My body is an object, it is owned by me. The systemic, unidealized process of selling my labor for a wage or other price is not dissimilar to slavery. I cannot sell my labor for a fair price, because my labor cannot be returned to me. I can be coerced into selling my labor by circumstances beyond my control, namely the stigma of joblessness, the risk of homelessness and starvation, the boot of the cop, the IRS agent and the soldier.
Who has a claim on my labor? Every living person has a fraction of a claim as long as they don't put me on their books as an employee.
Mutual aid, not greed or euphemisms for it drive the evolution of the world.
This is a beautiful and generous sentiment.
To do that which is meaningful for many is aspirational and laudable.
One who can make a contribution to every living person is rare and precious.
Capitalism is dying.
One of the risks of the philosophical is that we can lose touch with the broad popular usage of words to which we may ascribe a narrow meaning and purpose.
In the broad sense, capitalism is dying, it is killing, it is wickedness, greed, corruption, selfishness, jealousy and all manner of other wrongs.
In the narrow sense the philosopher might say those were not capitalism, but greed and the corruption inherent in creating and empowering the engine of a government useful for turning against our fellows and coercing what is theirs for our benefit.
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.htmlThat capitalism instead is the pure and noble voluntary exchange for mutual benefit which depends on having some decision authority (capitalism's ownership) over what we each might exchange. To seek a higher mutual affluence through trade.
But this philosopher can only speak with other philosophers who use the same definitions, and those are likely already in agreement about much.
And so broad labels often do not serve us well, and when we use them to attack an argument we unwittingly often engage in making straw men.
We also forget why we argue at all, which is to benefit our common understandings, rather than to defeat a foe. I suspect the only foes I can ever address are the wrong ideas I myself hold. For all I've written, I may never have convinced anyone else of anything. I may like to think I am helping someone else in understanding something, but in honesty admit that is more likely vanity.