Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Enterprise and Corporation 69lenge when employees cite the practice of democracy outsidethe workplace as a reason for bringing it inside aswell.Yet in market systems employer power over wages isgreatly limited. In both union and nonunion employment,competition drives wages up inexorably as new opportunitiesfor profit, especially those created by capital accumulationand new technologies, make employees increasinglyvaluable to entrepreneurs. The powers of even the mosthostile entrepreneurs are curbed by that competition. Slowly,fitfully, and with occasional relapses, as in the ‘90s, wagesrise in all market systems. In market systems workers arenow wealthy when compared with their grandfathers.For many employees, that is not enough. The consequentnever-ending struggle of workers for more controlover market elites—and the wages they pay—is no minorattribute of market systems. In their cold war, employersand employees persist even where and when they put violencebehind them.In their relation not to their employees but to their customers,market elites differ significantly from governmentalelites in their relations to citizens. Historically, governmentalelites have resisted mass or popular electoral controlso successfully that most of the world’s people have not yetestablished democratic governments. Even where democraticgovernment exists, political elites often twist andturn to weaken it: for example, trying to “buy” political office,as did Helmut Kohl, as head of Germany’s ChristianDemocratic Union, and Joseph Kennedy, in winning theAmerican presidency for his son. In contrast, market eliteshave less reason to resist mass control achieved throughmarket purchases. For what the market elites derive as