Doug: Almost no one has a controlling interest in a large corporation of any consequence.
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CB: "Almost" being a key word. It is not "no one" who has controlling interest, so it is someone who has a controlling interest ( Justin and Ian will check that logic).
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.
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Most Fortune 500-scale firms are owned by millions of shareholders, few with single shareholders even approaching even 5% of the total.
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CB: The "few" are the capitalists, and capitalists are few.
When you say "owned by millions of shareholders ", you don't mean that the millions control most corporations , do you ? This "ownership" is a legal fiction I'd say.
Seems you are suggesting that organizing the masses of stockholders would be a viable way to control the policies of giant corporations.
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There are some exceptions - the Ford family still has big power over Ford, the Sulzbergers over the NY Times - but not many. So is the U.S. capitalist class made up mainly of individual and family owners of small businesses? Is someone who owns a plastics plant in Tennessee more of a capitalist than the CEO of IBM?
Doug
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CB: Owners of _small_ businesses are by definition petit bourgeoisie, no ? CEO's of corps the size of IBM are a very small number of people. Not much problem including those with the most economic control and power in the capitalist class.
Bottomline on this thread, workers who own some stock don't control the company and are not capitalists. There is very little friction or contradiction in that conception, and the points raised on this thread do not confound the Marxist conception of class in 2002.