IBM was in the news recently for laying off more Americans and hiring more electronic migrants. Some writer pontificated that the workers had no right to complain.

They were just employees.

Such drivel, this idea that IBM owes the workers nothing. What IBM executives think they own, what the shareholders think they own, and what they actually own are two very different things.

It is very easy to calculate. Consider, tomorrow morning, no one employed by IBM, no one more than a few levels below vice-presidents, shows up for work? What happens the next day? Or the days after that?

What’s left? Aside from computer rooms, network cables, empty factories and panicked clients? Whatever it is, it’s worth only a small fraction of the current share price.

That’s not what Wall Street wants to hear. It’s not what the IBM board wants to hear. And it’s not what the executives at IBM want to hear.

But there it is. Take away the “employees” and the company ceases to exist.

A company is not a thing like a kitchen chair or a lawn ornament. The greatest part of most enterprises is intangible. It is the skills, the knowledge, the drive, the production, the creation, and the work. That intangible wholly owned by those disdainfully known as employees.

That label hides a truth, for they are not employees nor even workers, but producers. Even better, creators. They create the company and do it each day by walking in the door and bringing the company to life.

So I ask again: What is left if the producers leave IBM? If the producers don’t producer? If the creators don’t create? If they walk away?

A corpse. That’s what you call a body when the life is gone. And then you bury the thing.

A century ago, Carnegie and his ilk fought a war to deprive those who create from the rewards of their creation. Unfortunately, Carnegie won. Modern capitalism was born. Carnegie’s minions wrote the history books. His cultural descendants keep the lie alive.

Perhaps it was inevitable. The monarchies had fallen. Slavery was out of fashion. And the world had room for only so many warlords. The inveterate parasites had to find another way to feed. The key for all of them is, and always has been, to find a way to take from those who create and give to those who, well, don’t create.

Does that seem harsh? Perhaps. But there remain these questions:

What is a company?

And if it disappears when the producers stop and the creators cease, then how can someone else possibly own it?