I apologize if this post is not well structured.
I recently went down memory lane and saw some Gabe Newell clips. He seems like a decent guy (which is not an argument btw it’s just me pointing it out) and Valve seems like a decent place to work for (also not an argument).
Valve is a private company, with no stock to trade (no shareholders etc) and for most of its time existing it’s worked as a “company with no hierarchy” in the words of employes, as in you could work in a project this week and another project the next, without any upper management telling you what to do (although from what I could gather there’s still organization, just not in the way you’d expect).
While I do understand that private businesses are inherently exploitative and as a communist I seek to abolish such structures in favor of communal structures, am I wrong or misled to see companies like Valve Software as a major step up in comparison to others like Microsoft, Apple and the like? Of course it’d be amazing if it was a worker cooperative, for example, but Valve offers amazing services and products for customers all while not destroying its workers, even though it’s basically a monopoly in the PC market at this point. I also think most of this is due to Gabe Newell’s visions as well as employee feedback, but I have no evidence to back this.
Also, the biggest socialist experiment of the 21st century is China, and some similar company structures formed (like Huawei, for example, although it’s not 100% the same). At least in my naïve view this is a big step up from the big multinational corps, like Nestle, Coca Cola, Microsoft etc.
Anyways: I could always be wrong. Please share your thoughts on this.
Thank you for taking your time to read this and cheers from Brazil!
in a capitalist society, private companies > publicly traded companies, there is more chance that the private company owner has some actual interest in whatever the company does and actually contributes to the development of production than the amalgamation of stock owners of a public company. Doesn’t mean that private companies are desirable tho since just like a private owner can be a progressive force, it could also be a reactionary private company. Another example of a good private company was ben and jerries before they got bought out.
needless to say, Valve will end up being a public company eventually, it’s just a matter of time really.
I’m a bit worried that this conclusion comes from the lack of a comprehensive critical framework for understanding publicly traded companies, compared to private companies that fit very neatly into basic Marxist economics.
When we than go on to talk about billionaires as progressives forces, something has gone horribly wrong.
When choosing between the individual billionaire vs billionaires organized as a class, i’d choose the individual billionaire every time.
This. Billionaires are weaker when isolated