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Comment by asu_thomas | Hacker News Reader

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Politics, with a P, may be concerned about power, but capitalism starts with the letter C.

Rights and ownership are defined and maintained by a state. A state is a monopoly on violence, not by right but by power. In other words, power precedes rights and ownership.

Additionally, capitalism is defined by relations to capital, not by relations to mere property. Big difference.

This is not really true. "Power" in a social context proceeds from social relationships. A king only has power if people buy into the idea that he has power. In other words, any power beyond individual brute force is a social construct. Even the idea that the state has a monopoly on violence is a social construct, (and is often not true, even in practice.) So social power depends on the ideas that people in a society hold generally, such as ideas about rights and ownership. So it's often those ideas that define the power relationships in society rather than the other way around.

Wrong. A king only has power insofar as a people exist to buy into the idea that he has power, hence why kings required armies from the start. As we know, kings did not exist prior to farms that needed protection. This is not a coincidence. Only from the circumstances of material preconditions could such divine rights even be imagined, whether it be kings or founders of PayPal.

Materialism is one reason why I believe Marxism is worth defending.

That's revisionist history. A king only has power insofar as a people exist to buy into the idea that he has power, hence why kings required armies from the start. As we know, kings did not exist prior to farms that needed protection. This is not a coincidence. Only from the circumstances of material preconditions could such divine rights even be imagined, whether it be kings or founders of PayPal.

Utter nonsense. Kings and the like could not exist until agricultural societies needed armies to protect them from invasion. Only from within such material circumstances and relations could divine right be wrought on a public imagination, whether it be monarchic kings or founders of PayPal.

And this is why materialism, Marxism or possibly otherwise, is worth defending.

While that may be true, capitalism does not concern itself with power or class or anything like that. It is narrowly focused. It is not some catchall term for anything you happen to observe alongside the ownership rights it speaks to. It's okay to use other words.

But capitalism has consequences. Those consequences are also capitalism, even if they’re not the stated intent.

Capitalism has consequences like math has consequences.

I guess that's true, but what does that really mean in practice? CSAM, at least the digital kind, is a consequence of math. Are we supposed to brush it aside because "Oh, that's okay, it's just math!" or are we supposed to get angry with math and push for a math-less world? What is the takeaway here?

Moreover, while (digital) CSAM is, indeed, a consequence of math, if you see a problem with CSAM, why not just call it as such? Why try to obscure what consequence you encountered by calling every problem that might come from math, math?

By all means, if you think you know what it is then say it.

But those are political matters regardless of the economic system.

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