Writing in The Times of London, Daniel Finkelstein remembers the business manager of the Beatles, Brian Epstein, and interprets the Beatles as a triumph of capitalism. He also says high tax rates may have caused the band's breakup:
the Beatles are as much a triumph of commerce as of art. They were not merely brilliant musicians fusing avant-garde influences with rhythm and blues music. They were a showbiz act managed by an inspired entrepreneur. They weren't simply class rebels against the Establishment, they were the brilliant product of capitalist enterprise, the early pioneers of globalisation....In his recent book Magical Mystery Tours (a wonderful insider memoir) Bramwell argues that it was penal tax rates that helped to destroy the group's cohesion.
(Link via Mark Perry's Carpe Diem blog.)