Word: kelso
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Syntopicon) Adler decided that the 400 Great Books were about to have company. That was when a 600-page manuscript on the theory of capitalism thudded onto his desk at his Institute for Philosophical Research in San Francisco. The author: a hornrimmed, bow-tied corporation lawyer named Louis O. Kelso. Except for Kelso's wife, Adler was the first person to see the book; U.S. readers will see it shortly under the sweepingly simple title Capitalism. So challenging did Adler find Kelso's ideas that he proposed the two men collaborate on a kind of popular preview. Says...
...styles are scarcely comparable. Marx-Engels wrote in fire; Kelso-Adler seem to be writing under water. Yet the book achieves a triumph of grey matter over grey manner. Four points stand...
...decided it could never reform, and remanded it to the custody of the state. Result: tyranny. Marx's error, say K. & A., was his failure to see that the culprit was not the institution of private property itself, but undue concentration of capital in a few hands. The Kelso-Adler answer: decentralize capital, make everybody a "citizen-capitalist...
...this is apt to sound like pie-machine-in-the-sky, Kelso-Adler back up their ideas with concrete-and controversial -proposals. Among their suggestions: equity-sharing plans, distribution to stockholders of all corporate profits in the case of "mature" corporations, abolition of corporate income taxes and revision of personal income taxes, abolition of inheritance taxes. (At times, the program has the ring of "Capitalists of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your tax forms.") All capitalists-meaning, eventually, all citizens-would get a just return for their investments, limited only by another requirement of justice: that...
Indignity of Labor? Adler and Kelso expect economists to "clobber the book," and the possible objections are indeed strong. The scheme to diffuse capital might require more governmental control than the present pump-priming devices that K. & A. condemn. If the prescribed spreading of capital were more or less limited, would it give workers (except in theory) relatively more than they have today under high wage scales? Or, if the redistribution of capital were sizable enough to make a real difference, would there be enough capital concentration for new enterprise? Furthermore, the K. & A. vision of a coupon-clipping mass...