In 'Economics and Dominant Class', he bemoaned the 'very large differences in the distribution of income' mentioning J E Meade's description of property ownership as 'fantastic'. Describing Britain to be the 'most obvious example' of this inequality, seeing as the richest '1% of the population owned 42% of personal wealth, 5% owned 75% and 10% owned 83%', and America's similar statistics that in 1953, 75% of corporate stock was divided between 1% of adults' (Miliband pp25-26), he attacks any belief in 'People's Capitalism' as invalid due to the fact that this 1% is a 'self-perpetuating oligarchy' entirely inaccessible to most of the population.1 The 'dominant class', he argues, 'uses the state' as a tool to maintain power and wealth through institutions varying from public schools to rights of inheritance.
The fact that 35% of family named companies in the richest five hundred were still owned by the founding family (p29) seems to support the claim that those from wealthy backgrounds have a disproportionately high chance of attaining positions at the top of the wealth pyramid. Even amongst the managerial class in large companies, elitism appeared rife to him, given that '64% of executives of the l00 largest British companies bore that significant hallmark of the upper classes, namely that they attended public schools' (Miliband p35). This, he claimed, proved the existence of the 'dominant class' as a social phenomenon and the inaccessibility of those of a working class background to the higher echelons of society. Seeing as fee paying schools are, by their very nature, accessible to only a small portion of the population through their fees and the family connections required to attend, they are merely another social mechanism to retain Britain's wealth within a select elite.
This evidence can be criticised on several counts.