CONSPICUOUS SIZE IS A PROBLEM, TOO
Writing about the growing invasion of U.S. capital in France, John Urquhart, in the December 10 issue of the New York Herald Tribune [Buropean edition], gives some graphic indications of the size of American big business.
Chrysler, which absorbed Simca last year, "while ranking only third in American automobile production, still turns out more | vehicles annually than the entire French automobile industry."
‘As for General Motors, its "annual business exceeds by 10. per cent the Dutch gross national product. a ON,
Some further figures on General. Motors are cited in the Novem ber 16 issue of The Nation, a liberal weekly published in: New York, The figures are taken from a study made by Prof. James Kuhn of Columbia University:
. “professor Kuhn pointed out. . . that General Motors profits (after taxes) in 1963 were $1.6 billion, up 9 per cent from the year before, and now equal to almost 10 per cent of sales (22 per cant: of invested capital), Earlier this year the company announced that the bonuses of its top fifty-six executives had gone up by 5.6 per cent, and now amounted to almost $9.5 million. Bonuses of 14,028 executives and: managers had increased by 6.4 per cent, to $100 million,"
The increases. in bonuses, if paid to the 345, 000 General Motors workers represented by the United Automobile Workers. union would have amounted to $.145 an hour.
And if the profits for 1963 (after taxes) ‘had been distributed. equally among the UAW workers, each. would have received $4, 637. on “One of the worries of management. now is that the huge size of the company (it has hit as high as 56 per cent of the total annual sales of automobiles in the U.S.) is attracting too much attention, - It is afraid that pressure will mount to compel it to cut itself into sectors like Standard Oil, which would make some of its ‘monopo~ listic practices more. cumbersome,
In past decades great campaigns were conducted to "bust the trusts! The campaigns obviously ended in total failure. However, a campaign to expropriate such companies as General Motors will sooner or later catch the popular imagination in the United States, Expropriation offers the only practical means of bringing the celossal productive’ forces held by these imperialistic giants under. control of: ‘the people. a
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