Here is Steven Coatrella's response to my post about his book.
Hello David, and thank you for this balanced, constructively critical discussion of my book and the wider context of both our political trajectories in making sense of the world today. Since I first read your review of my book here, the world changed on Tuesday night, and I have read your two comments here on this blog about the election results, which I agree with and appreciate for their insight and depth.
As to my book, I will say that I see it more as an attempt to use Marxist class categories as living and vital tools, rather than putting or even less forcing today's complex reality of classes and other groups and organized political forces into a Marxist framework. I also use the English title for Marx's great work, "Capital" - as the German title tends to be off-putting to readers of English suggesting a more impenetrable work that it in fact is. But these are minor points.
As to the recent - well 40 plus years now - dominance of finance capital or as you quite rightly see it capitalism in its pure form - profit rate maximizing investment or credit and no interest in the actual product sold, service provided, production process, much less the social effects of their investment choices (private equity, Wall Street, banking, speculation, crypto currency speculation etc.) like working conditions, employment, environmental degradation, undermining of democracy and even dismantling of the demos itself - we agree. I think this is where the focus of the new, magnificent Democratic majority and the solid if still minority democratic socialist force within it should be, along with really holding the Trump Administration monsters accountable for their actions the past two years (and previously). It is at the core of the abyssal inequality, and so much more. Industrial capitalism in the New Deal era WAS capitalist, but it was not ONLY capitalist - it had actual representation of workers to a high degree, democratic government had set standards, limits, minimums, even goals. The late, under-rated Lynn Stout ("The Stakeholder Value Myth") called that system "Managerial Capitalism" so if we are looking for a name that could work. While, as a democratic and American Marxist, I don't want "management" in the sense that labor has always referred to "bosses" in charge of workers in a power relationship within firms and workplaces, I do within the current system want managers to actually run firms in the best interests - long term interests preferably - of the company rather than be worried about the share price, shareholder value, and the quarterly earnings report which is what shareholders supposedly base their investment choices on. We need to ban stock buybacks by the companies of their own stock, but even before that decent management should refuse to engage in that, instead investing in the company - research and development, product development, market share, job creation, wages and salaries and productivity gains, the company's relationship to the community, its customers, its suppliers, workers, government and environment.
However, the shareholder class of pure finance capitalism has used stock options and other incentives to win management to their side, and away from such wholesome practices for decades now, starting with the "Shareholders' revolt" of the 1980s. This is known in Organizational Behavior as "The Agency Problem" and in business schools is always presented as "how can investors make sure that management does what it is in their interests?" but the agency problem cuts several ways - how can managers keep shareholders from disinvesting while doing what is best for the company? How can workers ensure management does what they need, instead of what shareholders want? (we call this "class struggle" where I come from), how can the public ensure that companies act in the public interest. In my view, worker representatives - at least 40% as proposed in Senator Elizabeth Warren's "Accountable Capitalism Act" is a start, but I support managers being elected by the workers - at least the ones who oversee the workplace, and CEO's being elected in a republican system (small "r" - workers, customers chosen by jury type selection, suppliers, local community representatives, again using random jury selection, and shareholders all having votes for the Board and CEO, something like that. Democratic Mangerial Companies. For smaller and newer companies, I prefer they take the form of worker owned and managed cooperatives, run democratically, managers elected by employee-owners.
We need many changes, and with Trump in office, though much of his power and influence has now gone up in smoke, we won't get as much through as we want, and the conservative Democratic leadership will balk at much else. But we can start now, with the huge majorities around the statehouses and the halls of Congress. And a little brainstorming might be a good thing right now. So New Deal liberals well-versed in what has worked already, and Marxists who understand American social relations and many other groups - including as we have seen in the Talarico and El-Sayeed victories, all kinds of Christian, Muslim and other cultural backgrounds, have much to contribute, as they have in the past.
Finally, Europe. Europe is often used, understandably by American progressives as the counter-argument to American conservativism and neoliberal capitalism - we can have public health care, paid vacations and family leave, and other things they have in Europe. And indeed we do have these things to varying degrees and in slightly different forms in Europe (I live in Italy). But these victories of the past have been undermined for a couple of decades at least, are struggling with at least two decades of austerity programs by governments with the EU Commission and Central Bank taking the lead and keeping the money supply tight. This is the context for the Europe-wide revolts taking place right now. People can't make it to the end of the month anymore. Students don't see a future. Workers, from truckers to public employees, from teachers to factory workers, from delivery service workers to health care workers, are struggling and are fed up. My chapter "Why Is there no socialism in Europe?" was an attempt to address that picture. Americans need to see Europeans not as cousins living in a utopia, but as fellow working class people who have fought and won things in the past - health care, vacations, legal job security - just as we did - Social Security, the minimum wage - and just as we have, have seen their rights under attack by financial capitalism and its poiltical allies on the right and the neoliberal center. But the US election this week and the European strikes and demonstrations the past month show that the jig is up for these awful decades. David and I are older now, hopefully wiser, but we aren't done yet and many of you reading this are just beginning. There is much to be done, and better conditions to convince our fellow citizens and renew democracy and make it work for everyone that I have seen since I was in college in the 1970s.
[Thank you Stephen!]
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