New Zealand corporate capitalism

This thesis describes the process of concentration and centralisation of the top New Zealand corporate class fraction at three levels - the corporate agent, the corporate agency and the corporate structure. These three different perspectives are seen, first, at the level of the empirical evidence of concentration and centralisation over time, and second, at the level of theoretical explanation and lastly, at the level of the sociology of knowledge, that is, how the theories themselves locate within economic cycles. The two empirical bases of this study are the survey of the top thirty companies directors and the top thirty companies networks of.1966, 1976 and 1986. A centrality analysis used on the latter three data sources, found that at the peak of the longwave (1966) when accumulation was high within the protected New Zealand economy, there were few corporate interlocks, suggesting that centralisation (the destruction of already formed capitals) was not a problem. But by the economic downturn (1986) corporate interlocks had proliferated reflecting the insecure nature of the corporate economy in crisis. The main conclusions drawn from the survey and the centralisation data sources positively corroborate the Marxist thesis that the corporate class fraction (as agents of capitalism) are in a free market economy as much directive as reactive to the state, that banks operate at direct and indirect levels of intervention on this class fraction and that there is some evidence of corporate class cohesion.