IMGpapers

Newspapers of the International Marxist Group and its forerunners, 1968–1988

Portrait of a monopoly.

The Red Mole Vol. 2, No. 30, 20 October 1971 · pp. 8-9 of the scan · 389 words

The scan: v02n30-oct-20-1971.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 1-1 of 4; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 8 of the scan

pour que rouge yve General Motors is the 18th largest country in the world in terms of economic power. Its gross national product (GNP) is larger than that of Argentina, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark or Venezuela.

In terms of gross receipts, GM is the fifth largest government in the world, larger than West Germany, Japan, or Canada.

GM's 794,000 employees are equivalent to just one-tenth of 1% of China's population, but GM's income equals a full third of China's GNP.

GM, directly and indirectly, accounts for marly one out of 12 jobs in the United States through control of the auto industry and many of the industries which rely on the automobile for their existence.

Yet this awesome power is in the hands of a mall core of men (no women are on the Board or in top management) unrestrained by democratic control, elected internally by a small minority of GM stockholders. (11% of GM's stockholders control more than 50% of GM stock.)

The Board of Directors of General Motors is a small clique which controls $27 billion (1969) worth of the world's GNP through sales of autos, consumer durables, and munitions. These same men are also directors of 14 different financial institutions (including Chase Manhattan, more (or $50 per car) to convince the consumer Morgan Guaranty, and the Mellon National Bank, as well as the Royal Bank of Canada), 77 different corporate bodies (including US Steel, Armco Steel, ALCOA, Bendix, AT&T, Proctor & Gamble, and Polaroid) and seven insurance companies (including John Hancock and Metropolitan Life).

GM is in private hands, uncontrolled by the ublic. It has been able to work its way around ROUGE TRIAL STARTS The trial of Rouge, weekly paper of the Ligue Communiste, French section of the Fourth International, is now due to open on Tuesday 19th October. The editor, Charles Michaloux, is indicted on five counts for "injuries and defamation of the police and public administration"; the five articles concerned are all accounts of police brutality towards demonstrators or innocent bystanders, of police collusion with the fascist thugs of Ordre Nouveau, of false evidence given by police, etc.

As we pointed out in an earlier article (Red Mole 28), the Rouge trial is likely to develop

page 9 of the scan

"Ligas Agrarias" are sprouting up amongst the foreign rule; foreign rule begets resistance; resistance

← E LUMP KILLTHELUMPSOME MONOPOLIES EMPLOY AS MANY WORKERS AS WHOLE COUNTRIES →

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