Societies are to a large extent defined by their dominant property relations. Who owns and controls key resources, from land to finance, gets to exercise power and agency in both the present and the future. Ownership of the “means of production” therefore underpins all other societal values and interactions, including our relationships to each other, to work, to the rest of the world, and to nature. Under global capitalism, private forms of ownership are both predominant and driven by the profit motive such that the accumulation of capital on behalf of private individuals works against any semblance of the common good. Moreover, within this system of private ownership a particular form has come to dominate in recent decades – the large international corporation with shares traded on stock markets or closely held by a small group of individuals (and, specifically, large corporations that are financial in nature).
This particular form of ownership is riddled with problematic and destructive behaviour that is at the root of some of our most pressing economic, social, and ecological challenges. This includes prioritising short-term profits over longer-term investments; a relentless drive to reduce labour costs (through offshoring, internal relocation, and hostility to unions); efforts to externalise social and environmental costs as much as possible; the enshrinement of shareholder value and returns above all other considerations; accelerating inequality through both exorbitant salaries for executives and the funnelling of profits to a small group of elite shareholders; the decimation of local economies and small businesses; the use of off-shore tax havens and other tax avoidance mechanisms; and the establishment of an incentive structure that promotes financial speculation over productive investment. Large corporations are even beginning to threaten traditional measures of economic performance. For instance, recent studies have linked increased market concentration to slowing economic growth, reductions in business investment, and price rises accompanied by stagnant productivity.
This form of ownership represents one of the three pillars of the neoliberal version of capitalism that has, until recently, seemed so dominant and unassailable around the world (the others being deregulated/unregulated markets and increasingly exploitative/precarious employment relations). However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this system is failing; that we are reaching the point at which the unsustainable social and ecological impacts of neoliberalism push the system up against its limits, and a backlash sets in.
