From: "Ed Rocket" <ed_rocket-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: what do we mean when we say capitalism?
Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 11:37:37 -0400


Actually, I think Iain made a very important point when he distinguished 
between capital and private property. Capital in a state capitalist society 
is public property, not private property. What makes capital "capital", and 
what makes capital oppressive, is not whether it is private or public, but 
that in either case workers are dominated and exploited by a separate class, 
whether they be owners or managers or both. What I find particularly 
interesting about this point is that it reveals an important difference 
between the anarchist and marxist views of capital. Marxist theory does tend 
to conflate capital with private property, whereas an anarchist analysis 
would not.

Ed Rocket


>From: Jamal Hannah Reply-To: Jamal Hannah To: Old Goat CC: Liz Highleyman , 
>anarchy-list-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Subject: Re: what do we mean when 
>we say capitalism? Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 17:53:18 -0700 (PDT)
>
>On Thu, 10 May 2001, Old Goat wrote:
>
> > And when I speak of "private property" I guess that could be interpreted 
>as property -- real and chattel -- in my personal, or family, possession 
>which is used as a means of personal subsistence. Although I've yet to be 
>able to figger how you'd *enforce* a no private property edict in an 
>anarchist (voluntary) society.
>
>
>
>Anarchists basicly differentiate "private property" meaning things which 
>the capitalists owns but does not directly use (he hires other people to 
>use them and generate profits for him) from "personal posessions" which 
>people use directly. Private property would be things like land, factories, 
>rental houses, etc. Personal posessions are things like the house you live 
>in, your car, your TV, your VCR, your baseball card collection, etc.
>
>I think the concept of private property collapses once you no longer have a 
>police force to defend it, and once workers realize they dont have to be 
>part of a private property system anymore, which they are forced to put up 
>with now.
>
>- JH
>
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