What's theory in the Marxist tradition, though? Defining what "a capitalist" is first of all (independently of labor), measuring concrete individuals by the resulting definition, and classifying some who "fit" the definition into the "class" -- which are what is demanded by those who wish to ask the question Eric Dorkin mentioned - -- militate against the spirit of Marxist theorizing. Yoshie
OK, but I was talking about class composition. There is actually a lot of interest in this question among diverse groups of marxists. As we have seen in discussions on this list recently, the 'capitalist class' is made up of various elements who act partly in concert with one another and partly in antagonism. This is also true of the working class. The autonomous tradition tracks the continual composition and re-composition of the working class for good reasons, e.g. to show how anti-capitalist struggle is carried out in many different ways and to find ways of supporting these.
When I was a Maoist we used to characterise the ruling class of some country as a class alliance, of, say, the comprador, bureaucratic and national bourgeoisies. That sort of thing still interests me, because as I've said I like to understand these particularities of agency. All this is without going back into the question of composition of the middle class, the political significance of which I alluded to recently. But to take just one interesting example of the ruling class again, that of the 'bourgeois woman'. What class does the wife of the biggest, fattest and baddest capitalist belong to? The 'capitalist class'? Why? Here we come back to theory and class composition in a way that interests me very much, since I'm hoping to complete a text on gender soon. And I welcome whatever help I can get with that.
Tahir