Finally, there is the corporate function of social coordination. The complexity of the social division of labor which capitalism has developed over the past century, and the concentrated urban society which attempts to hold huge masses in delicate balance, call for an immense amount of social coordination that was not previously required. Since capitalist society resists and in fact has no way of developing an overall planning mechanism for providing this social coordination, much of this public function becomes the internal affair of the corporation. This has no juridical basis or administrative concept behind it; it simply comes into being by virtue of the giant size and power of the corporations, whose internal planning becomes, in effect, a crude substitute for necessary social planning. Apart from the federal government, for example corporations are the largest employing and administrative units in the United States. Thus the five hundred largest industrial corporations employ almost 15 million persons, or three-quarters of the persons employed by all industrial corporations. The internal planning of such corporations becomes in effect social planning, even though, as Alfred P. Sloan explained, it is based upon the "net return" on “invested capital," which he calls “the true measure of efficiency." The rapid growth of administrative employment in the corporations thus reflects the urgency of the need for social coordination, the general absence of such coordination, and the partial filling of the gap by the corporation operating on a capitalist basis and out of purely capitalist motivations. The expansion of governmental functions of social coordination in recent decades is another expression of this urgent need, and the fact that such government activities are highly visible, in comparison with those of the corporation, has led to the notion that the prime exercise of social control is done by government. On the contrary, so long as investment decisions are made by the corporations, the locus of social control and coordination must be sought among them; government fills the interstices left by these prime decisions.
Notes
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Labor and Monopoly Capital
The Modern Corporation
187
\* In the words of one observer: "The corporation is a society which accomplishes its work through division of labor—a proposition now so much taken for granted that it is surprising to think it once represented a discovery. In the modern industrial corporation, division of labor has been carried to great lengths. Not only are there broadly separate functions tied to classes of individuals—marketing, production, finance, law, accounting, technology, management—but within each of these there are many subdivisions, any one of which may constitute a career. This functionalism rests on the clear description of the varied, interrelated tasks that make up the corporation's work. The ‘job description’ is a statement of task meant to be independent of the individual who fills the job. Individuals become personnel' or ‘manpower' in relation to such job descriptions. . . .
“In the twentieth century we have become increasingly aware of the tendency of this industrial functionalism to take on the characteristics of the production process itself. Not only is the complex work of the corporation divided into many discrete tasks performed by discrete individuals, but there has been a strong tendency to make these tasks consist of simple, uniform, repeatable elements capable of at least partial mechanization."9"