Capitalism is not a system for the development of material wealth–however distributed–but rather of ideational wealth, of ideas. The “labor” of the Capitalist is thinking. Bill Gates invented Windows. These ideas lead to greater wealth through qualitative change in the means of production, with the important caveat that the wealth not be redistributed through money creation.
What Marx argued, as I understand it, is that Capitalism was a system wherein the productive labor of workers was converted into Capital, which was then reinvested in the system, in a spiral in which the gap between “have’s”, and “have not’s” (Alinsky’s terms) steadily increased. In his understanding the Capitalist provided nothing but money.
For that reason, his economic system was falsified by the emergence of a middle class, and by the steady enrichment of “the workers”. What happened was ideas were converted into de facto Capital, since doing something better is the same as doing more of it. Moreover, anyone can have an idea. Thus, anyone can create “capital” from scratch, at least if they can get funded.
Thus workers become Capitalists in two ways: first they can have ideas that convert to money. Second, they could save money, which is reinvested, either directly, or through saving it in a bank. Many wealthy men started with an idea and savings: Ross Perot, for example.
This process has been greatly disrupted by the “flexible currency” Keynes called for, as well as through his very clever and thoroughly disingenuous–even sinister–defamation of savings, and encouragement of debt. His thought process was that if you don’t save money, you have to borrow it. If the government, then, can control that borrowing process, they own you. He tried to get the Fed moved directly under the control of the US government–which is how it works everywhere else–but failed. He did create the IMF and World Bank, though, and my sense is that that system has been used to create and support dictators and economic dependency throughout the world, and that they have a plan for us too.
That’s enough for now. Few thoughts.