Capitalism is the right to keep the fruits of one’s labor.
Everything else is some kind of slavery -
- though it might not target a sex, color or creed, and might treat its victims with a softer touch, as in “democratic socialism”, and might seem more civilized than full blown whips, chains, dogs and gulags, work-them-to-the-bone, work-them-til-they-drop, work-them-to-death kind of slavery, it is still slavery.
If the fruits of human labor do not belong to the human performing the labor, then the human performing that labor exists in a state of slavery.
Capitalism isn’t a system, and we don’t need to refer to any outside source or authority to define and understand it. Dollars, euros, pesos are all tokens entitling the owner to trade them for so many units of labor or the products that result from such labor.
Capital is stored labor, and capitalism is the right to own that capital, to keep and use the stored fruits of one’s labors.
Socialism is the soft, seemingly benevolent face of slavery not yet fully formed, infant slavery, slavery yet to come, establishing the nation’s right to the fruits of one’s labors, without complete confiscation, that permits the slave some control over his life and the illusion he isn’t a slave.
Communism is socialism grown up, the confiscation and nationalization of the entire fruits of one’s labor, the nationalization of control over all work, the nationalization of what was abhorrent as a private institution. It is the enslavement of its citizens by the state.
In the early years of the American Republic, its citizens lived in a state of near perfect capitalism. We now live in a state of socialism, growing less soft and benevolent by the year. We are on our way to the cotton fields, thinking we’re not slaves because we still get to choose our hoes.
