Words have meaning based on usage. If I ask for a glass of water and you give me bleach, it won’t really matter whether you think the two are synonymous–I’m still going to have a bad time. This is why I appealed to the layperson’s usage in the comment above. Your definition of ‘capitalist’ certainly doesn’t track any academic usage, but it also doesn’t track the general usage of the term.
But now I’m stressing the terminological point too much which is really secondary to what the post is about. The goal is to note the fundamental difference between people who need to work for a living and people who can live on the profit from their investment & capital.
What are you rambling about? There’s two definitions to the word and both are commonly used:
Def 1:
someone who supports capitalism (= an economic and political system in which property, business, and industry are controlled by private owners rather than by the state, with the purpose of making a profit):
Def 2:
someone who has a large amount of money invested (= given hoping to get more back) in business:
Fair enough. The reasonable assumption is that the dictionary tracks the colloquial usage. So although the layperson’s usage is contradictory in some cases (e.g., “the slave was a capitalist” or “the capitalist was a communist”) this is more an indication of the ambiguity of natural language. Just like we can use the word “literally” to mean figuratively, we can refer to a slave as a capitalist. This is a rare case in which pointing to a dictionary does resolve a dispute. So I’ll concede your point about the dual-meanings of the word “capitalist”.
This is still not the main idea, however, as evidenced by the question “Do you have to work to live?” So let’s circle back to your first comment. When you argue that, “You can be both a capitalist and a worker.” this is not using the term capitalist in the same way as the post. In other words, if we concede your point that there are two ways to understand “capitalist”, then your original comment is not addressing the claim at issue.
When you argue that, “You can be both a capitalist and a worker.” this is not using the term capitalist in the same way as the post. In other words, if we concede your point that there are two ways to understand “capitalist”, then your original comment is not addressing the claim at issue.
Reasonable point. The way I see it is this. A capitalist, in the sense that it’s meant in the meme and my statement, implies that somebody has capital to invest. This isn’t necessarily tied to billionaires. A lot of working class people invest their money in hopes of making more. A lot of working class parents and grandparents put their lives savings into a rental properties to help them during their retirement. Most main street businesses are owned by locals. A good chunk of the stock market is owned by small investors. Obviously, these aren’t going to have the impact of a Bezos or Zuckerburg type of money, but they still count. These are examples of working class people who are also capitalists.
These are examples of working class people who are also capitalists.
They are capitalists in the sense that they believe in capitalism. But they are not capitalists in the sense that the post is using (i.e., a part of the capitalist class).
Members of the working class sell their labor in order to gain money and buy the necessities of life. Those in the capitalist class buy labor in order to see a profit on the money they already have. The worker lives on their labor while the capitalist lives on their profits. The idea that someone is in the capitalist class based on a minimal investment in the stock market ignores the fact that they must continue to sell their labor in order to survive. Similarly, Jeff Bezos can can work hard as the CEO of Amazon, but that does not make him working class. It makes him a “worker” in the weak sense that he decides to work, but that’s not what’s at issue in the post.
To be fair, most people who disagree with the ideology behind the post are not aware of the class analysis and so will default to the weaker use of the terms. (“Everyone can just choose to be a capitalist or a worker!”) But the question “Do you work for a living?” is an indication that we’re invoking deeply entrenched class distinctions. Typing this out, I realize the people who upvote the post already know all this, which gives the illusion that everything I’ve written above is immediately obvious.
But this is only true if you accept the Marxist interpretation of labor, class, and economics. I don’t accept the Marxist analysis as a valid one because the ideology itself is both outdated and flawed (both in theory and practice).
Like I agree with the general notion that oligarchs are a problem, but I don’t agree with the Marxist notion that labor is the source of all value in an economy (it isn’t) or that the solution is some form of a planned economy which has been shown to not be in effective historically.
It’s as if words can have more than one meaning
Words have meaning based on usage. If I ask for a glass of water and you give me bleach, it won’t really matter whether you think the two are synonymous–I’m still going to have a bad time. This is why I appealed to the layperson’s usage in the comment above. Your definition of ‘capitalist’ certainly doesn’t track any academic usage, but it also doesn’t track the general usage of the term.
But now I’m stressing the terminological point too much which is really secondary to what the post is about. The goal is to note the fundamental difference between people who need to work for a living and people who can live on the profit from their investment & capital.
What are you rambling about? There’s two definitions to the word and both are commonly used:
Def 1:
Def 2:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/capitalist
Fair enough. The reasonable assumption is that the dictionary tracks the colloquial usage. So although the layperson’s usage is contradictory in some cases (e.g., “the slave was a capitalist” or “the capitalist was a communist”) this is more an indication of the ambiguity of natural language. Just like we can use the word “literally” to mean figuratively, we can refer to a slave as a capitalist. This is a rare case in which pointing to a dictionary does resolve a dispute. So I’ll concede your point about the dual-meanings of the word “capitalist”.
This is still not the main idea, however, as evidenced by the question “Do you have to work to live?” So let’s circle back to your first comment. When you argue that, “You can be both a capitalist and a worker.” this is not using the term capitalist in the same way as the post. In other words, if we concede your point that there are two ways to understand “capitalist”, then your original comment is not addressing the claim at issue.
Reasonable point. The way I see it is this. A capitalist, in the sense that it’s meant in the meme and my statement, implies that somebody has capital to invest. This isn’t necessarily tied to billionaires. A lot of working class people invest their money in hopes of making more. A lot of working class parents and grandparents put their lives savings into a rental properties to help them during their retirement. Most main street businesses are owned by locals. A good chunk of the stock market is owned by small investors. Obviously, these aren’t going to have the impact of a Bezos or Zuckerburg type of money, but they still count. These are examples of working class people who are also capitalists.
They are capitalists in the sense that they believe in capitalism. But they are not capitalists in the sense that the post is using (i.e., a part of the capitalist class).
Members of the working class sell their labor in order to gain money and buy the necessities of life. Those in the capitalist class buy labor in order to see a profit on the money they already have. The worker lives on their labor while the capitalist lives on their profits. The idea that someone is in the capitalist class based on a minimal investment in the stock market ignores the fact that they must continue to sell their labor in order to survive. Similarly, Jeff Bezos can can work hard as the CEO of Amazon, but that does not make him working class. It makes him a “worker” in the weak sense that he decides to work, but that’s not what’s at issue in the post.
To be fair, most people who disagree with the ideology behind the post are not aware of the class analysis and so will default to the weaker use of the terms. (“Everyone can just choose to be a capitalist or a worker!”) But the question “Do you work for a living?” is an indication that we’re invoking deeply entrenched class distinctions. Typing this out, I realize the people who upvote the post already know all this, which gives the illusion that everything I’ve written above is immediately obvious.
But this is only true if you accept the Marxist interpretation of labor, class, and economics. I don’t accept the Marxist analysis as a valid one because the ideology itself is both outdated and flawed (both in theory and practice).
Like I agree with the general notion that oligarchs are a problem, but I don’t agree with the Marxist notion that labor is the source of all value in an economy (it isn’t) or that the solution is some form of a planned economy which has been shown to not be in effective historically.