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.
they literally can't help themselves. they have to go after everything - must, in fact - because at some point, there's so little profit to be extracted that they're really doing it from each other. the existence of the capitalist class is predicated on their continued capacity to extract profit, i.e. infinite growth. Marx called this the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. when the choices are to steal from other billionaires and to steal from societal welfare programs, which do you think they're going to go with? this is why we point to the imperialism of social democratic societies - that's where their capital has redirected their extraction.
but eventually, as is happening right now, you run out of other people's money. and when that happens, they don't hesitate to rob each other, rupturing the class during periods of intense political unrest.
capital is antithetical to a society that takes care of its population and that doesn't resort to imperialism.