US public corporations were dismantled in the 1980s as capitalism shifted toward financial speculation

Evidence

Thus began the disaggregation and diminishment of the US public firm. The public corporation as a social institution was reinterpreted as a costly error, and its long-standing reciprocities with customers and employees were recast as destructive violations of market efficiency. Financial carrots and sticks persuaded executives to dismember and shrink their companies, and the logic of capitalism shifted from the profitable production of goods and services to increasingly exotic forms of financial speculation. The disciplines imposed by the new market operations stripped capitalism down to its raw core, and by 1989 Jensen confidently proclaimed the “eclipse of the public corporation.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 128

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of surveillance capitalism’s emergence as a distinctly new form of capitalism built on the rubble of the old public firm. — connects to: Hostile takeovers in the 1980s drove the financialization of corporations — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 49; Hostile-takeover markets and Reagan politics, not finance theory, drove 1980s financialization — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 1175; The spirit of capitalism shifts from risk-taking to uncertainty-endorsing speculation. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 79 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• The US economy became increasingly financialized in the post-1970s period. #corroborates (0.85) — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 5
• Takeover markets and institutional investors drove shareholder-value restructuring of corporations. #expands (0.85) — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 31
• Financialization shifted corporate power from manufacturing and marketing executives toward financial executives. #expands (0.80) — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 21
• The shift to finance capitalism is nonlinear, not a clean rupture #complicates (0.80)
• Financialization accelerated through 1970s-80s deregulation and state support #corroborates (0.80) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 488
• Corporate restructuring since the 1970s stems from the neoliberal view of corporations. #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2133
• The spirit of capitalism shifts from risk-taking to uncertainty-endorsing speculation. #expands (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 79
• Financialization fragments corporate, state, and individual horizons into short-termism #expands (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 138
• Markets thrive only when capitalist firms are dismantled #qualifies (0.72) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 714