Dear friends:

a) I am gathering info on IP law in Argentina. Did not forget, will
mail it soon.

b) The "big/small" business thread is fascinating. I hope I can add
something from my own experience and knowledge.

1.  From the standpoint of the *actual* worker/employee, it is an
obvious fact that large corporations offer better conditions in terms
of wages, health care, and so on.  This is adamantly clear in third
world countries, and not only for white collars.

2. It is equally obvious, however, that these better conditions for each
and every isolated wage earner imply, at the same time, a very weak
position for labor as a whole vis a vis the company.  An "aristocracy of
labor" thus appears (or tends to appear), further dividing labor into
semi-conflicting layers.

3. When confronted, also one by one and in isolation, with the large
corporation, small business appears as the worst of possible worlds.

But the fact is that if large corporations can lure workers into
their plants and offices it is because there is an underworld of
small business overexplotation.  From the point of view of the
general conditions of development of the economy, however, small
business is less able to extract surplus labor from their employees
(because of technological/productivity differentials, etc.) This of
course is a very broad generalisation, and many examples can be
offered against it, but the aggregate result seems to be this one.

4. The hellish conditions of existence of small business employees,
then, appear as a necessary condition for the existence of large
business employees.  Sheer unemployment cannot be the only fate for
"surplus big business labor", not only because of the great dangers
such a "final solution" entails (in terms of social unrest, etc.),
but also because small business may also act as a valuable recruiting
pool and training area for many workers/employees. And there will
always exist some kind of social needs big business will not be
interested in.

5.  Then, opposing big-small business as if one could be substituted
for the other does not seem to be possible.  Both exist, both need to
exist, only that larger scale enterprise will dominate over smaller
ones.  In fact, the financial and political possibilities open to
large corporations may allow us to imagine current economies as
economies working not under a general, common, rate of profit, but as
economies working under at least two rates of profit: that of the
monopolies, and that of the (more) competitive "small business"
sector.

6.  I suppose that people who imagine small scale enterprise as a way
out of the current crisis are thinking of what could be termed
"manufacture mode of production", those unique communities of
craftsmen, lawyers, farmers, merchants, journalists, sailors,
physicians, priests, backwood pioneers, and so on, that characterized
(e.g.) early Anglo America (particularly the Northern states).

But the clock of history cannot be turned backwards, and those
societies evolve (in my opinion, inevitably) into today's corporate
America. From this point of view, defending small business is a
misguided Utopia. But inasmuch as defending small business entails a
heartfelt longing for a more humane society, where each member was
able to sustain him/herself without forced expoitation by some
Leviathan of money (whether this image is true or false, it is not
important), there is much to be learnt from "small business"
defenders.  It is, simply put, the ambivalent situation of middle
layers of modern societies vis a vis the two definitively basic ones:
labor and capital.

Well, at least that's the way I see it.  I hope my comments are useful.

Regards to all.
Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky
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