j
44 MONOPOLY CAPITAL.··
as they ev,er did, Over the portals of the magnificent office •.
building of today, as on the wall of the modest counting house .1
of a century or two ago, it would be equally appropriate to find "i
engraved the motto: ''Accumulate! Accumulate! That is Moses ·
and the Prophets."
7 try's biggest businessmen, writing about the problems of the
The replacement of the individual capitalist by the corporate
capitalist constitutes an institutionalization of the capitalist·
function. The heart and core of the capitalist function is ac-
cumulation: accumulation has always been the prime mover of
the system, the locus of its conflicts, the source of both its
triumphs and its disasters. But only in the infancy of the sys-
tem could accumulation be said to exhaust the obligations of
the capitalist. With success came also responsibilities. In the
words of Marx:
W_hen a certain stage of development has been reached, a con-
ventional degree of prodigality, which is also an exhibition of
wealth, and consequently a source of credit, becomes a business
necessity to the ''unfortunate'' capitalist. Luxury enters into capital's
expenses of representation. 25
These expenses of representation have traditionally taken
the form of conspicuous waste on the one hand and philan-
thropy on the other. Both have always had what would now-
adays be called a public-relations purpose: the one to dazzle
and ~verawe the public, the other to secure its loyalty and
affection. Both have been borne by the capitalist in his private
capacity.
One of the most striking changes in the American scene in
recent years has been a marked decline of both types of ex-
penditure by the aristocracy of the business world. The great
estates of Newport and Southampton, the regal yachts of the
Morgans and the Astors, the debutante parties costing half a
million dollars or more one now reads more about these
25
Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 22, Section 4.
'flIE GIANT CORPORATION 45
things in history books than in the society pages of the daily
paper. The Big Businessman of today (Texas oilmen excepted,
as they should be) lives if not modestly at least in decent ob-
scurity: the last thing he wants is to make a big splash with his
wealth. Similarly, individual philanthropy seems to play a de-
creasingly prominent role so much so that one of the coun-
corporate world, feels justifie<l in titling one of his chapters
''The Vanishing Philanthropist."26
These de;•elopments do not mean, however, that capital's
expenses of representation have somehow been abolished. Like
other aspects of the capitalist function, responsibility for meet-
ing capital's expenses of representation has been institutional-
ized. Nowadays it is the corporation itself that has to maintain
a high standard of living before the public, and it does so by
erecting grandiose headquarters buildings, providing its func-
tionaries with offices which grow plushier by the year, trans-
porting them in fleets of company-owned jet planes and Cadil-
lacs, granting them unlimited expense accounts, and so on and
on. 27 Most of this is the sheerest kind of conspicuous waste, cor-
2" Crawford H. Greenewalt, The Uncommon Man: The Individual in
the Organization! New York, Toronto, London, 1959, pp. 113 ff.
' "
27
Consider the-new sixty-story Chase Manhattan Bank building.
Tall enough at 813 feet to throw the early morning sun back at itself,"
says a brochure issued by the bank under the title A New Landmark for
New York, ''the Chase ~fanhattan Bank building represents the fulfill-
ment of an architectural ideal and a high water mark in modern manage-
ment. It was designed not just to function but to express-its soaring
angularities bespeaking an era rather than a transient need .... When the
building was in an embryonic state, it was decided that the decorative
elem.ent which would best complement the stark simplicity of its modern
architecture was fine art. Accordingly, the bank recruited the services of
a committee of art experts to select works which would contribute to a
Warm and stimulating environment in which the employees would work
and at the same time express the bank's concern with those things man
holds dearest. The works chosen to adorn private offices and reception
areas range from the latest in abstract impressionism to primitive Ameri-
c~na a~d connote the bank's rich role in American history as well as its
g obal interests . . . . 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza is really many things in
one-a product of an age when reaching for the stars is no longer a