Page 137 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 127
Stock companies in general have an increasing tendency to separate this
work of management from the ownership of capital…the mere manager
who has no title whatever to the capital performs all the functions
pertaining to the functioning capitalist…and the capitalist disappears as
superfluous from the production process. (Marx, 1974, p. 387–88)

Along with other types of enterprise the press of Marx’s day was also caught up
in this general shift in industrial organization. Whereas in the earlier part of the
century it had been common for newspaper proprietors to double as editors, as
the scale of newspaper organizations increased, so more owners relinquished
their control over day-to-day operations and left the routine management of their
papers to full-time editors.
Marx saw the rise of professional managers simply as a further elaboration in
the division of industrial labour. He did not see it as the basis for a shift in the
locus of control within corporations. Although they had delegated operational
control, he argued, the leading owners still retained their effective control over
overall policy and resource allocation through the board of directors which they
elected and on which some of them sat. Consequently, the managers’ operational
autonomy (and their continued employment with the company) ultimately
depended on their willingness to comply with the interests of the owners.
Marx’s own awareness of the limits to managerial autonomy was underscored
by his experience of working as one of the New York Daily Tribune’s European
correspondents. To begin with his articles were very highly regarded and when
money troubles forced the paper to lay off its foreign staff, he was one of the two
people retained. However, the proprietor, Horace Greely, was becoming
increasingly alarmed by Marx’s views and he asked the editor, Charles Dana, to
sack him. Dana refused, but publication of Marx’s articles was suspended for
several months and soon afterwards the paper dispensed with his services on the
grounds that the space was needed for their coverage of the Civil War. The owners’
interests had finally outweighed respect for Marx’s undoubted journalistic skills
(see McLellan, 1973, p. 284–89).
This basic imbalance of power between owners and managers has recently
been re-emphasized in an interview with Sir James Goldsmith, the flamboyant
proprietor of Britain’s short-lived weekly news magazine, Now.
Interviewer: If the editor and you disagree, what do you do?
Goldsmith: It’s the same as in any other business. If you disagree with the
editor, it’s give and take—and sometimes you give in, sometimes he
gives in. If a disagreement becomes such that you can’t live
together, then the editor goes, just like a managing director would.
(Dimbleby, 1979, p. 230)
Opponents of the Marxist argument might well object to this example on the
grounds that Goldsmith’s interventionist stance is untypical of ownermanager
relations in modern corporations. However, it is by no means an isolated