Excerpt:
. . . capitalism - the word and the concept - was the brainchild of Karl Marx. As well as offering an “-ism” opposite his own -ism, it describes a rigid class society in which one class possesses the means of production, the other nothing except its labor. The latter class is called “The Proletariat” who, as Lenin declared, can lose nothing but its chains when it rises against the oppressor.
This is not the place to argue whether capitalism was the appropriate way to describe certain European societies. The point is that owning things has always been open to Americans. The moment you buy one share of stock, you part-own “means of production,” not to mention owning your home and arriving at your place of work in your own automobile - a very American image.
America never had a proletariat.
In that case, America could not have been a capitalist country.
To the best of my knowledge, no one has redefined capitalism after Marx, and it is inappropriate to use a word whose meaning is different from what the speaker has in mind.
Perhaps what we have in America is best described as a free-enterprise system.
(snip)
- Balint Vazsonyi -
http://balintvazsonyi.org/shns/shns100202.html
“one class possesses the means of production”
Problem with that concept is that ANYONE can owns means of production. Sure, class distinctions seem apparent when talking very large scale production, but the distinction is position on a continuous spectrum and not an either/or. Any prole can start producing with his bare hands, leveraging his work to acquire more, and so produce more. Many a prole has, as a result of hard work, unexpectedly found himself “The Man” while railing against “The Man” along the way.
Those who object to capitalism as class warfare do not understand this.