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Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

"people who earn wealth from the work of others"

Everbody who has money on the stock market, directly or indirectly, earns wealth from the work of others. But this is not a bad thing, as "the others" also benefit from the capital invested as they otherwise could not produce or earn.

And for sure you have influence even with little stock, by choosing where to invest and where not. And surely there are people with much more influence (money), thats the way it is, if not everbody is forced to have the same, no matter what they do (or their ancestors did)

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As I said in my previous comment, it is easy to twist a definition as you just did, to claim that the penny stock owned by the average Joe is even comparable to the stock controlled by the actual capitalist class.

I think that everyone can understand the difference here, even though the line between proletariat and capitalist class may be a little more blurry than it was 50 years ago.

A good definition is not easy to "twist" (i call it arguing btw), but a blurry, vague and oversimplifying definition like yours of capitalist, is just useless.

You might as well say "rich" and "poor". Which is more fitting and more to the root problem.

I'm just a random person on the internet that read some books on the topic, but a very quick google search would get you to a lot of information about the definition of capital and capitalist class.

The division of the society in capitalist and working class is a well studied topic, it's not like I invented it at the moment.

But your argument about holding penny stocks making people comparable to capitalists makes me think that you're just attempting to mislead instead of keeping a meaningful discussion.

And by the way, rich and poor is a consequence and not the cause.

"The division of the society in capitalist and working class is a well studied topic"

Yes, studied and defined by those who later created a big slavesystem. And I read them, but don't like or agree to their definitions, nor alternatives.

And by the way, " rich and poor is a consequence and not the cause." I think not. So ?

And I also think that creating arbitary classes is not helping the (old) discussion or society at all and rather increases tensions, than solving them. I think history proves me right.

> Yes, studied and defined by those who later created a big slavesystem. And I read them, but don't like or agree to their definitions, nor alternatives.

This is just plain misleading. Marxism/Leninism is not the only school of thought against capitalism, or that distinguishes between proletariat and capitalist class in the capitalist systems.

And I would argue that

1. the "slavesystems" you're talking about (I guess you refer to soviet russia, china and other similar dictatorships) never applyed the Marx theory, but they rather implemented a state capitalism system (IMHO because the idea of dictatorship of proletariat as a means to reach communism is plain stupid).

2. even considering those cases, which I agree were fundamentally flawed and unjust, there's still debate about whether they caused more or less death and suffering than capitalism. I think this answer [0] on Quora gives a good summary of the main points in that regard.

[0] https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-communism-...

1. I have an actual printed out manifest lying around here. It very clearly says dictatorship on many cases. And that there is a ruling party and the to be ruled.

2. I disagree, but this goes too far.

And about those other schools, yes there are nicer formulated ones. But in my opinion, they all go in the same direction. "Rich are evil" "poor are good" "poor must take from the evilrich and then is all good"

1. Have you actually read my comment? I explicitly said that I think that Marxist's view of dictatorship of proletariat as a means to reach communism is fundamentally flawed and wrong.

2. Well you're free to disagree, but the point remains that capitalism is comparable, if not worse, to other systems (namely state capitalism / "communism") in regard to responsibility for deaths and suffering.

About your final sentence, first of all you apparently have no clue of the ideologies you're talking about. Claiming anarchism (for instance, but the same can be said on communalism and many others) is the same of communism in regard of authoritarianism and human rights is plain misleading, as being anti-authoritarian is like the main point of anarchism.

And the point in anti-capitalism is not about being against people who are rich, but being against the fact that they are rich while other people are extremely poor. Nothing against people themselves (I think everyone would be happy to be rich), the problem is that the system is so fundamentally flawed that some few people can own more than billions of other people combined.

I answer here, as he reply button on the deepest level is gone.

"emt02 17 minutes ago [-]

1. Have you actually read my comment? I explicitly said that I think that Marxist's view of dictatorship of proletariat as a means to reach communism is fundamentally flawed and wrong"

Have you read yours?

"1. the "slavesystems" you're talking about (I guess you refer to soviet russia, china and other similar dictatorships) never applyed the Marx theory, but they rather implemented a state capitalism system "

You were refering to Marxism i answered to that.

And I did not.

"Claiming anarchism (for instance, but the same can be said on communalism and many others) is the same of communism in regard of authoritarianism"

By saying "same direction".

But staying on topic, yes in theory anarchy is about anti-authorian. But applied that never happened. I read some history(spain, hungary, etc.) and have quite some first hand experience, with so so called anarchist who act pretty much despotically if things get serious.

And I also can't imagine how you take things away from others (the capitalist) and not act authorian while doing so.

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