Ever since Marx, the future of capitalism has been fiercely debated. Marx and his followers predicted capitalism will end by violent overthrow, while others prophesied its demise will be the result of collapsing under its own weight. Still others argue that capitalism will not only continue to exist but continue to expand globally. This book takes a distinctively different approach by presenting solid evidence that capitalism has already ended.Corporate statutory law, securities laws, and generally accepted accounting principles have combined to cause the extinction of capitalists. Without capitalists as owners of capital, there can be no capitalism. The book examines the factors that converged to contribute to and hasten the extinction of capitalists, and thus of capitalism as an economic system, in an ironic case of the law of unintended consequences. The very things that were intended to promote, protect, and sustain capitalism are the things that caused its death. It exposes the fallacy that capitalism as an economic system not only continues to exist but is expanding globally. Capitalism is extinct and the social system constructed on capitalism as an economic system cannot be sustained.This is the third in a series examining the relationship of corporate law, property law, economics, accounting, finance, and capitalism. In the first book, "Corporate Law and the Theory of the Firm: Reconstructing Corporations, Shareholders, Directors, Owners, and Investors," I exposed the contradictions between property law, agency law, corporate law, and the theory of the firm. In the second," Economics, Capitalism, and Corporations: Contradictions of Corporate Law, Economics, and the Theory of the Firm," I revealed the contradictions between corporate law and economics with an emphasis on capitalism. In this book, I explore the concept of capital and its ownership, and the relationships between capital, capitalists, and capitalism, and determine that capitalists and capitalism are extinct.Both capitalists and capitalism have been extinct for nearly a century, their extinction caused by politicians, lawyers, and economists through corporate law, accounting, and securities laws which, when combined with the trading of securities on exchanges removed any ownership interest by shareowners in productive capital. Unfortunately, capitalism has never been given a decent burial. In fact, no burial at all. Not even a funeral. Its decayed carcass continues to be displayed in public as if it were still viable much like the movie Weekend at Bernie’s, propped up by rhetoric that has long since lost any real meaning or relevance, but which nevertheless continues to shape economic, political, and social relations
