitment to continue to push for an economy that serves all Americans.”
For anyone who's read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine and seen what JPMorgan have done in Argentina and Asia ("Argentine's entire early-nineties shock therapy program was written in secret by JPMorgan and Citibank, two of Argentina's largest private credits") will be surprised by this concern for the world's "workers and communities".
"This approach is neither status quo nor abandoning capitalism altogether", noted Paul Tudor Jones, founder of Tudor Investment Corporation and The Robin Hood Foundation, Co-Founder and Chairman of JUST Capital, earlier this year at Davos. "It's simply recalibrating the system to take a deeper view of business, and ensure an economy that works for all."
As even the Harvard Business Review observed, "Naysayers will call stakeholder capitalism a PR stunt. Window dressing designed to placate protesters and pretty-up corporate images" (January 2020), before observing that in the same month, Larry Fink of BlackRock, the world’s largest investor with $7 trillion in assets under management, sent his annual letter to CEOs. “Awareness is rapidly changing,” Fink writes, “and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance…It’s time we get serious about writing a new chapter on capitalism, before it’s too late."
“It’s not a ‘versus’,” agreed James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola. “The Coca-Cola business has been set up under a simple idea for a long time: it can’t be a viable business without a viable community.” (! Coca-Cola!).
The Davos manifesto included its 7 key new principles or "pillars": “Governance mechanisms” , “Governing disruption” (!!!!); “Long-term vision, short-term needs”; and “Regulation and corporate adaptation”."
www.investopedia.com/stakeholder-capitalism-4774323