● The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong
John Kay
Review via Financial Times
When capital-intensive plant and machinery were the means of production, the capitalist elite had permanent power over the workers. But now control resides with professional managers who derive power not from ownership of the physical means of production or accumulated wealth but from their transient role in the business. Thus “the workers are the means of production” — and Kay’s italics are important.
Building on this, the importance of capital needs downgrading and redefining, argues Kay, a former FT columnist. In a suggestion that will jar with those actually running businesses or trying to start them up, the capital requirement of modern business is relatively modest. But it is difficult to argue with the observation that the modern IPO is more a means of enabling founders to extract capital than to raise it.