ABSTRACT
Beginning in the 1930s, the argument was put forth that industrial societies had come to be characterized by a sharp separation between the owners of industrial capital and those who managed the corporation’s affairs. This argument, the separation of ownership and control thesis, came to be taken as axiomatic over the next 30 or 40 years. The argument was especially important because it implied, when it did not say so directly, that capitalists no longer exerted a direct influence on the economy. This influence was instead exerted by a special class of business managers. Capitalists had given way to managers, and the economy these managers were running could no longer be adequately described as a capitalist one. In this selection, Maurice Zeitlin displays considerable skepticism about this argument. He suggests that despite the formal separation of ownership and control, capitalists may still be highly entangled in corporate decision-making. He suggests that we need to examine the concept of control much more carefully; it cannot be adequately captured if we simply think of it in terms of formal bureaucratic authority.
