The Political Economy Analysis of Enron: A Leftist Perspective

In the arena of political economy, most works employ the Right stance to analyze the Enron scandal. Therefore, they focus on the subjects such as corporate governance and legislation reform but don’t inspect the flaws in our modern producing system. This kind of methods, however, neglect the fact that Enron scandal had embodied defects in capitalist system and turned out to be a disaster to social life. In order to avoid this limitation and to get a better realization of the Enron scandal in a more comprehensive social context, this thesis employs a leftist stance. nron which is locating in the capitalist producing system must reflect the basic attribute of capitalism. Specifically, for the sake of corporation’s existence, Enron have to struggle to earn the profits. When its industry profit cannot satisfy the growth requirement, Enron turn to rely on financial accumulation. But financial investment is a highly risky business; there is no guarantee to get profit from financial investment. When the bad fortune does happen, the existence of company would be at stake. If a corporation faces such a plight, the only way to live longer is to cheat. These transformation stages are exactly what Enron had experienced. And the final ending for Enron is to go bankrupt. In order to avoid this disastrous pattern of economic development, the available alternative might be bring the Keynesian economics back in; or, in a leftist point of view, a more radical way of doing this is to totally change the producing system from capitalism to socialism, which would produce according to need without breaking the economic equilibrium. Then the goal of creating a stable social order can be achieved.