Contradictions of Shareholder Capitalism: Downsizing Jobs, Enlisting Savings, Destabilizing Families

Abstract

Freed from substantial government restraint, the anonymous power of circulating capital has 'turbo-charged' Anglo-American capitalism and spread its neo-liberal currents around the world. Working in concert with other forces, the tidal wave of near-money sloshing around in cyberspace is shifting the balance of power: altering the prevailing patterns of capital accumulation, the pecking order among the agents of capital, and the organizational form of large corporations; turning the balance of class power against labour by intensifying job insecurity on the one hand, while luring the family nest-eggs of fully employed workers into a compensatory bet on the continued appreciation of financial assets on the other, thus confounding their class interests.