Is it possible to be anti-capitalist and pro-market?

[BrainGlutton]

Interesting discussion I came across on the TVTropes page, Anarchy is Chaos:

A virtually ubiquitous trope, both in fiction and Real Life, is the misconception that anarchists have no beliefs, that anarchy is chaos. While anarchy and chaos are not mutually exclusive (chaos may be anarchic, although it is often defined by warlordism, but anarchy is not necessarily chaotic) such an un-mindset is properly called nihilism, the belief in nothing. However, the actual definition of Anarchism is the belief that rulership should not exist (as indicated in its Greek roots, an- [no] -arkhos [ruler]).

The issue of Capitalism is a divisive one for Anarchists, although this is partly due to terminology. Most anarchist literature, and most anarchists, define “Capitalism” in the Marxist sense of the term (i.e. capital is owned by party X, and party X pays wages to parties A, B and C to operate said capital). However, the term “Capitalism” is also commonly defined by non-anarchists (and by most self-proclaimed “Capitalists”) as “free market economics” (i.e. when all economic activity must take place within the realm of consent and contract and thus outside the realm of the State). Most anarchists consider the two meanings to be seperate concepts, with “Capitalism” being used in the Marxist sense and “Free Market” being used to refer to the second definition. For the remainder of this article, “Capitalism” and “Free Market” will be used in the Anarchist senses of the term. Therefore, someone can be both anti-Capitalist and pro-Market (i.e. arguing for a society of self-employed people interacting and exchanging on a purely voluntary basis, the Mutualists and Individualist Anarchists share this position). On the other hand, someone can be pro-Capitalist and anti-Market (arguably, Mussolini-style State Corporatism fits this).

I’ve never seen these antitheses stated in quite that way before. Of course it is possible to be anti-capitalist and pro-market, defining the terms as here, because apparently some people are. My question is, is it possible to be anti-capitalist and pro-market in a way that makes any sense – that is, is a non-capitalist market economy possible, practically or even logically? If so, what would it look like? Are there any historical examples postdating the Industrial Revolution?

[Fuzzy_Dunlop]

@BrainGlutton

Interesting discussion I came across on the TVTropes page, Anarchy is Chaos:

I’ve never seen these antitheses stated in quite that way before. Of course it is possible to be anti-capitalist and pro-market, defining the terms as here, because apparently some people are. My question is, is it possible to be anti-capitalist and pro-market in a way that makes any sense – that is, is a non-capitalist market economy possible, practically or even logically? If so, what would it look like? Are there any historical examples postdating the Industrial Revolution?

I’m not sure why you say “of course it is possible to be anti-capitalist and pro-market, defining the terms as here”. Could you explain why you think that’s true? If no parties own the capital and the land (strawman anarchist definition of capitalism) then how could there be a free market where economic activity takes place outside the realm of the State (strawman anarchist definition of Free Market)?

For example, what’s the anti-capitalist pro-Free Market mining industry like? Self-employed miners dig up minerals and sell them to self employed refiners. But who owns the land and mineral rights and where did these self-employees get the millions of dollars worth of equipment to do the digging? They can’t own them, or they would fail to be anti-capitalist per your anarchist definition. The State can’t supply them because that would be anti-Free Market per your anarchist definition.

Maybe this is what you’re asking but I can’t get past why you say of course it’s possible. I don`t see any reason to think it’s possible, let alone practical or logical.

[MrDibble]

@Fuzzy Dunlop

For example, what’s the anti-capitalist pro-Free Market mining industry like? Self-employed miners dig up minerals and sell them to self employed refiners.

Yep.

But who owns the land and mineral rights

No-one and everyone/what rights?

and where did these self-employees get the millions of dollars worth of equipment to do the digging?

From a mining-equipment factory?

They can’t own them, or they would fail to be anti-capitalist per your anarchist definition.

Why not? As long as they own them in common, they don’t violate anti-capitalist stance. Or only control them on the principle of usufruct.

The State can’t supply them because that would be anti-Free Market per your anarchist definition.

What State?

[BrainGlutton]

@Fuzzy_Dunlop

I’m not sure why you say “of course it is possible to be anti-capitalist and pro-market, defining the terms as here”.

I thought I had made that clear enough: Obviously it is possible, in the sense that some people, chiefly anarchists of one school or another, are, by their own account, anti-capitalist and pro-market, defining “capitalism” as a system where capital is owned by party X, and party X pays wages to parties A, B and C to operate said capital, and a “free market” as where all economic activity must take place within the realm of consent and contract and thus outside the realm of the State. The question I am proposing for debate here is whether that sense makes any sense.

The TVTropes page linked in the OP goes on to describe various anarchist schools of thought:

*  **Anarcho-Communism:** The most popular movement, which calls for abolition of private property, corporations, and the state. Think "Imagine" by John Lennon. People produce whatever they want to for a common pool of resources, and everyone takes what they need from it following a consensus made in a direct democratic vote. It's assumed that what you'll get will be correlative to your cooperation, unless you are a too young/old to work, or you need special care. This system was in place in some parts of Spain during the Spanish Civil War and, believe it or not, it worked, until Franco's fascist regime took over. This is also known as Libertarian Communism.
      o **Collectivist Anarchism:** Like Anarcho-Communism, but products are distributed according to work performed rather than need, through direct democracy. 
* **Mutualism:** Original anarchist movement started by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, author of What is Property? which contains the famous "property is theft" conclusion-he was also the first to call himself anarchist. Before that it was an insult; hey, come to think of it...This was the first Free-Market Anarchist movement, but unlike today's Free-Market Anarchists, it argues for the Labor Theory of Economic Value. Mutualist Anarchists believe that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility. They accept money and private property as long as it's actually being used by the owner. Mutualism, owing to its embrace of the Labor Theory of Economic Value, supports democratic cooperatives of workers who own the means of production, instead of traditional capitalist bosses.
* **Individualist Anarchism:** A movement (very similar to Mutualism) of US origin focusing more on a society of independent craftsmen owning their own tools and thus free of employer domination. Like Mutualism it held to the Labor Theory of Economic Value. Individualist Anarchists supported worker cooperatives if they wished, but with the provision each part of it be held separately, thus a worker could leave and support themselves if necessary. The rise of capitalism and the anarcho-communist reaction eclipsed the Individualist Anarchists, though some exist. This was what most people knew as Free Market Anarchism, along with the Mutualists, until:
* **Anarcho-Capitalism:** Anarcho-Capitalists (the modern Free-Market Anarchists) are essentially Individualist Anarchists but instead of advocating the Labor Theory of Economic Value, they advocate the Subjective Theory of Economic Value (which has been accepted by nearly all economists since Walras, Menger and Jevons). As such, they do not see Capitalism as inherently exploitative; rather they see an employment contract as no different to any other form of contractual relationship. Anarcho-Capitalists also reject the view that "big business" and "big government" are enemies of each other; rather they see the former as a force that benefits from having 'friends in high places' and the latter as more than willing to bestow privileges and special favors upon the former.
      o **Agorism:** Agorism is a movement related to Anarcho-Capitalism, but not quite. Agorists hold as a revolutionary goal the development of freely-competing, market producers of law and security through non-aggressive black market activity, which will eventually drive the state out of existence. In fact, this is precisely what sets Agorism apart from other forms of anarchism. 
* **Ecological Anarchism:** Similar to Anarcho-Communism, but with a higher emphasis on respecting nature. The more radical forms of this, like Anarcho-Primitivism, believe that civilization is inherently oppressive, and wish to abolish industrial technology, agriculture, writing etc., returning to a primitve (hence the name) existence as hunter-gatherers.
* **Egoist Anarchism:** The reason why the Bomb Throwing Anarchists trope exists. Basically, they believe that anything that an individual can do, should be done. Also known as Nihilist Anarchism and Project Mayhem. Here is a classic text by Situationist International, advancing a collectivist form of egoism. 

[Bryan_Ekers]

Arguably, Ernest Callenbach worked an anti-capitalist pro-market argument into his novel Ecotopia, describing the Pacific Northwest states (Oregon, Washington, Northern California) twenty years after they seceded to form an essentially green regime. Corporations as we understand them don’t exist, but cooperatives in which every member is an equal partner of up to 300 or so were commonplace. Buying someone out didn’t consist of simply buying their shares, nor did new investors enter simply by purchasing shares, but by dissolving and recreating the co-op. Inheritance tax ran 100%, so forget about inheriting shares, either.

Or so I recall. It’s been about 20 years since I read it. Personally, I find it only vaguely plausible with a major cheat I noticed at the time: anyone who didn’t like post-secession life simply moved away, leaving the infrastructure intact and abandoning their immovable or less-movable property. Thus there were still plenty of buildings standing in San Francisco for people to live in (though more and more of the population was going rural) and factories presumably were still intact and usable, and heavy machinery was still available. How the Ecoptians managed to build their Eurorail-style high-speed train, I cannot recall. Also, I’m curious how they, in the novel having seceded in 1979, would have coped with the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which clobbered numerous buildings, bridges and roads in and around the Bay area. I have my serious doubts a bunch of co-ops could muster the necessary wealth and machinery to clean up, and by the time the first-person reporter shows up in 1999 (the novel’s narrator and apparently the first American journalist to enter Ecotopia since secession), much of San Francisco would still resemble a wasteland.

[BrainGlutton]

@Bryan_Ekers

Arguably, Ernest Callenbach worked an anti-capitalist pro-market argument into his novel Ecotopia, describing the Pacific Northwest states (Oregon, Washington, Northern California) twenty years after they seceded to form an essentially green regime. Corporations as we understand them don’t exist, but cooperatives in which every member is an equal partner of up to 300 or so were commonplace. Buying someone out didn’t consist of simply buying their shares, nor did new investors enter simply by purchasing shares, but by dissolving and recreating the co-op. Inheritance tax ran 100%, so forget about inheriting shares, either.

You’ll find something similar in Pacific Edge, by Kim Stanley Robinson, set in an America after a Green revolution (presumably a nonviolent revolution, though no details are given). Everyone is guaranteed an annual income of $10,000 and no one is allowed to have more than $100,000 – this still leaves room for ambition and innovation, as “Everybody wants to be a Hundred.” Business enterprises are allowed to be only so large that everyone in them can personally know everyone else – if it one grows beyond that point, the state intervenes and splits it into two or more. (Kind of like antitrust legislation on steroids.) Other than that, the state does not run economy and businesses are private affairs.

[njtt]

What is the difference between anarcho-capitalism (as defined above) and libertarianism?

[Sage_Rat]

@BrainGlutton

that is, is a non-capitalist market economy possible, practically or even logically? If so, what would it look like? Are there any historical examples postdating the Industrial Revolution?

Of course.

1. There is a central bank which can offer loans to anyone, but everyone must vote as to whether or not the bank gives out a loan. Hereby, money is created.
2. I, having taken out a loan, offer you money to do what I say, you accept that money as a free individual, entitled to choose to do whatever you want. You can work for me creating products, or go freely on your way.
3. Having created produce, I sell that to other people who are free to buy or not buy as they prefer.
4. Worried that people might try and take the things that I claim ownership over, I hire bodyguards to protect my riches.

If you pick random selections of people to vote on loans in section 1, rather than polling the whole community/nation, then it’s a fairly feasible system while still having no overlord groups (except temporarily). The only main difference from modern day, then, is that there would be a significant number of police/bodyguards. (Which I suspect would turn into private armies and fight a lot.)

[BrainGlutton]

@njtt

What is the difference between anarcho-capitalism (as defined above) and libertarianism?

IME, (most) Libertarians are not in any way hostile to Big Business, apart from wanting it to get along without government subsidies and sweetheart contracts.

[Bryan_Ekers]

Heck, the heroes of Atlas Shrugged were typically heads of major businesses, albeit still run as single proprietorships named for the founder or founder’s family with little or no mention of boards of directors or stockholder concerns or really much of anything that suggested the possibility of internal dissent or disagreement. Large concerns like Mulligan’s Bank, D’Anconia Copper, Rearden Steel, Wyatt Oil and so forth essentially dissolved when their individual leaders chose to end, sabotage or abandon them, suggesting that none of them had to bother telling anyone about their plans beforehand.

I don’t recall who was supposed to own the heroine’s company, the Taggart Trancontinental railroad, but Dagny Taggart’s wastrel second-hander brother Jim gets elected President without difficulty, suggesting he controls a significant (if not majority) stock position. Dagny also owns stock, but never seems to vote at stockholder meetings, instead just voicing her desperate objectivist realism at executive meetings, to be over-ruled by cowards. It’s as if Ayn Rand saw a corporation as just a Mom-and-Pop company (well, Pop - Mom would be too busy enjoying rough passionate sex and submitting to Pop’s will) with 10,000 employees who would we well-paid, representing as they do the cream of the labour market.

[Sam_Stone]

You cannot separate capitalism from a free market, because if markets are truly free, then people are free to build companies and invest capital to improve products and have ownership over those resources and all the rest.

But I think you’re excluding a huge middle. Capitalism as it is practiced today in America is a ‘third way’ system, in which the largest corporations are in bed with government and have laws passed to protect them. Government regulations protect industries, subsidize industries, and in general distort the marketplace in ways that favor the powerful and politically connected.

A good example of this is General Electric’s current behavior. General Electric makes trains, so it lobbies hard for new high-speed rail and train upgrades. The government pays them off by creating multi-billion dollar train projects which just happen to fit GE’s business model. GE is lobbying hard for cap and trade, because GE makes wind turbines and nuclear power plants, and because GE makes industrial equipment that factories would have to buy to upgrade their emissions.

Now, you may agree with Immelt on the need for trains and cap and trade. But the fact is, he and his corporation have clout to influence policy in ways that benefit them and hurt their competitors. British Petroleum did the same thing with regard to safety inspections of its oil rigs. Other companies lobby for things you don’t like.

This form of ‘capitalism’ is generally opposed by Libertarians. A market isn’t free when some players have better access to the referees than do others.

So right off the bat, you’ll get almost universal agreement from libertarians that this form of crony capitalism should be done away with. Unfortunately, you won’t find that agreement from the traditional left or right, because both sides seem to believe in this form of crony capitalism - so long as the deal-making being done fits within their own political beliefs. One man’s crony capitalism is another’s ‘partnership’.

But you need capitalists. You need the ability for people to pool their capital together to build factories and do research and development. To do that, you need limited-liability corporations so that responsibility can be delegated. And if you have capital investment, you need to have capital return. To keep money moving, you need to be able to issue stock. To do that, you need brokers and analysts. And so it goes. The modern capitalist economy has evolved and created the intermediaries it has for good reason. Mucking with it is like deciding to remove a species from an ecosystem because you don’t like it. Chances are, it really needed to be there, or it wouldn’t exist.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sam_Stone

You cannot separate capitalism from a free market, because if markets are truly free, then people are free to build companies and invest capital to improve products and have ownership over those resources and all the rest.

Well, consider the Spanish Revolution: The anti-capitalist, anarcho-syndicalist collectives that ran the economy in Catalonia, Aragon and Andalusia for about three years still made up a free market, in the sense that they were self-organized and were not controlled by the state or by any political party. (Ultimately all that was squashed – not by Franco, but by the increasingly Soviet-dominated Republican government. “Now we see the violence inherent in the system!”)

[Sam_Stone]

There’s nothing about capitalism that says you can’t have voluntary collectives. Even in the U.S. capitalist system such collectives exist (Hutterite colonies, for example). There are all sorts of organizations that are non-profit or volunteer driven.

Maybe you need to tell us your definition of ‘capitalist’, first.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sam_Stone

There’s nothing about capitalism that says you can’t have voluntary collectives. Even in the U.S. capitalist system such collectives exist (Hutterite colonies, for example). There are all sorts of organizations that are non-profit or volunteer driven.

Maybe you need to tell us your definition of ‘capitalist’, first.

For purposes of this thread, I’m using the one in the quote in the OP: “capital is owned by party X, and party X pays wages to parties A, B and C to operate said capital.” The economy of the Spanish Revolution did not (for the most part) work that way.

[RickJay]

@BrainGlutton

The economy of the Spanish Revolution…

How does a war have an economy?

And with regards to what did or didn’t happen in Spain do you have any sources for us to examine other than a very strangely written TVTropes page?

[LonesomePolecat]

Is it possible to be neither anti-capitalist nor pro-capitalist, neither anti-socialist nor pro-socialist? Is it possible to use the terms capitalist and socialist simply as terms broadly descriptive of certain types of economies theories, neither good nor bad in and of themselves, and not as banners in a holy war?

'Cuz I really, really get tired of the knee jerk way so many people respond to those terms.

[BrainGlutton]

@RickJay

How does a war have an economy?

The Spanish Revolution was not a war. It did happen during a war, the Spanish Civil War, but was a different phenomenon.

@RickJay

And with regards to what did or didn’t happen in Spain do you have any sources for us to examine other than a very strangely written TVTropes page?

I provided a Wikipedia link in post #12. From that link:

The Spanish Revolution was a workers’ social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to three years, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and parts of the Levante. Much of Spain’s economy was put under worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%, but lower in areas with heavy Communist Party influence, as the Soviet-allied party actively resisted attempts at collectivization enactment. Factories were run through worker committees, agrarian areas became collectivised and run as libertarian communes. Even places like hotels, barber shops, and restaurants were collectivized and managed by their workers. Sam Dolgoff estimated that over 10 million people participated directly or at least indirectly in the Spanish Revolution[1], which he claimed “came closer to realizing the ideal of the free stateless society on a vast scale than any other revolution in history.”[2] Dolgoff quotes the French anarchist historian Gaston Leval (who was an active participant) to summarize the anarchist conception of the social revolution:[3]

    In Spain during almost three years, despite a civil war that took a million lives, despite the opposition of the political parties (republicans, left and right Catalan separatists, socialists, Communists, Basque and Valencian regionalists, petty bourgeoisie, etc.), this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect. Very quickly more than 60% of the land was collectively cultivated by the peasants themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without instituting capitalist competition to spur production. In almost all the industries, factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services, and utilities, the rank and file workers, their revolutionary committees, and their syndicates reorganized and administered production, distribution, and public services without capitalists, high salaried managers, or the authority of the state.

    Even more: the various agrarian and industrial collectives immediately instituted economic equality in accordance with the essential principle of communism, 'From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.' They coordinated their efforts through free association in whole regions, created new wealth, increased production (especially in agriculture), built more schools, and bettered public services. They instituted not bourgeois formal democracy but genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganization of social life. They replaced the war between men, 'survival of the fittest,' by the universal practice of mutual aid, and replaced rivalry by the principle of solidarity...

    This experience, in which about eight million people directly or indirectly participated, opened a new way of life to those who sought an alternative to anti-social capitalism on the one hand, and totalitarian state bogus socialism on the other.

<snip>

The British author George Orwell, best known for his anti-authoritarian works Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, was a soldier in the militia of the CNT-allied Partido Obrero Unificación Marxista (POUM; English: Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification). Orwell meticulously documented his first-hand observations of the civil war, and expressed admiration for the social revolution in his book Homage to Catalonia.[4]

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life–snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.–had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.

<snip>

The most notable aspect of the social revolution was the establishment of a libertarian socialist economy based on coordination through decentralized and horizontal federations of participatory industrial collectives and agrarian communes. This was accomplished through widespread expropriation and collectivization of privately owned productive resources (and some smaller structures), in adherence to the anarchist belief that private property is authoritarian in nature. Spanish Civil War scholar (and anti-socialist) Burnett Bolloten writes of this process:

The economic changes that followed the military insurrection were no less dramatic than the political. In those provinces where the revolt had failed the workers of the two trade union federations, the Socialist UGT and the Anarchosyndicalist CNT, took into their hands a vast portion of the economy. Landed properties were seized; some were collectivized, others were distributed among the peasants, and notarial archives as well as registers of property were burnt in countless towns and villages. Railways, tramcars and buses, taxicabs and shipping, electric light and power companies, gasworks and waterworks, engineering and automobile assembly plants, mines and cement works, textile mills and paper factories, electrical and chemical concerns, glass bottle factories and perfumeries, food-processing plants and breweries, as well as a host of other enterprises, were confiscated or controlled by workmen’s committees, either term possessing for the owners almost equal significance in practice. Motion-picture theatres and legitimate theatres, newspapers and printing shops, department stores and bars, were likewise sequestered or controlled as were the headquarters of business and professional associations and thousands of dwellings owned by the upper class.

[6]

The economic policies of the anarchist collectives were primarily operated according to the basic communist principle of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. In some places, money was entirely eliminated, to be replaced with vouchers and coupons distributed on the basis of needs rather than individual labor contributions. Bolloten writes of this process also:[7]

In many communities money for internal use was abolished, because, in the opinion of Anarchists, ‘money and power are diabolical philtres, which turn a man into a wolf, into a rabid enemy, instead of into a brother.’ ‘Here in Fraga [a small town in Aragon], you can throw banknotes into the street,’ ran an article in a Libertarian paper, ‘and no one will take any notice. Rockefeller, if you were to come to Fraga with your entire bank account you would not be able to buy a cup of coffee. Money, your God and your servant, has been abolished here, and the people are happy.’ In those Libertarian communities where money was suppressed, wages were paid in coupons, the scale being determined by the size of the family. Locally produced goods, if abundant, such as bread, wine, and olive oil, were distributed freely, while other articles could be obtained by means of coupons at the communal depot. Surplus goods were exchanged with other Anarchist towns and villages, money being used only for transactions with those communities that had not adopted the new system.

Bolloten supplements this analysis through quotation of anarchist journalist Augustin Souchy’s remark that “The characteristic of the majority of CNT collectives is the family wage. Wages are paid according to the needs of the members and not according to the labor performed by each worker.”[7] This focus on provision for the needs of members rather than individual remuneration effectively rendered these conditions anarcho-communist in nature.

Despite the critics clamoring for “maximum efficiency” rather than revolutionary methods, anarchist collectives often produced more than before the collectivization. In Aragon, for instance, the productivity increased by 20%.[8] The newly liberated zones worked on entirely libertarian principles; decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any sort of bureaucracy (it should be noted that the CNT-FAI leadership was at this time not nearly as radical as the rank and file members responsible for these sweeping changes). In addition to the economic revolution, there was a spirit of cultural revolution. Traditions some viewed as oppressive were done away with. For instance, women were legally permitted to have abortions, and the idea of “free love” became widely prevalent. In many ways, this spirit of cultural liberation prefigured that of the “New Left” movements of the 1960s.

[matt]

@Sam_Stone

But you need capitalists. You need the ability for people to pool their capital together to build factories and do research and development. To do that, you need limited-liability corporations so that responsibility can be delegated

Bolding mine.

I don’t follow the part about limited liability. My observation is that limited liability isn’t used to delegate responsibility but to avoid it. The controllers of a corporation can effectively borrow and spend in the name of the corporation without fear of any personal liability. And in large corporations where seven-and-eight figure salaries and bonuses are normal, they can set themselves up as wealthy for life in a year or three with little fear of ill-advised or downright mendacious policies bringing them down.

What exactly would be the bad consequences of eliminating or altering limited liability so that controllers of a corporation were partly or entirely liable for debts incurred by a corporation? E.g. off the top of my head, any personal fortune over $1000,000 for a board member or controlling partner could be liable against the debt of a corporation. Why would that be a bad thing?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@matt

I don’t follow the part about limited liability. My observation is that limited liability isn’t used to delegate responsibility but to avoid it. The controllers of a corporation can effectively borrow and spend in the name of the corporation without fear of any personal liability. And in large corporations where seven-and-eight figure salaries and bonuses are normal, they can set themselves up as wealthy for life in a year or three with little fear of ill-advised or downright mendacious policies bringing them down.

Actually, the limited liability is for the investors, not the “controllers”. If I invest $10,000 and buy a 1% stake in a million-dollar corporation, and that corporation creates some environmental catastrophe with a liability of $5 million, the corporation’s assets might be liquidated (and the controllers, or corporate officers, possibly jailed if their negligence caused the catastrophe) but nobody’s going to come after me and demand I cough up another $40,000.

What exactly would be the bad consequences of eliminating or altering limited liability so that controllers of a corporation were partly or entirely liable for debts incurred by a corporation? E.g. off the top of my head, any personal fortune over $1000,000 for a board member or controlling partner could be liable against the debt of a corporation. Why would that be a bad thing?

Well, for starters, let’s say company X is in trouble and they might be able to straighten things up if they bring in a new CEO. Who would take that job knowing their personal fortune was now at risk?

[BrainGlutton]

@matt

I don’t follow the part about limited liability. My observation is that limited liability isn’t used to delegate responsibility but to avoid it. The controllers of a corporation can effectively borrow and spend in the name of the corporation without fear of any personal liability.

Not exactly; that is the point of the separation of ownership from control. The “controllers of a corporation” – i.e., its executives – are usually also stockholders, but they don’t need to be; and the majority of any big publicly-traded corporation’s stock usually will be owned by non-executives.

The point of a limited-liability corporation, on the other hand, is so that the investors (stockholders, bondholders) risk no money beyond what they have invested – i.e., if the business fails and has debts, the investors are not on the hook for those debts, nor for any torts the corporation might be sued for. (Not usually, that is. Lawyers know ways to “pierce the corporate veil,” but it’s not easy and requires showing some especially egregious conduct.)