As Marx sets out, there are legitimate wages for management, but these are quite different to profit. Marx gives the example of an orchestra. The conductor of the orchestra does not play an instrument, but their role is necessary in ensuring that all those that do play instruments do so in a harmonious manner. The role of the “functioning capitalist” is precisely of this nature. It is to bring together, in an efficient manner, all of the means of production, and coordinate the production process. As Marx details in Capital III, in large-scale, socialised capital, it represents the separation and distinction between capital as function and capital as property.
The functioning capitalist does not own the capital. Either they are employed, as a professional manager, by a private capitalist, who does own the capital, or, in the case of socialised capital, be it a cooperative or joint stock company, the capital is owned by the company itself, as a legal entity, i.e. it is collectively owned by the associated producers within the company at the time, and the functioning capitalist is just another member of the company, performing the specific role of coordination and supervision, like the orchestra conductor. In fact, as this socialised capital assumes mammoth proportions it is necessary to have not just one or a few such individuals in a company, but a growing army of such managers administrators and technicians.
They are, as Marx and Engels describe, increasingly drawn from the ranks of the working-class, which itself requires an expansion of free public education. The result is that these functioning capitalists not only are paid just a wage for their labour-power, but this wage is frequently lower than that of a skilled manual worker. This role of the functioning capitalist, as Marx notes, in relation to the large-scale, socialised capital, has to be distinguished from that of the directors, placed above them by the shareholders, whose role is not any such function, but is to directly represent the interests of shareholders as creditors of the company, rather then the interests of the company itself. These directors are not paid a wage for the supply of their labour-power, but, like with the shareholders they represent, simply leach from the company's profit. The shareholders leach in the form of interest/dividends, and their directors, as well as often being, also, shareholders, assign to themselves a portion of profit whilst labelling it salary.
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