The article aims at tracking the trajectory of the human capital theory in its original society, the United States. By identifying trends present in American social thinking, markedly the one oriented at first to organization of industrial labor through experiences carried out by Frederick Taylor and, later, by theorizing about a new concept of property emerging in the process of organization of large stock companies, the theory of human capital is placed within the field of solving American capitalism's major dilemma, namely the institutionalization of a classless society.
social thinking; liberalism; property relations; Taylorism; human capital