Is it hypocritical for any "leftist" to own shares?

[Isambard]

The people I know are all one-person operations who flit from place to place.

Right, I though you meant like a one man building outfit or something.

Contactors have a fair ammount of control over their work and a large income in many cases but they are esseitailly selling their labour. Whether one could still think of them as workers though........

The ones I've known have been VERY Thatcherite.

BUT, they are in a precarious psition and many were dropped like a stone in the early 90s by large corporations and saw their living standards crash and burn.

 

[october_lost]

All banks invest their money in shares so no-one should have a bank account either. Or a pension. And everyone should live in a tree house eatting tofu.

Primitivism it is then.....

 

[kyser_soze]

Whether one could still think of them as workers though........

Here's where it starts - because of the fact that a 'contractor' isn't in a manual job you 'can't call it work'.

Isn't the definition of someone who is a worker one who has to sell their labour in return for generating someone else surplus income? Contractors gret paid what they do because they have a skill that is highly prized. As many have found, the globalised IT market isn't that kind when X company can employ somone in India for 25% of the cost of doing so in London and the contractor in India is still, in local terms, making a fucking mint.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Contactors have a fair ammount of control over their work and a large income in many cases but they are esseitailly selling their labour. Whether one could still think of them as workers though........

I'd say not. Far too much control over the labour process. And how do we improve our conditions? Certainly not by uniting with those who work around us. Usually by spending money on yet another course, getting the next professional qualification and getting the interesting work the permies should be doing.

The ones I've known have been VERY Thatcherite.

At best. Actually I do know a couple of liberal/Green types but they are of the very individualistic variety. Being determines consciousness and all.

BUT, they are in a precarious psition and many were dropped like a stone in the early 90s by large corporations and saw their living standards crash and burn.

True enough. It's a young man's game, which reminds me...

 

[pinkmonkey]

'Shareholder value' and share owernship are two very different things pm.

SV was/is a seriously ill-begotten financial theory which ignores ideas like medium-long term growth of companies in preference to short term share price gain, to the detriment of the companies concerned. It also created the current concept of 'fat cats' who were renumerated for share price performance rather than actual corporate growth and wealth creation. I've said on a number of occassions that it will be looked back on as a very stupid idea - FFS even Warren Buffet has said bad things about it!!

However, owning shares is, like any other financial investment other than Premium Bonds, a risk like any other. Look at the backers of Eurotunnel and NTL for example - they've had to stump up for additional shares and seen the value of their original stakes collapse.

Our company wasn't making enough profit for the shareholders, so they made two thirds of us redundant. We were actually making a healthy profit at the time, but they were greedy - they wanted more.

Isn't that shareholder value?

Especially seeing as the company died on its' arse after they got rid of most of us - our customers were not happy to see the teams they dealt with reduced from ten to two and they voted with their feet and got new suppliers.

 

[kyser_soze]

Our company wasn't making enough profit for the shareholders, so they made two thirds of us redundant. We were actually making a healthy profit at the time, but they wanted more.

Isn't that shareholder value?

Yup, and your sackings were done to push the share value up despite the existing profit and potential long term damage to the company. 'Increasing shareholder value' means using anything to drive the share price up - be that sacking, asset disposal (offices, kit) or even sell-offs of different parts of the company.

It's bollocks - it's terrible for company growth, fucks share value growth over in the long term and leads to god awful customer service and sales support, which in turn impacts on future custom etc.

I mean you've pretty much summed up everything that is wrong with SV as a creed for capitalists. It does NOTHING to improve anything except the returns shareholders see.

 

[pinkmonkey]

Don't get me started on the shithole rented office we had either - the directors wanted to build a new office for us, had all the plans done, got planning permission but then the shareholders wouldn't let them.

It was so draughty in there I used to have to save newspapers up and jam them in the window frames to stop the cold.

 

[kyser_soze]

The irony is that SV is crazy behaviour, even within the context of contemporary capitalism - it's extremely destructive and not in a good way. Scorched earth...

 

[pilchardman]

Of course it is,

As I suspected, the charge of hypocrisy comes from the right. Read the question, KS; it doesn't ask if it's ideal. It asks if it's hypocritical. There are certain circumstances in which it might become hypocritical, but it isn't hypocritical per se. (Unless we're understanding different things by the word hypocrisy).

The balance of this thread is about correct, I'd say. Especially as butch and others picked up on the important caveats, primarily: is that you sole or main source of income?

 

[kyser_soze]

As I suspected, the charge of hypocrisy comes from the right. Read the question, KS; it doesn't ask if it's ideal. It asks if it's hypocritical. There are certain circumstances in which it might become hypocritical, but it isn't hypocritical per se. (Unless we're understanding different things by the word hypocrisy).

The balance of this thread is about correct, I'd say. Especially as butch and others picked up on the important caveats, primarily: is that you sole or main source of income?

*said in pissy tone* Read the rest of my post, pilchardman. Looks to me like you 've just seen 'Yes' and haven't bothered reading any further.

*flounce*

 

[pilchardman]

*said in pissy tone* Read the rest of my post, pilchardman. Looks to me like you 've just seen 'Yes' and haven't bothered reading any further.

*flounce*

No, I read further. But didn't think the Yes part was worthy of the rest.

 

[kyser_soze]

So why make the comment you did? About it coming from 'the right' and all that?

Hypocrisy, to my mind, is expousing/expounding one view, expecting others to hew to it and then disregarding it in ones own life, not just in action but in thought as well. While owning shares is, on the face of it, hypocritical, it's not like owning shares suddenly turns you into Donald Trump or Michael Milken does it?

While I know you'll disagree on the basis that industry should be owned 'by all' (which iI take as meaning no one owns even a part of it, it's just there like...a tree in a park), workers owning shares in the company they work for is, I think, a good thing. While I've never taken a company to IPO, one thing I would at least attempt to do is reserve 51% of the shares for employee ownership - ultimately I believe that people will work harder and more importantly smarter and more productively if they know that they have an actual stake in what they do (loads of IT firms that become successful have similar models of share ownership - often these shares are offerered in lieu of salary while the company is a startup) and it's ultimate success/failure as a business.

 

[Fruitloop]

(loads of IT firms that become successful have similar models of share ownership - often these shares are offerered in lieu of salary while the company is a startup)

My experience with this is that it's an excuse to pay you fuck-all, a disincentive to workers to leave (because the rewards are always at some undisclosed point in the future), and half the time they lay off the workers before the share-options can be taken up in any case. The first time they tell you 'stick with us and we'll all get rich!' it's sort of exciting, but after a while in the biz you've heard all that shite before.

 

[N_igma]

Depends if you're economically liberal or not which means yes it's ok.

And defining "leftism" is a very hard thing to do, but generally speaking in the traditional sense of the word yes it would be quite hypocritical.

 

[kyser_soze]

My experience with this is that it's an excuse to pay you fuck-all, a disincentive to workers to leave (because the rewards are always at some undisclosed point in the future), and half the time they lay off the workers before the share-options can be taken up in any case. The first time they tell you 'stick with us and we'll all get rich!' it's sort of exciting, but after a while in the biz you've heard all that shite before.

Oh completely - but then that's one of the risks of being in a startup and not investing your own capital in it. You also need to consider other factors - has the company given you a timetable to IPO or just said 'You can have some shares IF we float at some unspecfied point in the future'...if they don't then I'd always get the hell out of dodge

 

[pilchardman]

So why make the comment you did? About it coming from 'the right' and all that?

Are you not of the libertarian right? I always understood that to be the case. If it is not, I withdraw the remark.

Hypocrisy, to my mind, is expousing/expounding one view, expecting others to hew to it and then disregarding it in ones own life, not just in action but in thought as well.

Indeed, but I know of very few serious "leftists" who demand that eshewing ownership in every form is a basic tenet of leftism. Were such a beast to exist, holding such views, then indeed for that person to own shares would be hypocritical. But since that person with those views is in fact a parody of a "leftist", it is erroneous to call all "leftists" who own shares hypocrites.

 

[kyser_soze]

Are you not of the libertarian right? I always understood that to be the case. If it is not, I withdraw the remark.

Neither left nor right. There are elements of my thinking that would be considered 'right' and others that are considered 'left'. I have hopes for the future that would also be considered left and right in terms of how society moves forward (or not).

The closest you can come to it would be individualist, but it's not the awful reductive individualism of the 80s.

 

[pilchardman]

Neither left nor right.

In that case I withdraw my crass oversimplification.

 

[kyser_soze]

And...

I agree with your 2nd para - I guess I meant it in 'flesh is weak, spirit is willing' kind of way. You'd prefer to not own shares, but within the way of the world etc etc

 

[pilchardman]

And...

I agree with your 2nd para - I guess I meant it in 'flesh is weak, spirit is willing' kind of way. You'd prefer to not own shares, but within the way of the world etc etc

I see it in more structural terms. We are part of capital. If we are workers we are a cog in the machine. It isn't a matter of lifestyle choices; it's bigger than that. Indeed, in some ways, asking for lifestyle commitments is again blaming the victim.

 

[Fedayn]

If you live off the income from those shares? I don't mean owing a few shares via pension fund that you have no control or practical say over the running of - the big investement companies are set up so that these small shareholders can have no say over how they operate anyway, but if your primary income comes via the surplus value pumped out of others rather than yourself? Don't we believe that material condiitions influence peoples outlook or politics any longer?

As noted above, it's a question of degrees - and there's a whole load of lumping together very different degrees on this thread.

I concure old chap.

Another way of looking is football fans who buy 1 or a few shares in the club they support. Yeah they're 'shareholders' but for entirely different reasons than the millionaires and Geckos (to use an analogy) of this world.

 

[hundredthmonkey]

I don't like the idea of investing in shares if only personal profit is penultimate in the minds of investors, but I may have to do so if circumstances dictate - e.g. a child with disabilities needs to be cared for after I am dead and so I need to ensure that their needs are catered for.

However, if shares are to ensure a future benefit for one person and his/her kin why not invest for the sake of all? We are just custodians of the earth, and those shares are gained from exploiting the earth and it's people. If I had the means to invest in schools and amenities for future generations that would lessen the impact of my presence or just ensure that they had stuff which would mean the next generation did not have to suffer the same hardships I have endured, I would do so.

 

[888]

What about any pension you might have? The pension fund will play the stock market.

What about people who had building society accounts when the society demutualised - they will have been given shares at that time.

And many other ways.

That's different from actively investing in stocks, which Chomsky's wife may have been doing. You may as well say it's OK to be an employer, because "we can't extract ourselves form capital, we're part of it"...

 

[pilchardman]

That's different from actively investing in stocks, which Chomsky's wife may have been doing. You may as well say it's OK to be an employer, because "we can't extract ourselves form capital, we're part of it"...

I do make the point above that there are degrees.

If I may take myself as an example: I have mostly found myself in jobs where there is no occupational pension available to me - because I was on a temporary contract. But in one job I had an occupational pension. It's worth about £2 a month to me. But it's still there, and I knew when I joined it it would play the stock market, since there is really no other way for pension funds to increase their value.

My argument is that to demand of workers that they forgo a pension if they want to adhere to a pure "leftist" ideal is both symplistic and actually harm-causing.

Second real life example: I use the Alliance & Leicester. When they ceased being a building society, they awarded me some share. Now, a hypothetical purist might demand I refuse them, since to deliberately profit from them is wrong. To sell them immediately is to deliberately profit from shares, and to hold onto them to sell later is to deliberately profit from shares. I again think that to argue I ought not to have accepted them is not tenable.

Another way to deliberately profit from shares is to have a savings plan. Perhaps an ISA. I've never had enough money to make use of such a thing, but I understand you can pay fairly small sums into it. Indeed I understand it is capped at about £3000. Now, while to me that'd be a significant amount, it is hardly earning your living from playing the stock market; if you were forced to live on the capital investment - £3000 per annum - never mind the profit, you'd be in a sorry state.

So it isn't an absolute. And it certainly doesn't equate to being a boss. Even though, in economic terms, it does move you slightly into the realm of owning the means of production. (Which is exactly why Thatcher was so keen on small-scale share ownership: she adhered to a crude Marxian economism, with the values reversed).

 

[redsquirrel]

Another way to deliberately profit from shares is to have a savings plan. Perhaps an ISA.

I thought ISA didn't use the stock market (well at least no more than any other bank account), that they just had a fixed rate of interest that they replaced the old TESSA's which were (AFAIK) just like a bank account with a higher rate of interest and less easy to withdraw money from.

EDIT: Ah we're both kind of right . I suppose this is what happens when you don't listen to money box

 

[Idaho]

I don't think you can work toward an ideal society merely by cherry picking obscure points of principle. I won't own shares, but do have a bank account. I won't buy mcdonalds, but drive a car, etc (actually the latter is me!).

I don't think being ethically sound is about making these arbitrary choices. That's not to say there aren't significant times that you abstain from a certain economic activity, or boycott a particular company - just that you have to be fairly holistic in your approach to life, as well as pragmatic.

To be fair, reading that back, it's a bland point.

 

[Fruitloop]

but a correct one, IMO.

 

[pilchardman]

I don't think being ethically sound is about making these arbitrary choices.

Indeed.

 

[Idaho]

Two people aggreeing with me in P & P

Now I'm scared...

 

[levien]

already regretting drunken answer....