The ‘Corporatisation’ of Shareownership

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After the Second World War, in the 1950s and 1960s, it become fashionable to discuss whether or not capitalism had changed, calling the debate ‘the theory of contemporary capitalism’. What was said was that capitalism had now conquered its crises, that the theme had changed from the business cycle to that of economic growth, that incomes had been equalised and that the ‘affluent society’ had arrived. This argument was popular in Western Europe and Japan as well as in the United States, and what was cited as a major underpinning for the idea that capitalism had changed was the arrival of what was known as ‘people’s capitalism’. In concrete terms, this referred to the fact that shares were widely dispersed and that large numbers of ordinary people had become shareowners and thus capitalists. In Japan, too, through the dissolution of the zaibatsu, a large number of shares had been confiscated from zaibatsu families and from holding companies and released and dispersed into the hands of the masses. The idea was that through the dispersal of shares and the mass of people ecoming capitalists, capitalism itself had changed.