Welcome to Bookmarker!

This is a personal project by @dellsystem. I built this to help me retain information from the books I'm reading.

Source code on GitHub (MIT license).

The scale of capitalist enterprise, prior to the development of the modern corporation, was limited by both the availability of capital and the management capacities of the capitalist or group of partners. These are the limits set by personal fortunes and personal capabilities. It is only in the monopoly period that these limits are overcome, or at least immensely broadened and detached from the personal wealth and capacities of individuals. The corporation as a form severs the direct link between capital and its individual owner, and monopoly capitalism builds upon this form. Huge aggregates of capital may be assembled that far transcend the sum of the wealth of those immediately associated with the enterprise. And operating control is vested increasingly in a specialized management staff for each enterprise. Since both capital and professional management—at its top levels—are drawn, by and large, from the same class, it may be said that the two sides of the capitalist, owner and manager, formerly united in one person, now become aspects of the class. It is true that ownership of capital and the management of enterprises are never totally divorced from each other in the individuals of the class, since both remain concentrated in a social grouping of extremely limited size: therefore, as a rule, top managers are not capital-less individuals, nor are owners of capital necessarily inactive in management. But in each enterprise the direct and personal unity between the two is ruptured. Capital has now transcended its limited and limiting personal form and has entered into an institutional form. This remains true even though claims to ownership remain, in the last resort, largely personal or familial in accordance with the rationale and juridical structure of capitalism.

—p.257 12. The Modern Corporation (257) by Harry Braverman 2 weeks, 1 day ago