Monopoly as the Essential Determination of Corporation

In the stage of industrial capitalism the corporations developed specially as railway companies. As K. Marx pointed out, if there had not been the system of corporation, the mankind would have had yet no railways. What is the implication of Marx's determination concerning the relationship between the system of corporation and the railway companies? In this paper, taking the examples from the railway companies on the industrial capitalism mainly in England, I try to investigate into that relationship. Monopolizing the supply of the services of transportation, the companies were able to sell them at monopoly prices, realize monopoly profits and stabilize the dividends more or less apart from the business cycles by applying the double-account system. The companies, therefore, were able to concentrate the idle money capital which accumulated on the hands of aristocratic landowners, and such middle class as the officials, military officers, retired capitalists and widows. The concentration is determined as 'the mobilization of capital' as R. Hilferding formulates in his Das Finanzkapital . The mobilized money capital was transformed into the real capital by the hands the managers of railway companies. This capital moves in such formula as G-W(=Pm + A)…P…G・G→, and the movement of the real capital is differenliated from the movement of the money capital invested by the share-holders which moves G…G'→. Common share holders are enough to gain dividends determined by the interest rates then prevailing, and thus they transformed into the investors of fictitious capital as a mere depositor. Although Hilferding misunderstands as if the manager as share-holder would appropriate the founder's gain in the form of money, he does in the form of shares in contrast to his understanding. Thus the manager governs the company, appropriating the average profit as the functioning capitalist in contrast to the money capitalist as common share-holders. To be brief, why the railway companies were able to monopolize the supply of transportation services is, precisely because they monopolized the railways as the land-of-capital embodied improved land such railways, tunnels, bridges, stations and so forth. The corporation or the limited company can survive by incorporated the monopoly of the land-as-capital.論文Articledepartmental bulletin pape