In a major revision of economic theory, the author of this study argues that there is an unacknowledged element of surplus concealed in employee compensation. Having identified it with returns to skill over cost, he shows how it increasingly overshadows the returns to capital.

There is a growing literature on America's postcapitalist society, an intellectual tradition that runs from Veblen, its prophet, through Berle and Means to Burnham, Drucker and Galbraith. Its shared thesis is that America's corporations are controlled by a new class of managers and professional, but it cavalierly assumes that capitalists are still the main beneficiaries. The author disputes this assumption. In a major revision of economic theory, the author argues that there is an unacknowledged element of surplus concealed in employee compensation. Having identified it with returns to skill over cost, he shows how today it increasingly overshadows the returns to capital. The political significance of this startling conclusion is that socialists are no more necessary to socialism than is public ownership. Socialism requires only that employers manage the economy and that they siphon off most of the surplus. Although not socialism in ideal terms, the author concedes, managerial socialism is here to stay.

Part 1 Socialism without socialists: unwitting socialists
pragmatic socialists under another name
socialism by default
socialism without illusions. Part 2 Threshold to a new order: the managerial revolution as social revolution
Marxist theory and the managerial revolution
the thorny problem of surplus wages
calculating the surplus concealed in wages. Part 3 Postcapitalist society: surplus wages and the "new class"
managerial socialism as postcapitalist society
possible counterarguments. Part 4 Managerial imperialism: imperialism, the highest state of capitalism
managerial imperialism and the state
the multinational corporation - a case study
America in the new world order. Part 5 The condition of labour: managing labour discontent
political agents of despair
the turning point in managerial unionism
a surplus labour society
three "working classes"
the merger movement
professional unionism. Part 6 What happened to the social question?: the Marxist formulation
why the Marxist formulation lost out
the social question ceases to be class oriented.