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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.