Towards a Less Irrelevant Socialism: Stakeholding as a ’Reform‘ of the Capitalist Economy

Abstract

In a recent paper entitled 'Corporate Governance, Stakeholding, and the Company: Towards a Less Degenerate Capitalism?',' Paddy Ireland has authoritatively stated the marxist criticism of the concept of stakeholding. For the purposes of this paper, I take socialism to be the making of fundamental choices about allocations of goods by a consciously political process rather than by 'the invisible hand'2 of the capitalist market. I take 'marxism' to be the claim that it is basically 'economic' developments within the capitalist mode of production that will lead to socialism. It is obvious that on these definitions there is a very strong connection between socialism and marxism such that the latter is a particular grounding of the former which turns on the identification of economic developments within, rather than on the ethical critique of, capitalism. From Mr. Ireland's previous work and from personal conversation, I believe that I am right to say that he is both a socialist and a marxist in these senses. I share Mr. Ireland's socialism