The Resurgence of Financial Control: Fact or Fancy?

Abstract

A long three-part article by Robert Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer on "Who Rules the Corporations?" in Socialist Revolution (vol. 1, nos. 4, 5, 6) purports to demonstrate that giant U.S. corporations are controlled by banks and other financial institutions. In order to support this thesis, Fitch and Oppenheimer (henceforth F&O) find it necessary to attack views expressed by Paul Baran and me in Monopoly Capital. We are labeled "Marxist managerialists" and are charged with many grave errors of omission and commission. How large this misguided group is supposed to be is not clear, since James O'Connor is the only other one specifically named as belonging to it; but it seems evident that F&O regard the three of us not as isolated cases but as representatives of a significant theoretical trend which can seriously mislead the American Left. Under the circumstances a detailed reply seems called for.

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