[maxxxxx]

I always tell people that working in a big Corp feels like walking around in Eastern Germany while the wall was still up. Same kind of posters, 5 year plans, top down propaganda that has little resemblance with reality, "rewards" like T-shirts with motivational messages.

[maxlybbert]

Ronald Coase’s paper, “The Nature of the Firm,” compares companies with the alternative of everybody being an independent contractor cooperating with other independent contractors on individual projects. I think it’s an interesting thought experiment, and it focuses on why companies operate in a authoritarian way internally.

Occasionally, companies try to organize with market principles internally, with divisions charging each other for services performed. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it turns into Sears.

[jahaja]

This is the reason why some people called it state capitalism, since the only difference for the workers is who's the boss.

[geezerjay]

> This is the reason why some people called it state capitalism

Actually, it's not. State capitalism has absolutely no relation to how workers were used and abused by communist regimes.

[jahaja]

Care to explain?

For example, the following is from "The Failure of the Working Class" by Anton Pannekoek in 1946:

The workers of the world nowadays have two mighty foes, two hostile and suppressing powers over against them: the monopolistic capitalism of America and England, and Russian state capitalism. The former is drifting toward social dictatorship camouflaged in democratic forms; the latter proclaims dictatorship openly, formerly with the addition "of the proletariat," although nobody believes that any more.

[_lqaf]

The tension between capitalism and communism is a dispute about the optimal size of the firm.