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0 pointsrandomdata2y ago0 comments

> Capitalism is entirely about power.

Surely it is people that are entirely about power?

> “Ownership rights” are power.

Perhaps, but capitalism only describes one of many different ways of organizing ownership. It is not about ownership in and of itself. It turns out that we already have a word for ownership: Ownership. We came up with another word, capitalism, because it means something else.

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dragonwriter2y ago· 2 in thread

> > Capitalism is entirely about power.

> Surely it is people that are entirely about power?

Most people are in part interested in power and some people are entirely interested in power, but capitalism is entirely a system engineered for distributing power for the benefit of a particular class.

> Perhaps, but capitalism only describes one of many different ways of organizing ownership.

Capitalism implements (not describes) one particular way of organizing ownership, chosen for the effect it has on the distribution of power in society.

randomdataOP2y ago

> but capitalism is entirely a system engineered for distributing power for the benefit of a particular class.

A previous commenter postulated a hypothetical world where capital only has value when labour is utilizing it. It in no way violated capitalism, but clearly labour holds the power in that world. After all, labour could just not use the capital and then take it from the dumpster after it gets thrown away for being worthless.

It is possible other worlds could see capital that is not dependent on labour and use that to take power, perhaps, but that's beyond the topic of capitalism. Nothing in capitalism says that there must be capital that is utilizable without labour.

> Capitalism implements (not describes) one particular way of organizing ownership

Huh? Words can't implement anything. Only people can implement something.

dragonwriter2y ago

> Huh? Words can’t implement anything.

If we were talking about the word “capitalism”, it would be in quotes; that’s how you make use/mention distinctions in English. “Capitalism” is a word, the thing it describes is capitalism, which is a system, which implements a design that people have made.

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