Question about captilism

[bighead631]

is a rich person automtically a captilist


ThanKs :)

[codyvo]

Well if you mean that they are supporting the capitalist economy then yes. Whether they believe in capitalism is a completely differant question, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels were both pretty well off as far as money goes. So they are bourgeois, but this doesn't mean they believe in capitalism.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

That's not according to marxist theory.

A rich person is not automatically a capitalist. And how would you define "rich"? Everything is relative. A pole can be considered tall, but not tall compared to a mountain.


The bourgeois (the capitalist class) is the property-owning class who exploit the labor power of the proletariat (workers).

An example of a capitalist would be an owner of a factory.

The proletariat (workers) are essentially wage workers. They sell their labor power to the capitalist class. This class must sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to produce the goods needed by society.



People who simply support capitalism, are just fans. They can go under the disguise as a liberal, conservative, social democrat, fascist, etc. but all they do is being supporting of capitalism. They do not neccesarily belong to the capitalist class.

[Clarksist]

People who simply support capitalism, are just fans. They can go under the disguise as a liberal, conservative, social democrat, fascist, etc. but all they do is being supporting of capitalism. They do not neccesarily belong to the capitalist class.


Although we all support communism, anarchism, or some left economies... so are we just fans and not actual communists, anarchists, socialists, etc.?

[julianer]

Broadly speaking for a rich person to be a capitalist they have to use their money to invest and gain reward from the investment.

A rich person may just live off their pile of money - they would not be a capitalist though the money will probably have come from capitalist activity in the first place.

Marx defines a cycle where a capitalist's money is transformed into commodities that are then sold and transformed into (more)money.

M->C->M or Money->Commodity->Money in his terminology.