>Doug:
>Almost no one has a controlling interest in a large corporation of
>any consequence.
>
>%%%%%
>
>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).
Let me rephrase that - there's almost no corporation of any consequence in which identifiable individuals have a controlling interest.
>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.
>Most Fortune 500-scale firms are owned by millions
>of shareholders, few with single shareholders even approaching even
>5% of the total.
>
>%%%%
>
>CB: The "few" are the capitalists, and capitalists are few.
What few? Few refers to corporations, not individuals who are capitalists.
>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.
Lemme ask you - who controls AT&T? IBM? JPMorgan Chase?
>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.
But the CEO of IBM doesn't "control" it - he could be fired on a vote of the board. And the board can (though not easily) be replaced on a vote of the shareholders. The CEO of IBM looks like a capitalist in some ways, but he doesn't own a very large block of stock.
>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.
Dunno about confound, but it sure complicates it.
Doug