资本主义社会本质 英文.doc

4 INTERNAL HIERARCHIES AS SELECTION ENVIRONMENTS An internal hierarchy is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for the extraction of surplus value in the production process in any form SCREPANTI: CAPITALIST FORMS of capitalism. Therefore, not only must it be present in all of them, but it is in fact a fundamental structure of capitalism in general. It ensures the existence of the power relationship enabling the capitalists to govern labour activity and thence to implement exploitation. I will return to this problem in the Conclusion. Internal hierarchies also play other important functions besides that of exploitation implementation. In particular they serve: (1) to coordinate production activity in the presence of technical complexity through team production, economies of scale and scope, innovation and the development of specific capabilities; (2) to exert control and monitoring activity when strong information asymmetries threaten to impair the extraction of surplus value; (3) to organize and develop knowledge when innovation and adaptation to a changing environment require problemframing and problem-solving activities to be played collectively. Again these functions of hierarchies do not call for deeper investigation in this article. There is one function, however, that must be investigated in greater detail here, namely the capacity of a hierarchy to work as an accumulation governance structure. This function does not involve the whole organizational structure of a firm, but only its upper layers, the upper hierarchy that organizes cadres and executives. The command hierarchy of a firm is normally structured in the form of an internal ‘labour market’ (Doeringer and Piore, 1971; Edwards, 1979) which is in fact anything but a market. Officers are enrolled in the lower layers of the hierarchy, and are engaged with long-term contracts. Salaries are determined not by market conditions, but by efficiency considerations for given positions in the hierarchy. A