Henwood: where are the capitalists?

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is a snippet from an exchange on Henwood's list at:
http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0201/0636.html

Although I have gotten used to this fellow's wholesale retreat from
Marxism, there is something about this that makes me want to plotz,
as they say in Italian. This guy, who only 5 years ago was widely
regarded as the next Paul Sweezy or Harry Magdoff, is now repeating
things I heard in high-school in the 1950s about "shareholder
capitalism" but he appears to be wrapping it in Hardt-Negri rhetoric
now. How he manages to continue to pull the wool over the eyes of
smart people at Socialist Register, etc. amazes me. Well, maybe after
that recent exchange with Colin "Kenyan capitalism" Leys, maybe I
shouldn't be so surprised.

----

Charles Brown:
>The capitalist class is a very small group of people relative to the
>total population. The few that do have the controlling interests in
>big corps are the capitalists.

Most stock is held by institutional investors - pension funds and
mutual funds. Are the portfolio managers the capitalists then? But
they're just the hired agents of the fund managers. The fund managers
are the hired agents of the ultimate beneficiaries. It's the Wall
Street branch of Empire, where power doesn't reside at a known
address.

--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 01/09/2002

Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org



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