[pdonis]

> This is what Karl Marx calls "exploitation."

Karl Marx himself knew he was peddling bullshit; he once told Engels, "I have of course so worded my proposition as to be right either way."

The real tragedy is that several generations of intellectuals swallowed his bullshit hook, line, and sinker, and in the 20th century well north of a hundred million people died as a result. I would hope we have figured out by now that that philosophy doesn't work.

> Capitalists acquire wealth, passively, by owning things.

Then by that definition, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, etc. are not capitalists, because they created things, they didn't just passively sit there and acquire ownership of things that already existed.

(Btw, even ChatGPT appears to get this since, in the very passage you italicized, it talks about "investment".)

[p0pcult]

Yes, he told Engels that in reference to some military maneuvers he suggested the English take, when he was writing as a war correspondent.[1] Not his economic works.

Please, do yourself a favor: stop digging. The hole is only getting deeper.

[1] https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1857/l...

[pdonis]

If you seriously believe that remark described a rhetorical strategy that Marx only used in that one particular context, I think you are the one who needs to stop digging. But obviously we're not going to come to agreement, so I'll bow out at this point.

[uoaei]

Your accusation that Marx conflated rhetoric and analysis is pretty funny, because of how flagrantly you're doing exactly that in this thread.