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by claudiawerner 2695 days ago
I believe what GP is trying to say is that capitalism necessarily creates such an element, since they view it as a class structure society.
1 comments

I believe that's what they are saying, too. I think it's flat-out wrong.

If you and I are both working stiffs, and we both have $50 left at the end of the month, and you buy some beer, and I buy a used sewing machine so I can take sewing jobs in the evening, then I'm a capitalist and you aren't. That doesn't make us of different classes, though, (except that I may be mentally at a different place than you are).

>and I buy a used sewing machine so I can take sewing jobs in the evening, then I'm a capitalist and you aren't

I don't think that's true. In the traditional schema (for its faults and advantages), a capitalist is someone who both owns capital and employs wage labour. If you hired people to work on your sewing machine and kept their produce, that would likely make you a capitalist. At the end of the day, these examples don't work well to illustrate the notion of capitalism as a social phenomenon, rather than one involving two individuals who buy beer.