p Monopoly profits and various government measures to encourage investment, e.g., rapid amortisation, tax privileges granted to companies when they instal new plant, etc., 180 have led to an enormous accumulation of money capital and “self-financing” of industrial monopolies.

p Before the outbreak of war in Vietnam, between 1960 and 1964 the US industrial corporations’ proper assets accounted for 76 per cent of their gross investment. This fact gave rise to claims that the ties between the industrial and banking monopolies were slackening. Actually, however, the fusion of banking and industrial monopolies has always been typical of 20th-century capitalism. The most conclusive example of this is the role played by the banks in the formation of monopoly conglomerates. In the recent wave of mergers and take-overs, the monopolies that came out on top have been those connected with the biggest banks. “ Operation take-over" usually consists in buying up shares, and to do that one must have large sums of ready money. As a matter of fact, each conglomerate has its “own private bank" at its core. In the struggle of giants, one monopoly falls victim to another, whose bank has acquired the controlling interest.

p Lenin’s teaching on finance capital as the merger of bank capital with industrial capital is now being confirmed on an even larger scale. The tiny number of centres of finance capital testifies to the stronger domination of the financial oligarchy in the imperialist countries.

p Marx established that with the concentration of production capital as property separates from capital as a function. The independent individual capitalist becomes a shareholder in a big concern, while the financial oligarchy disposes of other people’s capital as if it were their own. Lenin wrote that “imperialism, or the domination of finance capital, is that highest stage of capitalism in which this separation reaches vast proportions".  [180•1 

p The well-known US electrical engineering monopoly, General Electric, had a mere 2,900 shareholders in 1900, 51,882 in 1928, and 534,970 in 1969. Another monopoly, American Telephone and Telegraph, had 7,535, 454,596, and 3,110,074 shareholders in 1900, 1928 and 1969 respectively. The total number of shareholders of the largest US monopoly corporations whose stock is circulated at the New York Stock Exchange amounted to 8,630,000 in 1956, increasing to 26,500,000 in 1969. The number of joint-stock companies also increased, and so did their share in the economy.

p These figures illustrate what both Marx and Lenin said about associated forms of capital being dominant under developed capitalism in contrast to the dominance of private capital in the last century. Lenin observed that “scattered capitalists are transformed into a single collective capitalist".  [181•1  As capitalist production and labour became socialised on a gigantic scale, the structure of capitalist property altered as well. Describing the joint-stock companies, Marx wrote that capital “is here directly endowed with the form of social capital (capital of directly associated individuals) as distinct from private capital, and its undertakings assume the form of social undertakings as distinct from private undertakings".  [181•2 

p In relation to individual private property, share capital is collective capitalist property. But in relation to public property, it is the private property of associated capitalists. Although it expresses a higher degree of socialisation, state ownership in capitalist countries is still as much a form of capitalist ownership as joint-stock company ownership. Engels wrote: “But the transformation, either into jointstock companies [and trusts], or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalist nature of the productive forces."  [181•3  The nature of state ownership corresponds with the class nature of the state itself.

p Despite the assertions of some petty-bourgeois economists to the contrary, the dominance of joint-stock property which Marx sometimes called social capitalist property to distinguish it from individual private property, certainly has nothing in common with socialism. “Socialism is inconceivable unless the proletariat is the ruler of the state. This also is ABC."  [181•4  The prevalence of shared ownership implies that numerous individual capitalists are being ousted by a few collective capitalists, and so, “instead of overcoming the antithesis between the character of wealth as social and as private wealth, the stock companies merely develop it in a new form".  [181•5 

p Displacement of individual capitalist ownership by that 182 of joint-stock companies and the mushroom growth of the number of shareholders has given rise to bourgeois theories of the “diffusion of capitalist property”, “ democratisation of capital”, and “people’s capitalism”. These apologetic theories are a revival of conceptions old enough for Lenin to have commented on. He wrote: “The ‘democratisation’ of the ownership of shares, from which the bourgeois sophists and opportunist so-called ‘Social-Democrats’ expect (or say that they expect) the ’democratisation of capital’, the strengthening of the role and significance of small-scale production, etc., is, in fact, one of the ways of increasing the power of the financial oligarchy."  [182•1 

p According to available data, 90 per cent of the US population held no shares in 1965. Despite the fact that the monopolies resorted to semi-compulsory methods, seeking, for political reasons, to distribute their shares among their personnel, only 2.7 per cent of workers held shares. A mere 0.3 per cent of the farmers had shares. Equally revealing is the distribution of shares among the shareholders. According to Professor Lampman of the United States, one per cent of the US population own 76 per cent of all shares. In 1964, in Britain 75 per cent of all shares quoted in the share markets were held by 1.7 per cent of the adult population. These data proved so damning to the theories of “democratisation of capital" and “people’s capitalism" that they have been completely discarded by now, like bad coin.

p In the imperialist countries, control of the monopoly corporations, and, by implication, economic and political control, is in the hands of the financial oligarchy, which heads the modern bourgeoisie and consists of the biggest capitalists —the millionaires and billionaires.

p F. Lundberg, an American researcher, writes that the US financial oligarchy, which controls the 750 largest industrial, banking, insurance and trading monopolies, consists of 5,000 people. These are mostly directors, presidents and vice-presidents of monopoly corporations. In 1968, there were 200,000 people in the United States whose private fortunes exceeded a million dollars apiece; they made up 0.25 per cent of the working population. In 1960, 5 per cent of the British taxpayers owned 75 per cent of all private wealth.

p These facts, like the data on the distribution of shares, conclusively demonstrate the great aggravation of the conflict between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation under modern state-monopoly capitalism.

p The financial oligarchy is connected with the rest of the bourgeoisie through monopoly shares. R. Lampman’s study showed that already in 1953 there were 1,659,000 people in the United States with fortunes larger than 60,000 dollars. The group of capitalists with fortunes of 60,000 to 100,000 dollars accounted for 20-23 per cent of shares. The next group —those with fortunes of 100,000 to 300,000 dollars accounted for 25-35 per cent of shares. The larger the fortune, the greater the extent to which it consists of corporation shares. With personal fortunes of over a million dollars, this proportion exceeds 60 per cent.

The fact that the financial oligarchy is economically linked with the rest of the bourgeoisie does not prevent differences and clashes inside the class, but such differences spring from competition for high profit. The modern financial oligarchy does not form a distinct class. It is connected by a thousand ties with all other capitalists, forming together with them the modern capitalist class. The present time gives added materiality to Lenin’s words that the enormous dimensions of finance capital have brought forth “an extraordinarily dense and widespread network of relationships and connections which subordinates not only the small and medium, but also the very small capitalists and small masters".  [183•1  Instead of becoming stronger, the economic positions of the petty and middle bourgeoisie have weakened during the past half-century, while the role of wage labour, constituting at present an absolute majority of the imperialist countries’ population, has increased.