>But in a society where the function of the capitalist has been socialized -
>execs, shareholders, and investment bankers all members of that socialized
>capitalist class, but individual capitalists are relatively rare - it's one
>of the easiest measures we've got of one's position in the hierarchy.
You've talked about this sort of thing before, Doug: the socialization of capital. But what I'm having trouble understanding is why this matters all that much.
There're certainly not as many individual capitalists as there used to be (along the lines of J P Morgan et al., right?), and more people can and do get a share of the capitalist "pie" by owning shares in companies (is this what you mean by "socialization"?). But wouldn't the vast majority of those share-holders get very little out of their stocks, assuming they keep them for dividends? Wouldn't they have to work "9-5" to make ends meet on a regular basis, reinvesting their dividend money in a company or just treating it as some "extra income" for spending? And the vast majority of stocks are still held by a tiny minority of people, right (presumably also getting the lion's share of the money back from purchasing the stocks, through dividends, sale of stock, change in value, etc.)?
(Forgive my ignorance about something this basic, but the few people I know who have stock don't really worry about it all that much (at least, not in front of me), and I don't know how much stock one needs to buy to be able to live independently. Nor do I know how much money one gets from stocks as dividends or whatever.)
So a capitalist today could be like Morgan, but, due to socialization of stock ownership, a "capitalist" could also, theoretically, (and most likely is) be some John/Jane Average who still has to work for a living while owning and receiving income from stock ownership. And this fact has to be accounted for. Is that what you're saying?
If that is the case, then I'm still puzzled why this matters all that much. Isn't it more or less "just" a matter of still trying to convince them ("proletariat stockowners") of their class consciousness vis a vis the independantly wealthy ("capitalist") stockowners? Owning a bit of stock must make this job more difficult but not impossible, surely. (I'm sure I'm understating the matter of difficulty, but there's difficulty and then there's difficulty.)
Todd
_________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com