No More Learning

Yet, as Baran and Sweezy remark, the monopoly system tends to work at cross purposes with itself.
It tends to generate ever more surplus, yet it fails to provide the consumption and investment outlets required for the absorption of a rising surplus and hence for the smooth working of the system. Since surplus which cannot be absorbed will not be produced, it follows that the normal state of the monopoly capitalist economy is stagnation. With a given stock of capital and a given cost and price structure, the system's operating rate cannot rise above the point at which the amount of surplus produced can find the necessary outlets. And this means chronic underutilization of available human and material resources. Or, to put the point in slightly different terms, the system must operate at a point low enough on its profitability schedule not to generate more surplus than can be absorbed. 36
Compensation for surplus or intermediary employees, as Baran and Sweezy admit, would exist in any system; but it is their argument, for which they cite good reasons, that under the American system much of it is excessive and wasteful. The intermediation of brokers and agents adds nothing to the value of products. A real estate or stock broker, for example, may mediate the sale of the same property many times a year, drawing a commission each time. Nothing new has been added.
Government Absorption of Surplus
The largest absorption of the surplus of the highly productive American system, however, takes place through government. Here, as official data show, absorption of surplus has risen steadily from $10. 2 billion in 1929 to the level of $168 billion in 1963. Here is the statistical basis for the cry of statism against the welfare-warfare-subsidy
state. From 1929 to 1961 government spending steadily rose from 9. 8 per cent to 28. 8 per cent of gross national product. 37
It is common knowledge that some of government expenditure by anybody's standards represents waste, expenditure for socially unnecessary ends. The common notion of the congressional "pork barrel," with respect to which congressmen trade votes in order to get unnecessary expensive projects for their districts, supports the notion. The local folks are pleased but are postoffices in the form of Greek temples and colonial mansions necessary? Are various airfields and army posts necessary? Governmental absorption and spending of surplus, however, whether wasteful or not, "pumps" money back into the economy. The government, thus--local, state and federal--is the biggest customer in the marketplace and, if it considerably reduced or withdrew its patronage, the so-called private enterprise economic system would almost instantly collapse. By running Keynesian deficits it can push the economy ahead. By curtailing expenditures it can depress the whole structure.
Despite the outcries against statism, it has been mainly for the military establishment that government demands on the economy have been made. Whereas in 1929 less than 1 per cent of gross national product was devoted to military purposes, by 1957 it had risen to more than 10 per cent and accounted for approximately two-thirds of the aggregate expansion of all government spending. Government spending, then, is largely military spending.
Which government expenditures are socially necessary or sustaining and which are waste of surplus? We know already there is some waste, by common agreement; the question is only to determine how much there is, a difficult if not impossible task.
Whereas nondefense or civilian expenditures by government increased only from 7. 5 per cent of gross national product in 1929 to 9. 2 per cent in 1957, the military proportion increased by fifteen times. Transfer payments increased from 1. 6 per cent to 5. 9 per cent, less than four times. 38 Transfer payments comprise interest on government debt, subsidies minus surpluses of government enterprises, veterans' allowances, old- age pensions, unemployment benefits and the like.
Although some argue that military spending is not a prop to the economy and contend despite the 1930's that there would not be a depression if military spending were reduced (because with the reduction in military expenses there would presumably be a corresponding reduction in taxes and a compensating rise in private spending or in redundant investment), it seems inescapable that no scattered private spending or investment could replace the massive concentrated military effort which currently takes more than three million men out of the labor force and makes an effective demand for more than 10 per cent of the production of the labor force.
Instead of military spending, others argue, there could be an increase in socially necessary civilian spending as for hospitals, schools, sanatoria, playgrounds, health resorts, community centers, galleries, museums, lecture halls, libraries, public housing and the like. While such creations would indeed absorb surplus at as great a rate as one liked they would, clearly, be "socialistic. " Such a civilian creation by government would in many directions, as in housing, medicine and other areas, conflict with profit enterprises and by supplying libraries, museums, lecture halls, playgrounds and the like would provide alternate uses for the free time of people, to the possible detriment of profit enterprises like TV, movies, automobiles and so on. All this is precisely what is not wanted by the vested interests who exert decisive political leverage. But if there were effective political leadership, overswollen military budgets could be trimmed for these domestic purposes.
Merely to staff a great expansion in such socially useful facilities would require the diversion of much upper-level personnel from profit-making enterprises.
Some percentage of the military establishment, by the testimony of all schools of thought, represents waste. Some of it is necessary waste, arising from unavoidable circumstances; some is avoidable waste. There are, again, those who would argue that, humanly speaking, it is all waste; we need not follow this line of thought in a highly imperfect world. Owing to continual technological advance, moreover, there is rapid obsolescence of much military equipment in a situation where it is felt, hysterically, that the nation must be prepared at any moment for a maximum military effort to save its very life.
Large portions of civilian outlay by government can also readily be interpreted as waste. The federal roadbuilding program, as indicated in Note 28, supra, is considered (I think rightly) a huge example of compounding social waste by Baran and Sweezy, who also interpret slum clearance as in good part a waste of public money. This last item of waste comes about in this way: Instead of utilizing low-cost open spaces, readily available, the slum-clearing programs buy up deteriorated properties at good prices to the owners and then supply contractor-promoters with huge sums and excessive tax rebates to construct new buildings that rent at such prices as to bar slum dwellers. Slum clearance thus becomes indirectly subsidized luxury building, a delight to politicians, many of them participants in the building syndicates.
Government expenditures for schools and hospitals, health and sanitary measures (water supply, sewage and garbage removal), conservation and recreation, housing and facilitation of commerce, police and fire protection, courts and prisons, legislatures and administrative offices are conceded by these writers to be socially necessary. Presumably they would agree that libraries, post offices, government printing and the maintenance of rivers and harbors are in the same category. But, as they point out, there has been little expansion of such services relative to the expansion of gross national product. Most expansion of governmental spending and allocation of funds has been in areas that are more or less, or entirely, socially and economically wasteful or rationally questionable.
Thus, while socially necessary services are skimped and held down with cries for "economy in government," the sluice gates are wide open for the military in repelling a Leninist communism held to be lapping at distant shores and in underwriting schemes of roadbuilding and urban renewal that not only facilitate huge profit-making enterprises but undermine those that are socially more efficient such as railroads.
In general, what Baran and Sweezy say here is true. The stake of property is steadily being increased under the camouflage of high depreciation write-offs. Persuasive advertising is wasteful and exploitative of credulity, a substitute for genuine competition. More surplus employees are utilized than is socially necessary, although not more than this kind of system requires. Much of what the government spends is indeed wasteful in various degrees and from various points of view and much of it, as in the approach to housing and the automobile complex, is positively harmful. In this last category we have, not merely social waste for profit, but positive, certifiable social harm for profit. Beyond the harm produced by the approaches of public policy to urban housing and the automobile complex there is the harm induced by misallocation of resources, as in military overspending for Over-Kill.
The prime virtue of capitalism in theory is that it provides a mechanism--the ostensible free market--for meeting the effective varied demands of people at the best prices. What happens, however, when people are deviously induced to make an effective demand for something they do not need (automobiles instead of houses) or
something that will not meet some need (chewing gum instead of psychotherapy) is not embraced in the theory. People must know their need and how to satisfy it. Again, if the market is under monopoly, people cannot make effective demand at the best possible prices even for things they do not need--things that do not cater to necessity, convenience or comfort. Ideas of spurious need are inculcated by playing upon latent fears, such as that other people will ostracize them if they do not use deodorants and a long line of other products. Advertising, seen in this aspect, is obviously a vast booby trap, a legally condoned swindle for profit. 39
Quality in the Consumer Economy
As to the quality of goods in the Consumer Economy, where consumption in and of itself is regarded by many public men as the remedy for all ills, there is a wide range. In order to appeal to the impecunious, much of what is offered is sleazy, saturated with built-in obsolescence. The case made by Ralph Nader about the Detroit automobile could in general be applied to many products, although in the automobile it was more serious than usual owing to the immediate life-and-death aspect. 40
In order that at least the more literate portions of the middle classes may pick their way about among a large variety of substandard, overpriced and absolutely unnecessary products that cater at most to free-floating anxiety and suppressed restiveness, there have emerged successful private enterprises such as Consumer's Union and Consumer's Research. By means of regular reports these organizations, and others, advise subscribers of the results of product analysis and price comparison.
Strong in the production of capital goods (generally machinery designed for further production), the American productive system in the line of consumer offerings is about as uneven as the American school system. The main consideration all along the line is admittedly the rate of profit. Producers, it must be conceded, are entitled to fair returns for effort, but the object of business enterprise in general and of the American business system in all its parts is to obtain maximum possible return without regard for quality or social necessity, comfort or convenience. Do-nothing products, economic placebos, are quite common. Under the rubric of glorious freedom, if they make a big profit through misleading advertising as in the case of deodorants, they are justified. The vendor has given the customer what he has been frightened or cajoled into wanting and has given employment perhaps to thousands who are raising children to grow into another army of worker-consumers making null or below-par products--all, however, for somebody's profit.
Many products in the market, especially in pharmaceuticals and foods, are repeatedly found in government laboratories to be positively harmful. This is a long story in itself.
Just how little fear of authority producers feel under the skull-and-crossbones of freedom we learn from Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, of the Bureau of Ships of the Navy and known as "The Father of the Atomic Submarine," a really competent man. Rickover announced that work on many atomic submarines was being delayed because parts, upon which performance depended, were being delivered that did not follow specifications. He cited "the inability of American industry to meet the exacting demands for quality and reliability posed by modem technology. " and charged that industrialists did not know what went on in their plants, which were left to administrators chiefly interested in getting more contracts. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the same time voiced similar complaints, which it later smothered in a tribute to the cooperation of industry. Rickover not only held to his position but has many times made it known in the same terms. 41 The deaths of three astronauts were ascribed to poor equipment.
Not all officials react disagreeably to treating the government as though it was a rank- and-file customer. The political authorities of Massachusetts, for example, accepted the Massachusetts Turnpike as constructed. Soon after completion the road was already crumbling over long stretches and was being extensively rebuilt. As one who has driven over this road many times and experienced its undulations, seen it pitted with holes and watched repair crews at work over its entire length, I can personally testify to its generally poor condition, especially as contrasted with the New York State Thruway, with which it connects. As soon as one travels on to the New York State road from the Massachusetts road one is aware of a dramatic transition from uncertainty and hazard to a well-engineered, well-built road. The ancient Romans built roads that are still used for heavy-duty purposes.
A very wide range of consumer goods conforms more to the standards of the Massachusetts Turnpike than to the New York State Thruway, all produced under the pressing motivation of a quest for maximum profits. Cheap goods, perhaps not paradoxically, are often socially expensive goods.
Institutions or People
'The full-blown Marxist will have no difficulty putting his finger on the difficulty. He will say it is capitalism, or monopoly capitalism. With this convenient analytical abstraction, I do not agree.
Capitalist institutions, being oriented toward private profit in return for the commitment of private capital, no doubt facilitate and reinforce inherent selfish drives in the acquisitive-minded, encourage corner-cutting. It is part of self-serving capitalist theory that the driving self-interest of the entrepreneur indirectly serves society, with an invisible hand conferring benefits out of the process. Up to a point this may be true, or it may once under competitive conditions have come nearer the truth than it is under monopoly conditions. But as the screws are rationally tightened to generate more and more profits, more and more surplus, the gains in the productive sector of the economy are increasingly made at the expense of the consuming sector. And social welfare lies at least as much as or more in the consuming sector than in the producing sector. Production is merely the means, consumption the end. In dominant American thinking, this order is reversed, Again, much of what is termed capitalism has been simple illegality, outside the system.
If the general public were as rational as the producers and had at its fingertips as much knowledge and insight, and ability to apply knowledge and insight, all would perhaps be well. But a very large section of the public, a majority, is woefully handicapped through the possession of insufficient rationality, knowledge and insight. Its members are as amateur participants in a card game with experts. Not only are the politico-economic adversaries of the broad public highly expert but they are what is known among card players as sharpers, prone to violate the rules. These sharpers play a cooperative game with marked cards. Not only this but to some extent they are mind readers. Armed with a knowledge of psychological laws and backed up by computer technology, the large- scale entrepreneur knows in advance what plays the amateurs in elections and markets are bound to make. The amateurs, in fact, are inherently restricted in the plays they are able to make in their own defense. Even if they were pantologists they would not be able to make better choices than a mass-oriented monopoly market and complex political system offer.
In the selection and purchase of goods and services, the disorganized public is led in some cases by necessity, in others by the quest for convenience and comfort and, at times, by the attraction of dispensable diversion and luxury. Beyond these ends it may, too, as advertisers well realize, be led by the prospect of purely imaginary and illusory
advantages, as that ladies will become intensely amorous at the sight of men who use certain pomades.
By Way of Summation
The cleverness of the rich, as I see it, has consisted largely of the fact that the acquisitors among them have been able to operate practically unhindered by law among multitudes of thoroughly confused people, who are readily victimized in politics and economics. The victims have at all times been left externally free to choose in their own way. The rich, whether they knew it or not, could always have been fortified in the thought that the handicapped will usually make the wrong choices under the rule of external freedom.
Approached from the standpoint either of IQ or formal education, far more than half the population has not had the knowledge, intelligence or ability to make choices in its own interests. It has merely drifted with the tide, trusting to its feelings, while others gathered in the hay. Nobody in most instances twisted the arms of this population to make it perform as it did in the polling booth and the market; on the other hand, rescue parties have been few and have not been understood as such by the victims, who regarded saviors such as Mrs. Sanger as enemies. A whole line of would-be saviors, including socialists such as Norman Thomas, have been rotten-egged for taking the trouble to make known their panaceas to this same population. Left and right, radicals, reformers, liberals and labor organizers have been bustled off to jails, not usually by capitalists or even by capitalist agents, but by the local rank and file of victims and their duly elected officers.
Underlying the low IQs and faulty education have been deliberately contrived cultural deprivation as in the case of Negroes and spontaneous, self-induced cultural deprivation as in the case of rural and small-town Protestants and urban Catholics. These, it is evident, have been self-designated victims in a game with rules the rank-and-file did not understand.
What is evidently the case is that a large section of the population is dependent- emotionally, intellectually, economically and politically--and is unable inherently or by conditioning to function in its own behalf under free institutions. A large section of the population, indeed, if it is to be properly served, should be regarded as public wards, ethically subject to rather close highly informed benign guidance in making life dispositions. No doubt much of this dependency arises from its conditioning, from its unreasonably inculcated faith that provision will be made for it, if not by man then by some remote deity. Perhaps a socialist sector of society should be established for it, perhaps true socialism itself is the ultimate answer.
As to socialism as the answer to social ills: I have never been a socialist simply because socialism has seemed to be a dispensation out of practical reach. As shown by the nonindustrial countries where it has been forced by revolutionary means, installed at a time of total social collapse, it can hardly be attained by force. The consequence is simple totalitarianism, with heavyhanded politicians in the saddle. Nor, as is evident from public indifference to it in the face of persuasive argument by a long line of intelligent men from G. B. Shaw to Bertrand Russell, can it be attained by persuasion. Socialism, which long antedates Karl Marx, who merely gave a distinctive romantic turn to the way of attaining it, is in fact an aristocratic doctrine, originated by a French count-Claude Henri de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), who fought in the American revolution and was imprisoned during the French revolution. Like socialists in general, aristocrats were disdainful of men of business, who believed in turning everything, including all of society, into a profit-making scheme. As Veblen said, "Men whose aim is not an increase in possessions do not go into business. " 42
Not only is the profit-seeking way of the businessman distasteful to aristocrats, who long looked down on "people in trade," but it has been looked at askance by professionals from time immemorial. To the ancient Greeks, Hermes was not only the god of commerce but also of cunning and theft. While traders have perhaps been more influential than any other group in the diffusion of culture-more than the philosopher, theologian or writer--their influence here was no more than an unconscious byproduct of their intrusions into all corners of the world.
It was basically the existence of this sort of trusting, optimistic, dependent, happy-go- lucky population that made it possible within a single generation for the wealth of the nation to find its way into hands almost as few as in some of the long-established older countries. The cleverness of the American rich comes down to the fact that acquisitors found themselves, like delirious foxes in a chicken farm, turned loose among so many unprotected suckers and boobs--the handicapped. From this situation sprang the rule, the overriding operating principle of American society: Never give a sucker an even break.
The result was not brought about by capitalism, as the socialists claim, for such an abstraction has no power to do anything whatever. It was brought about by individual capitalists--that is to say, it was brought about by people seeking wealth, using convenient institutions, ideologies and strategies, versus less adroit people.
Human life, in truth, is less an affair of institutions and systems than of people and an interplay of motivations and abilities.
What I have said in this chapter, it is evident, reflects on the sagacity of most of the public, the darling of the democratic ideologue, who replaced God with "The People" as an object of veneration and faith. Any critical evaluation of the public usually is rejected as, somehow, unacceptable in the light of democratic dogma. 43
The objective role of the democratic ideologue is precisely as follows: Out of his own inner need to see humanity liberated from the rule of others be preaches his ideology. Into the network of institutions and policies thereby generated steps the economic entrepreneur and the politician, who convert democratic institutions into something of vast profit-to themselves. It is time, by now, to see that most people are not capable of wielding this instrument of democracy in their own interests. They do not know by what standards to select representatives who will secure the popular interest. Perhaps, even, they do not care.
Fourteen
FINPOLITAN FRONTIERS
As the management of properties is considered by apologists to represent in itself a great social contribution (which may in some muted degree indeed be so), in this chapter there will be passingly considered this aspect--even though the management of personal holdings can hardly be considered a clearcut public contribution. At best it would be an ambiguous one. Just because a man runs his plantation well provides no ground in itself for immoderate public rejoicing (as public relations men insist), however much we may admire his adroitness and democratic bearing.
As to corporations, most of the big ones are run well. They are models of self- centered efficiency and rational planning. In some cases they are managed by dominant owners, in others by well-paid hired managers acting for dominant owners. But while laudable efficiency and rational planning--in their own self-oriented interests--mark the large corporations, the dominant public ideology sponsored by the leaders of these very corporations is that there should be no public planning. Planning is a wicked word when engaged in by government, for it allegedly leads to "statism," by definition a bad thing. But corporate planning for maximum profits is virtuous. The consequence is that only corporate policy is rational, in the interests of the corporation, and helter-skelter public policy is helpless to defend itself against the corporations. Such being the case it can only be incidentally that the well-managed corporation is publicly supportive; often it is discovered as overtly anti-social. Merely managing a corporation well, then, does not represent a social contribution. Such action may represent carefully contrived piracy. We can, therefore, forget about corporate management as ipso facto a social contribution even though it may be in some instances.
The Rockefeller Empire
The Rockefeller empire of contrapuntal profit and nonprofit enterprises is here taken, purely for illustrative purposes, as the central and conventionally most creditable of such ostensible contributions, with allusion later to lesser similar finpolitan complexes. Currently this empire is an international network of industrial, financial, cultural and political activities that for variety, quantity and quality put everything of a similar kind in the shade. The present third generation of ruling Rockefellers--five sons and a daughter of John D. , Jr. , without considering the independent branch of the founder's brother, William-has at its fingertips what is the quintessence of many great fiefdoms, worthy to be included in a modern Arabian Nights tale. All of it is bone and muscle, none either of fat or meagerness. It is not only quantitatively but qualitatively rich, like a Christmas fruit-nut-brandy cake.
The reigning Rockefeller brothers are John D. III (b. 1906), Nelson Aldrich (b. 1908), Laurance S. (b. 1910), Winthrop (b. 1912) and David (b. 1915). They have a sister, Mrs. Abby Mauze? , who figures in the giltedged sextette, according to reports by family friends, pretty much as a silent partner. All appear to be of good intelligence, not the least of their assets, although actually the intelligence at their disposal--the pooled family intelligence deriving from long experience with a mercurial world plus that of their large professional advisory and research staffs--greatly exceeds their personal intelligence, Like the ruler of a great state they have far more relevant information at their ready disposition than they carry with them in their own heads. As far as the contemporary world is concerned, they are thoroughly informed. They can, in fact, out- think most contemporaries.
The fourth, and even fifth, generation is being readied in the wings. At this writing there are twenty-three living members of the fourth generation. John D. III has one son and three daughters, Nelson four living sons and two daughters, Laurance one son and three daughters, Winthrop one son, David two sons and four daughters and Abby two children. Some of these offspring are now married and themselves have children of the fifth Rockefeller generation, members of an established world dynasty.
In Their Own Eyes
The self-image of the Rockefellers is quite different from that which a detached observer might arrive at, although it is a conception that many people now share through the power of public relations. "The boys' father," says Joe Alex Morris, "had been brought up with the feeling, which his mother emphasized, that the family's money belonged to God and that he was to be merely a steward. He impressed something of
this idea on his sons. . . . " 1 They are, then, stewards of wealth. In this case the laudably humble role carries with it vast emoluments, privileges, immunities and intangible advantages and disadvantages.
Discussing foreign trade after World War II, Nelson remarked: 'In the last century capital went where it could make the greatest profit. In this century, it must go where it can render the greatest service. " 2 Noble words. . . .
Again, speaking of the financing of various enterprises in Latin America, Nelson said: "We're really setting up pilot plants. Our way of life is confronted with a lot of big problems that have to be solved. We hope that our pilot plant operations will demonstrate some of the things that American enterprise can do to help solve these problems that are vital to our everyday life and to our position in world affairs. Because we've got to master such problems if our system is going to survive. " 3 Survival of "our system," then, is a matter of concern.
The Rockefellers, then, look upon themselves as stewards rendering service and helping solve big world problems in harmony with "our system. " They are, in fact, problem solvers, within limits imposed by mass irrationality.
The Economic Base
"Any real clues as to the wealth of the brothers," says Fortune, "have been vigilantly guarded since their birth. None of the terms of the trusts established for them by their father has ever been revealed, and even the names of the trustees are known only to the family and a few key advisers. The great concentration of the brothers' wealth is in oil companies like Jersey Standard, Creole, and Socony-Vacuum, but the precise amount is still their secret since the holdings are not big enough for mandatory disclosure to the SEC. " 4 Glimpses of some of the trust funds, however, were obtained from TNEC records as cited in Chapter Four. As the SEC does not require the reporting of stockholdings of less than 10 per cent in a company unless held by an officer, the six Rockefellers, none of whom is a Standard Oil officer or director, could (but certainly do not) own up to nearly 60 per cent of the stock of each of the many Standard Oil companies without the fact appearing on the public record.
"Though these circumstances make appraisal inordinately difficult, appraisal is essential to an understanding of the material source of the brothers' power--their wealth," Fortune continued. "Their personal fortunes are estimated at upwards of $100 million each [as of pre-boom 1955 and prior to their father's death--F. L. ]; the money is mostly tied up in trust funds, yielding them individual incomes of probably $5 million a year before taxes, but leaving control to trustees. Roughly $7 million is given away each year to standard charities, or in gifts such as Laurance's recent offer of one-half the island of St. John for a national park in the Virgin Islands. Apart from the, trusts, they have an asset of roughly $150 million in Rockefeller Center [an understatement, clearly, for the Empire State Building alone recently sold for $100 million--F. L. ]; some $15 million is put out as U. S. venture capital; $12 million has gone into Latin-American enterprises such as dairies, supermarkets, fisheries, hog farms. At a minimum, then, the brothers are probably worth over $500 million. Even in 1955 dollars, this does not compare too badly with the 1913 fortune of $900 million-considering that the holdings of their father, their sister, and other Rockefeller kin are not included in the $500 million, considering all that has been given away, and finally, considering taxes. " 5
Since the death of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , in 1960, the center of financial gravity has moved, manifestly, to the brothers. And inheritance taxes have not whittled down the original Standard Oil fortune by much because the original John D. transferred most of it to his son (and daughters) by gift, himself dying comparatively stripped of wealth, and the son in turn transferred at least half of it by bits and pieces to his children, thus
incurring only gift taxes. As some was transferred in the 1930's at depression prices, some no doubt nontaxable at birth, possibly by the grandfather as well as the father, the gift taxes on highly elastic, dynamic properties were minimal. Morris says. "With the third generation, the family's accumulated wealth is being dissipated on a great descending curve by taxes, philanthropies and division among the heirs. . . . " 6
Now, whatever else one may say, one cannot rightly say the Rockefeller fortune is in any way being dissipated; it is, apart from that portion undeniably dedicated to public purposes, only being subdivided as to direct beneficiaries but held together in concentrated form in properties. One can dismiss the so-called tax bite out of hand. Owing to its trustification the fortune left in private bands is intact, and a potent influence.
Precisely how much has been paid in inheritance taxes, even while many publicists erroneously assert that taxes are breaking down big estates, can easily be shown. John D. Rockefeller's estate after death in 1937 totaled $26,410,837, of which $16,630,000 was paid in federal and state taxes. 7 His son's estate totaled approximately $150 million, of which half went to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and half to his wife. The first half was nontaxable as a philanthropic contribution and the second half was nontaxable under the marital deduction of the tax law, a spouse receiving tax free under 1947 law half of any estate above the basic deduction of $60,000. 8 There was some small real and personal property in the estate of the junior Rockefeller, and any of it that was not given to institutions would be subject to a minor tax, tax experts pointed out.
We see, then, that the Rockefeller fortune, estimated at $900 million in 1913, has to this date not paid much more than $16,630,000 in inheritance taxes.
Leaving it at this would be misleading because the 1913 dollar has depreciated by approximately 70 per cent to the Johnson dollar of August, 1966. In terms of the value of current dollars, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indexes of the cost of living, Rockefeller's fortune as of 1913 was worth approximately $3 billion, exclusive of what he had put into foundations before 1913. A man today would need to make $100 per week to equal in purchasing power $30 per week in 1913, when, moreover, he was not subject to a federal tax bite. Put another way, what cost 30 cents on the average in 1913 now costs $1, taxes sometimes added.
Fraternal Investments
The brothers' investments, apart from trust funds of which the capital is distributable only to their grandchildren (an example of serial entailment if the grandchildren replace the trusts with new trusts according to standard estate doctrine) are held through Rockefeller Brothers, Inc. There was also established by them in 1940 the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to finance nonprofit or philanthropic properties. 9
None of the brothers is actively associated with the management of any of the Standard Oil companies, although most, like their father, held minor jobs with some of them upon emerging from college and some have for a time been directors. All are directors of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc. , formed in 1946, and Rockefeller Center, Inc. , and trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. David, for a short time secretary to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York, is now chairman of the ultra-powerful Chase Manhattan Bank, one of the "Big Three" largest commercial banks in the world. His cousin James S. Rockefeller, of the William Rockefeller branch of the family, is chairman of the First National City Bank of New York, another of the "Big Three. "
John D. III is chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation and the General Education Board as well as of the Lincoln Center of Performing Arts. Laurance is chairman of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc. , and Rockefeller Center, Inc. , and styles himself a "venture
capitalist. " Nelson was chairman of Rockefeller Center before becoming governor of New York in 1958. Winthrop heads his own Winrock Enterprises in Arkansas and participates in the fraternal enterprises; he was elected Republican governor of Arkansas in 1966.
A division of labor has been worked out by the quintet. John D. III is generally in charge of nonprofit or philanthropic enterprises, David of banking and finance, Laurance of new investments, Nelson (and, lately, Winthrop) of direct political participation (all are indirectly in politics through financial participation in the Republican Party) and Winthrop to some extent in his own orbit although he is a participant in all the fraternal enterprises and his brothers may, too, he participants in some of his ventures.
Winthrop, for special reasons associated with his development in the family constellation and his childhood relations to his older brothers appears to be the more independent of family patterns, at least in shading. Although each brother is sharply individualized, which a psychologist would expect in view of their order in the family, Winthrop appears to be the most noticeably different, more ambient. Both intra-family and later experience, including severe combat experience in World War II during which he rose from enlisted private to lieutenant colonel and won the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster, no doubt set him somewhat apart. Although all the brothers except Nelson served in the armed forces, Winthrop's experience was sufficiently unique, following and presaging a persistent pattern, so that among the Rockefellers he is a bit of an odd-man out. As such, he provokes a more spontaneous kind of publicity. Actually, all the Rockefellers are far more individualistic than even some close admirers credit them with being. On policies, their intimates report, they often differ and argue strongly back and forth at quarterly meetings. How differences are settled, by majority vote or otherwise, is not indicated. Which one, if any, is dominant in the group is as much a mystery as in the Russian Politburo.
It would require a rather long catalogue to detail all the projects, profit and nonprofit, with which they are associated. Morris lists thirty-six boards and committees of which John D. III was a member over a period of eighteen years and suggests that one multiply the list by five to ascertain how many such formal connections the brothers have, excluding their club memberships. Some of these are permanent connections, some temporary. The Rockefellers, because of past unpleasant experience with deputies (as in the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company strike of 1913), always involve themselves with all projects with which they are financially associated; and the mere business of attending rounds of meetings occupies much of their time and energy. They are working diplomats, or finpols, who aim to eliminate unfavorable public repercussions to the often commendable application of great power.
The Enterprises in Closer View
Their major enterprises are as follows:
Trust funds, at least seventy-five, managed by family nominees, invested in corporations, mainly in Standard Oil companies. Precisely what is in the trust funds, precisely how many there are or what they are worth in the aggregate is not publicly known. As trust funds are usually managed, there is shifting of holdings, perhaps only in the way of selling out at higher prices and buying back at lower. Whether there has been such shifting of Rockefeller holdings is not known. If the trustees were omniscient and in every market phase sold out at top prices and repossessed at market lows, never making an error, the funds would today be worth far more than anyone believes them to be. As nobody can pick market highs and lows with perfect prescience, theoretically maximum results can never be attained. What seems more certain is that the relative
value of the Rockefeller trusts has at least been preserved with respect to the performance of the economy. Whether they have outperformed the economy is not known, but it is a lively possibility considering the politically coddled oil industry.
A question of interest to a wide public is how the brothers stand with respect to control of the Standard Oil companies. The image projected by writers in the confidence of the family is that they are passive income-receivers, rentiers. Up to a point they may indeed be. But at any moment the massed family holdings can be mobilized into active dominance and control. This was shown cleanly in 1929 when a wayward chairman of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, in which the Rockefellers were not active, took it into his head to seize control. The chairman was very popular with small stockholders, who had enjoyed unexpected extra dividends and the like. After rivalrous appeals to stockholders for proxies, at a special meeting the chairman was overwhelmingly voted out by the massed proxies of the Rockefeller family, philanthropic funds, family trust funds and nonfamily investment and trust funds. For investment managers throughout the world, after studying the issues, had decided to side with John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Mainly the small, purely dividend-oriented stockholders sided with the chairman. The Rockefellers held proxies for about 65 per cent of the stock when all the chips were down. A new management was installed. What was exemplified here was corporate power .
Who Controls the Corporations?
As there is a good deal of learned nonsense in circulation about who controls the corporations--nonsense placed into circulation by professors intent upon making a complex mountain out of a simple molehill--this is as good a place as any to dismiss the question. This nonsense was originally set in motion by Berle and Means in The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) and has since been embroidered upon by James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution, and others. Even such hard-bitten observers as the neo-Marxists Baran and Sweezy have to some extent been brought into the camp of those who believe corporations are dominated by managers, not by stockholders. 10
When all the chips are down, which is not always the case, the stockholders, particularly the big stockholders or trustees managing, big stockholdings, exercise broad control by determining the composition of the management. Basically, the stock controls. There are situations, however, where the generalized-ownership kind of influence Baran-Sweezy talk about comes into play.
Even with respect to small stockholders the formal power of the management is in any test restricted. Lindahl and Carter, in The Dartmouth Study, repeatedly point out, correctly, that the small stockholders have much legal power they do not use with respect to company policy. 11 Small stockholders are usually interested only in dividends, and as long as these keep flowing they are inert. But in many cases of record a single small stockholder has, by invoking the assistance of the courts, completely thwarted an established management, even a stockholding management. There is a great deal of law on the books on the side of the smallest stockholder. Most small stockholders feel they cannot take the time, trouble and expense to invoke this law; if they don't like the way the company is run they usually simply sell out, depressing the value of the stock to the chagrin of managers. They have an effect indirectly.
The big nonmanagerial stockholders hold the whip hand. So I believe it to be the case of the Rockefellers with respect to the Standard Oil empire, in which they are silent partners. If any issue arises with respect to which control needs to be asserted, they will unhesitatingly once again, as in the case of the Indiana company, assert that control.
This fact--or assumption--is unquestionably part of the thinking of every high Standard Oil official in the world.
Even though we don't know precisely the amount of stock the Rockefellers own in the Standard Oil companies, it is known what stock is owned by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund et al. This stock, too, has voting power, and the trustees include the Rockefellers. The voting power of these foundation stocks combines with the precisely undetermined stake of the family members to give a large, perhaps unexercised voice, in the determination of the company management. No company management is going to ride roughshod over or even politely ignore the interests merely of the foundation stock, formally a public possession. And so it is in other cases.
As I indicated, it is not known precisely what the participation of the Rockefellers is in the Standard Oil companies. When the master New Jersey company was ordered dissolved in 1911 it was separated into thirty-eight independent companies, and the stocks of thirty-three underlying subsidiaries as well as those of the parent companies were distributed pro rata to stockholders. The parent company then had outstanding 983,383 shares, of which John D. Rockefeller I owned 244,500 or almost 25 per cent, giving him working control. If this distribution had been maintained through the constituent companies the family would, clearly, now hold about 25 per cent evenly throughout the empire.
There is ample reason to believe, however, that this even ownership has not been maintained. First, the stocks in some companies appear to have been sold out, with more emphasis placed on other companies. Again, there has been distribution of assets on the philanthropic circuit, although where such distribution has been retained as principal the control power of the stock has remained in being, an important point.
During his later lifetime it was often reported that John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , owned 10 per cent of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, an enormous holding in itself in the largest industrial company in the world in point of assets; but this percentage, as it was often assumed, did not necessarily exhaust the family participation in the company.
While soon after dissolution the Rockefeller share of the constituents of the New Jersey company was valued in the market at around $900 million, subsequent price movements showed that this was a gross undervaluation. For in the market the stocks, and this prior to the automobile age, were steeply marked up in price. It took the dissolution of the trust to reveal to investors something of what this company was worth. It was the greatest profit-generating mechanism the world has ever to this day seen. It made General Motors even as of today look small because it included with the New Jersey company, which alone tops General Motors in assets in the industrial field, the present-day Indiana, California, Mobil, Marathon and many other big companies.
What happened to this 25 per cent Standard Oil interest is that it was subdivided among family members and family foundations for the most part. Taxes, either inheritance or gift, have had little impact, and as to income taxes far from all income of the companies has been paid out. It has been retained and reinvested.
So much for the trust funds, corporate control and the Rockefeller position in Standard Oil companies.
Venture Capitalists at Work
Rockefeller Brothers, Inc. , is the brothers' joint private investment company, into which they apparently put some of their income from Standard Oil sources, thus diversifying in an uncertain world. Its holdings are not reported. This enterprise, with Laurance as chairman, appears to concentrate in the area of modern advanced
technology. Laurance himself, for his personal account, has invested in technologically advanced growth-type companies; and writers such as Morris leave it ambiguous whether some of his investments at different times also included his brothers. Sometimes he clearly acts for the brothers together, sometimes apparently alone.
In the first five years of its life the brothers put less than $4 million into ventures of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc. , Morris reports, whereas their total investments of venture capital in that period came to $15 million. 12 The proclaimed intent of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc. , is "to achieve social and economic progress as well as a fair profit on investment. " 13 How much it is now worth does not appear on the record.
Laurance, the gadgeteer of the family, with ace flyer Eddy Rickenbacker in 1938 bought into North American Aviation, which was converted into Eastern Air Lines, a profitable venture. He then went into nonscoring Platt le Page, pioneer in building helicopters, and finally put in with the then limping J. S. McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, in which the brothers collectively after the war held 20 per cent of the stock on an original investment of $400,000 apart from any share Laurance antecedently held, put by Morris at an original modest $10,000. This company produced the advanced Phantom and Banshee jet fighters, which are thought to have enabled the United States to command the air in Korea in 1950-52 and which are still used in improved models. It is more recently deep in space-age technology. 14 But the Rockefellers, through their oil interests, were already an integral part of the front line of national offense-defense.
Other investments of the brothers were in Marquardt Aircraft Company of Los Angeles, manufacturer of ram-jet and pulse-jet engines and electronic air-navigation and control devices; the Laboratory for Electronics, Inc. , of Boston, makers of cyclotron equipment, radar components, electric flight control and guidance systems; Airborne Instruments Laboratory, radar and electronic devices and target indicators; the Aircraft Radio Corporation, radar and other electronic instruments; Horizons, Inc. , engineering development and research and (Laurance alone) $1 million as of 1952 in the Glenn L. Martin aircraft enterprise. 15
Laurance, too, held an interest in Reaction Motors (21 per cent), Marquardt Aircraft (20 per cent), Wallace Aviation (27 per cent), Flight Refueling (30 per cent), Piasecki Helicopter (17 per cent), Airborne Instruments (24 per cent), Aircraft Radio (24 per cent), New York Airways (3 per cent), Horizons (5 per cent), and Nuclear Development Associates (17 per cent). 16
Four out of five of these ventures, said Fortune, were successful. 17
While the Rockefeller brothers clearly have decided to put a good part of their personal investments into the field of advanced technology, which may seem to them the wave of the investment future, some clue to their broader investment approach may be discerned in the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
At the end of 1964 we find there $20,689,425 by market value of government and corporate bonds, $21,882,161 of corporate notes, $1,801,589 of preferred stocks and $161,608,512 of common stocks with a book or acquisition value of $88,157,570. The entire Fund was valued at $205,981,687.
Although the portfolio embraced a wide section of the investment spectrum, like any balanced investment fund, distinctive Rockefeller properties among the holdings were as follows:
Value
Shares Book Value Market
Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey)
$61,665,328
Standard Oil Co. of California
17,927,934
Socony Mobil Oil Co
18,340,825
Marathon Oil Co. ,
a Standard Oil unit
1,996,800
Chase Manhattan Bank
12,203,264
684,220
244,333
199,900
31,200
167,168
$30,422,352
10,388,607
8,482,656
1,074,958
6,949,897
All these stocks, naturally, represent corporate voting power which, in conjunction with other family holdings, represent still greater voting power. Additional smaller holdings were in Alcoa, AT&T, Armour, Bethlehem Steel, Chrysler, Du Pont, Eastman Kodak, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors, Great A&P, IBM, International Nickel, International Paper, National Cash Register, Polaroid, Sears, Roebuck, Texaco, etc. As indicated by this Fund, then, the Rockefellers: are diversified by investment throughout the American corporate structure.
Their private holdings presumably follow the same general line of distribution, although there may be differences of emphasis in different funds.
More recently at least, Laurance has had a large position in the Itek Corporation, formed in 1960 to concern itself with mechanical, electrical and electronic equipment and to develop optics with relation to photography and photocopying.
Some of these personal investments have been closed out. Where there has been a profit, the close-out required a capital gains tax of 25 per cent. These capital gains ventures of the Rockefellers are, in my opinion, on the basis of the theory of giving tax leniency to actual new ventures, fully justified and differ from capital gains leniency accorded buyers and sellers of stock and real estate in the open market, where there is not the shadow of any social contribution. Whether the brothers operate cyclically in the stock market, as their grandfather did over a broad spectrum, is not known, although the family Stock Exchange seat is still held.