1. Downs, Anthony, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Friedman, Milton, Capitalism, Freedom and Democracy (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar; Niskanen, William, Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar; Tullock, Gordon, Politics of Bureaucracy (Washington, D.C., 1965)Google Scholar

2. Tiebout, Charles, “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures.” The Journal of Political Economy 64 (1956): 416–424CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. The original formulation of the Marxian class theory upon which this approach to privatization builds upon is set out in, Resnick, Stephen A. and Wolff, Richard D., Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy (Chicago, 1987)Google Scholar.

4. Marx, Karl, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1, ed., Engels, Frederick. Trans. Moore, Samuel and Aveling, Edward, (New York, 1967), 209Google Scholar.

5. A park (like Central Park) may nevertheless influence the exchange values of other commodities, e.g., condos, co-ops, hotel room stays, and horse-carriage rides. Hence, the park qua commodity and its post-privatization exchange value should not be conflated with other commodities' exchange values.

6. In Marxian class terms, municipal employees are “unproductive” because they do not produce commodities containing surplus. Instead, the goods and services they produce represent use-values. These use-values are important to other production processes, many of which yield surplus. The point is that municipal workers are not generally involved in a class process—given the narrow definition of a class process set out. This fact does not imply that they are not (have not been) implicated in class struggles. From a class perspective, municipal privatizations are understood to be symptomatic of a unique form of class struggle. The public sector retrenchment that began in the 1970s and continues today reflects a form of struggle between the various parties that receive cuts of capitalists' surplus value. Hence, the state or municipality, shareholders, landlords, advertisers, and managers all struggle for shares (viz., taxes, dividends, rents, fees, salaries, and bonuses) of surplus value. Capitalists have been successful in reducing the share of surplus the state/municipality receives. In this light, public-sector retrenchment (reflected in things like privatizations) is understood to be symptomatic of such struggle. This struggle obviously affects municipal workers. However, this struggle and its impact on municipal workers, is qualitatively different from the type of class struggle capitalist wage workers engage in. These workers struggle over the very existence and magnitude of surplus value. Hence, while both municipal workers and capitalist wage workers engage in class struggle, the objects over which they struggle are fundamentally different.

7. This knowledge is thus produced by a class analyst.

8. Wolff, Richard, “Limiting the State versus Expanding it: A Criticism of this Debate” in Contemporary Economic Theory: Radical Critiques of Neoliberalism, ed. Vlachou, Andriana, (London: 1999), 73Google Scholar.

9. New York State Department of Labor Statistics (NYSDOL). All employment data cited from the NYSDOL's establishment employment series. Unemployment and labor force data cited from NYSDOL's local area unemployment statistics.

10. Rosenzweig, Roy, Blackmar, Elizabeth, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca, 1992), 502Google Scholar.

11. Ibid.

12. Savas, E.S., A Study of Central Park (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.

13. Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and its People, 503.

14. Ibid., 447–463. See also, Kinkead, Eugene, Central Park: The Birth, Decline, and Renewal of a National Treasure, (New York, 1990), 105–109Google Scholar.

15. Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and its People, 502.

16. Kinkead, Central Park: The Birth, Decline, and Renewal, 120.

17. Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and its People, 510.

18. Elizabeth Hawes, “Whose Park is it Anyway?” New York Times, August 16, 1987, A9.

19. Rogers, Elizabeth Barlow, Fitch, James Marston, Cramer, Marianne, et al. , Rebuilding Central Park: A Management and Restoration Plan (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar.

20. For details on restoration during the 1980s and 1990s see, Kinkead, Central Park: The Birth, Decline, and Renewal.

21. Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and its People, 514.

22. Hawes, “Whose Park is it Anyway?”

23. Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and its People, 522.

24. Memorandum of Understanding between New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and the Central Park Conservancy, March 31, 1993. Unpublished copy in author's possession.

25. “More Attacks On Dinkins As Giuliani Speeds Pace” New York Times, August 9, 1993, B1. Mitchell, Alison, “Mayor Given Array of Ideas On Privatizing” New York Times, January 9, 1994, A21Google Scholar.

26. Rudolph W. Giuliani, Reengineering Municipal Services, 1994–2001: Mayor's Management Report Fiscal 2001 Supplement, The City of New York, 267–269.

27. Agreement between The Central Park Conservancy and City of New York Parks & Recreation (February 11, 1998), 2. Unpublished contract in author's possession.

28. Only those costs and expenses of performing these activities are included in the computation of the $5 million. Costs and expenses attributable to the corporate or fundraising offices and, City- or Parks-originated contributions to the CPC in excess of $100,000 are excluded.

29. Richard Gilder, “Set the Parks Free” City Journal 7.4 (1997).

30. The fact that the park is not exchanged via a market mechanism, but via a privately negotiated contract, does not imperil its theoretical specification as a commodity. Commodities may be (and have been) exchanged via various mediums throughout history.

31. In many capitalist commodity-producing entities, such distributive decisions are made by a board of directors.

32. The CPC does not make many of these distributions which are those more common of an equity-issuing (publicly-held) capitalist. This does not jeopardize its theoretical status as a capitalist, however. The class approach deployed here allows capitalists to be differentiated according to the sets of distributions they make in order to reproduce the class processes they host.

33. These production costs (outlays on constant and variable capital) are separate from distributional outlays, as well as, outlays on general support staff, overhead, and fundraising operations.

34. Author's calculations based on the Central Park Conservancy's Financial Statement and Schedules, 1998–2003. Unpublished copies in author's possession.

35. Harden, Blaine, “Neighbors Give Central Park a Wealthy Glow” New York Times, November 22, 1999, A1Google Scholar.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Seley, John E. and Wolpert, Julian, New York City's Non-profit Sector (New York, 2002), xxiGoogle Scholar.

39. Seley and Wolpert, New York City's Non-profit Sector, 43–44. All statistics in this paragraph are from this source.

40. It is worth noting that given the fact that sixty-eight percent of the city's nonprofits (excluding the health and supporting organizations segments) have annual expenditures of $500,000 or less, the $7 million annual average increase in donations the CPC captured following the park's privatization could have supported several nonprofits.

41. This is surprising given that nonprofits are acutely aware of this type of competition. See, Association of Fundraising Professionals, Association of Fundraising Professionals, State of Fundraising Report 2003 (Alexandria, VA, 2003)Google Scholar.

42. Rose-Ackerman, Susan, “Charitable Giving and ‘Excessive’ Fundraising” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 97 (1982): 193–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rose-Ackerman's use of the word “charities” is synonymous with nonprofits.

43. Inkyung Cha, William Neilson, “Is Competition Among Charities Bad?” Working Paper Series No. 0116, (Texas A&M University, 2001), 1.

44. Ibid., 9

45. Weisbrod, Burton A., ed., To Profit or Not to Profit? (Cambridge, 1998), 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. There is evidence that declines in donations lead some non-profits to rely more heavily on government sources of revenue. See Seley and Wolpert, New York City's Non-profit Sector, 62–63.

47. The growing commercialism of the non-profit sector has become an increasing focus of academic attention over the past decade. See Weisbrod, To Profit or Not.

48. Weisbrod, To Profit or Not, 5.

49. While space constraints preclude elaboration here, it can also be shown formally that the CPC's fundraising may reduce the city's capitalist sector's rate of accumulation. See, Cooke, Oliver, “Rethinking Municipal Privatization: A Marxian Class Analysis of the Privatization of New York City's Central Park” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2005)Google Scholar.

50. The fact that the CPC Board includes six public officials does not redress this issue. These officials' dual positions as “keepers of Central Park” and public servants necessarily renders their board memberships problematic. Moreover, public officials have long been leery of antagonizing the CPC (See Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and its People, 520). Interestingly, the CPC Board has debated whether it should redistribute some of the wealth Central Park captures throughout the city's park system. See Harden, “Neighbors Give Central Park a Wealthy Glow.”

51. Central Park Conservancy, “The Right to Rally and the Great Lawn” Central Park Conservancy website, July, 18, 2004.

52. Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and its People, 525.

53. U.S. Department of Labor, National Commission on Employment Policy (NCEP), The long-term implications of privatization (Washington, D.C., 1989)Google Scholar. Cited in Clark, Christi, Johnson, Robin A., and Mercer, James L., “Impact of Privatization and Managed Competition on Public Employees” in Local Government Innovation, eds., Johnson, Robin A. and Walzer, Normal, (Westport, CT, 2000), 191–211Google Scholar.

54. Barbara Stevens, “Delivering Municipal Services Efficiently: A Comparison of Municipal and Private Service Delivery” (Washington, D.C., 1984). Cited in Clark, Johnson, and Mercer, Local Government Innovation, 195.

55. Pendleton, Andrew, “What impact has privatization had on pay and employment? A review of the UK experience” Industrial Relations (Canada) 52 (1997), 554–583CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56. Bishop, M., Kay, J., “Privatization in the UK: Deregulatory Reform and Public Enterprise Performance,” in Privatization: A Global Perspective, ed., Ramanadham, V., (London, 1993)Google Scholar. Cited in Pendleton, “What impact has privatization had on pay and employment?”

57. Haskel, J., Szymanski, S., “Privatization and the Labour Market: Facts, Theory and Evidence” in Privatization and Economic Performance, eds., Bishop, M., Kay, J., Mayer, C. (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar. Cited in Pendleton, “What impact has privatization had on pay and employment?”

58. Walsh, Kieron and Davis, Howard, Competition and Service: The Impact of the Local Government Act, 1988 (London, 1993)Google Scholar.

59. These conditions are set out in, Oliver Cooke, “Are Progressive Privatizations Possible?” Paper presented at Critical Perspectives on Third World Development Conference, New School for Social Research, New York, NY, October 29, 2004.

60. Since 1992, trade unions in China have aggressively established economic enterprises. By the end of 1998, Chinese trade unions had launched 65,000 economic entities (See: http://www.acftu.org.cn/volindus.htm). Of course, the question of whether or not these enterprises qualify as democratic ones is an empirical question. In any event, if these enterprises exhibit noncapitalist class processes then the much ballyhooed rise of China might well owe much to noncapitalist enterprise formation. There would be deep irony could it be shown that China's march toward capitalism had simultaneously spurred the growth of such enterprises. The idea of union-supported or financed democratic enterprises (one perhaps comprised of former municipal employees) that could produce public goods and services following their privatization, deserves more careful consideration. Remarkably, Andy Stern, the president of Services Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest union in the United States, recently commented, “Maybe privatization isn't such a terrible thing for people.” See, Matt Bai, “The New Boss” New York Times Sunday Magazine January 30, 2005. Stern's comment might be true if and only if privatizations could be harnessed to pursue democratic enterprise formation. Another example can be found in the creation of worker cooperatives and microenterprises. Such enterprises have often been used to help absorb workers laid off as a result of the privatization of former state enterprises. As in the Chinese case, the critical question regarding such cooperatives and microenterprises is, “what type of class processes do they exhibit?” The point is that the creation of cooperatives and microenterprises (as byproducts of privatization processes) may afford opportunities for establishing noncapitalist enterprises.