Louis Kelso has been called everything from a crackpot visionary
to the second coming of Christ. Even if you?ve never heard of the
guy, if you?ve spent any time in corporate America in the past
decade, you?ve been living in Kelso?s world. Early in his career,
Kelso discovered what the Bolsheviks had been arguing for years:
that capitalism only made sense for capitalists. ?What appears to
be justice in the distribution of incomes is in fact gross
injustice,? Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler wrote in their best-selling
1958 book, ?The Capitalist Manifesto.? He also wrote that the
principles of the Declaration of Independence would only be
realized when American workers could fully share in the bounties of
the free market. ?What Kelso never prophesied though, is that when
everyone becomes a capitalist, capitalism itself may stop working,?
writes Harvard business school student Charles Duhigg, in a recent
Boston Globe op-ed. Today, the existence of stock options,
employee ownership plans, and 401(k) accounts can be attributed to
Kelso?s ideas. At the end of 2001, BusinessWeek reported
that 90 percent of large U.S. companies encouraged employee
ownership and that more than 10 million workers received stock as
part of their compensation. The biggest downfall for this
type of employee ownership is when a company like Enron declares
bankruptcy, and employees lose both their jobs and their
savings.
?Nick Garafola
Go there>>
Worker?s Paradise
