Comment by p0pcult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by p0pcult | Hacker News Reader

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You really don't understand what a capitalist is, do you? Fortunately, I have enlisted ChatGPT to help you!

p0pcult: Explain what Karl Marx would tell a five year old a capitalist is

ChatGPT: Karl Marx would tell a five year old that a capitalist is someone who owns a business and makes money by hiring people to work for them and selling the things they make for a profit. The capitalist gets rich, while the workers who make the things only get paid for their time and effort. This is what Karl Marx calls "exploitation."

p0pcult: What is a capitalist?

ChatGPT: Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production, such as factories and businesses, are owned and controlled by private individuals for the purpose of generating profits. In a capitalist system, goods and services are produced and distributed in a market economy, and prices are determined by supply and demand. The goal of a capitalist is to accumulate wealth and capital through ownership and investment in businesses. [Emphasis mine]

Capitalists acquire wealth, passively, by owning things.

> 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".)

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...

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.

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

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