I was arguing with a friend about whether a capital class could be tolerated as long as necessities like shelter, healthcare, education, etc are freely available.
One one hand, marx says that class war is inevitable, and the capital class would try to increase their share of profits by pushing into the government.
On the other hand, assuming that there exists a system where the average citizen could reliably access human necessities, can the existence of a parasite capital class be tolerated, as long as they stay away from the above mentioned necessities?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
If capital was weakened to the point that housing, healthcare etc. were fully decommodified and socialized, then there is no reason not to eliminate it completely. Allowing a capitalist class to exist at all poses a threat to the system you mention: the amount of profit to be made from housing and healthcare is too great for capitalists to sit by and let it go untapped. An applicable situation can be seen in countries with universal healthcare today, where there are often repeated attempts to privatise and whittle away at such systems.
This exact argument is what took me from "just take care of everyone and then I don't care what the fuck else you do" to "yeah, capitalism needs to go." Capitalism is a corrosive agent -- as long as it exists it will seek to roll back whatever progress has been made.