Capitalists acquire capital and, in a capitalist system, acquire power over others through doing so.
Laborers generate capital (among other forms of value), but capitalists, by virtue of the power they exercise within capitalism, capture what labor generates.
Laborers generate no capital. They sell services to capitalists who are the ones generating the capital. A person who works may also be a capitalist, who invests their surplus income into building a business, which is a form of capital.
You are simply wrong.
how is what they said incorrect?
There isn't a way that it is incorrect. It just isn't. It is like asking "how is it incorrect to say Wubble Bubble Jibble Quibble." It is a bunch of words placed together to form nonsense. He didn't give any reasons to support any of what he said.
nope
>There isn't a way that it is incorrect. It just isn't. It is like asking "how is it incorrect to say Wubble Bubble Jibble Quibble." It is a bunch of words placed together to form nonsense. He didn't give any reasons to support any of what he said.
well it's not his problem you don't know what the words mean. what he said is simply objective reality - your "argument" is essentially identical to disagreeing with someone saying "apples are not oranges" because you don't know what an apple or orange is and the person didn't give any reasons to show that apples are not oranges
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
or is that also just a "bunch of words placed together to form nonsense" like everything else you don't understand?
It is an element of the original description of capitalism in which the system got its name (and it is the central element for which the system is named.)
(That description happens to be contained in a socialist critique of capitalism as an actual existing system, but the particular element described is not the cornerstone of socialism, which is, after all, a prescriptive system, and not merely a critique of capitalism. It is the cornerstone of capitalism as an actual existing system, though.)
So yes it is a cornerstone of socialism to falsely claim that (evil, greedy, immoral) "capitalists" exist, who "acquire capital" and in doing so "acquire power" as opposed to the (noble and virtuous) workers who are actually the ones that generate all the value, but who suffer at the hands of the evil greedy capitalists who exploit them and steal all that value.
Somehow we're meant to believe that despite these noble and virtuous workers generating all the value and far-outnumbering the evil, greedy capitalists, that the fact they haven't revolted and changed the system is because they're so oppressed and powerless (even though apparently they generate all value? what?).
It's just an incoherent mess of ideological nonsense. It puts people into two categories, even though actually most people are in both categories. Everyone with retirement savings (vast majority of people) is a "capitalist" and everyone with a job (vast majority of people) is a "worker".
No, its not, and the “not a system” you describe is neither what we call “capitalism”, nor anything that has ever existed. Restrictions and limits on trade exist in all real-world economic systems and conditions. “Capitalism”, is, at root, a particular structure of property rights.
> So yes it is a cornerstone of socialism to falsely claim that (evil, greedy, immoral) "capitalists" exist
People who own capital exist, and I never made the moral claim that you make. (Leaving aside whether it has anything to do with socialism or not.)
> It's just an incoherent mess of ideological nonsense. It puts people into two categories, even though actually most people are in both categories
Actually, the socialist description of the structrue of capitalism does not have two categories; it recognizes a continuum of conditions, in which there are three main broad classes useful for discussion: those whose support is predominantly from renting out labor (proletariat/working class), those whose support has significant contributions from both labor and capital, as by applying their own labor to their own capital, though there are other patterns (petit bourgeois/middle class), and those whose support is predominantly through capital to which rented labor is applied (haut bourgeois/capitalist class).