“No nation will put up with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of bonus-mongers”
“No nation will put up with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers”, wrote Frederick Engels over a hundred years ago. He was explaining why he considered full state control of the capitalist economy theoretically plausible but practically unlikely. If “all the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees”, then “the capitalist has no further social function than than of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange”. Today the capitalist class has devised many other ways of siphoning off...