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This is a very important point. Similar to how most Americans think they are capitalists even if they don't have any capital.


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The United States is a capitalist country. If you don't have capital, you're screwed.

You don't "become" capitalist, a capitalist has capital, and if you don't have any capital, you're not a capitalist.

> There are a lot more people who don't own capital than there are people who do

This attitude explains, at least in part, why they live in a place with the shoddy rule of law and a deficiency of capital. (The track record of revolutions which violently re-allocate property is terrible, mostly for the people who originally lacked capital, moreso in the last century.)


It always amazes me how ignorant most of the so called "capitalists" (who generally control little to no actual capital) are. Thanks for showing me at least someone paid attention in economics (or maybe history) class.

Precisely this message. The issue is that there is a strong incentive for capitalists to behave in a certain way due to their material conditions, capital being truly international requires those with international capital interests. The capitalists (or non-capitalists for that matter) do not see Russian, American, Japanese etc., they see a representative of a certain commodity or class of commodities. This is commodity fetishism, in which money acquires a supernatural magical quality within the circuit of capital.

All capitalist countries appease the rich. It's how capitalism works. Capital means wealth.

In capitalism, capital de tend to concentrate.

The capital that most Americans "own" is managed by a very small class of capital managers at elite financial institutions. The point is, who controls the levers of power, and whose interest are they operating them in? The distinction you're making isn't much more than pedantry.

It should be considered remarkable that Marx's observations need only minor adaptations after one hundred fifty fucking years.


Capitalism is global and the number of labourers in the world with retirement savings that could be considered as capital is a tiny minority

But they do need capital.

If you don't bother to mention how they attained the capital, you could be describing feudalism as well!

Realize the most important aspect of capitalism is the ability to accumulate capital, to a fundamentally infinite end because any limits will be overturned by the controllers of the capital.


Access to capital in a capitalist economy isn't important?

Everyone has capital, if only their minds & muscles - therefore all have liberty, and are capitalists.

Capital is not underappreciated - it is hidden by owners. Because their power and wealth comes from control of a scarce, hidden resource. If everyone had access to capital, nobody would be “on top”, and that’s unacceptable to the owning classes.

Capital != labor.

Wait, you are saying that people with more capital have more power under capitalism?

I think it's something else. After all, people with large amounts of capital having attention and power is not new; the world's dominant economic and political system has been grounded in an ideology of capital for at least half a century, and in the Anglo world far longer.

>capital is _real_, that it is a tangible "thing" which humanity has now produced enough of, and not a _measurement_ of how authority flows.

This is a really good point.

You could also look at it as a measure of "spare" wealth.


In other words, the problem isn't capitalism, it is that capital often ends up in the hands of those least equipped to wield it well.
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