I've got to get back to playing in java. But... Some points I won't be able to defend today..
``Threats are responded to by agents, not by abstractions...''
Yes I am elading the differance between capital firms as active agents in the real economic world, and Capital as a class and historical `force'.
However, to get Hegelian about it, the former is a material manifestation of the latter. It is only a matter of more precise epistemology that is at stake. The corrected procedure of providing material arguments for material actors, and more general or abstract, perhaps more logical arguments for more abstract entities, doesn't add much.
Ugly but logical proof: When all the members of a class are dead, there is no class.
(Technical correction. There remains the null class composed of one element, the no-longer-an-active-member element.)
The point remains that both Capital and capitalists (I treat them as fractals, the same all the way down) are always seeking domains, methods, transactions, aspects of human society and its processes of dynamic reproduction to apprehend, manage, and control in order to extract profit, and in order to maintain their, its own power position as elite members and as the Class of power. So then both the class and its members are highly attuned to any form of human action that in principle escapes potential control, or in fact threatens any part of their immanent control. They are snake oil salesmen and control freaks, both as an abstraction and as their own natural pig selves.
``Capital has never had a monopoly of the English language.''
This is a great metaphor, and why I tried to use it.
Capital and capitalists most definitely do exercise a vast monopoly control on the English language, both in the large and in detail. And they are definitely trying to extend that control through developments in software technology. Dictionaries, textbooks, cd's, internet web pages, editing systems, layouts, word processors, newspapers, books, and practically the entire desktop is one giant production and distribution system of and by the English language---right down to the pixilated images of the characters that compose it, and the complex programming that creates those character images [Postscript (TM) Adobe, TrueType (TM) Microsoft, etc]
I would go so far as to say that it is almost impossible to function socially in English, without using some material means of expression that isn't dominated by capital and capitalists. This control was one of their very first achievements, and remains one of their finest. Gutenberg didn't print God's words for free, and the old tightwad Protestant still doesn't. (Except his radical cousin the Spinozist, Projek Gutenberg)
Anyway, the control of the language is one of the most critical social relations or domains of all. That is exactly why the production and distribution of free or do-it-yourself software to use for written communication posses a threat to the lesser enterprisers like Gates and the greater `Free' Enterprise system itself.
Try this. While writing your answer, think of the number of times some capitalist's cash register goes `cling' during the activities you must perform to answer my post. Well your computer of course. But also your word processor, your e-mail system, your browser, your modem connection, your phone line, your isp gateway to the big highway, finally somewhere over in Jordan's Mail system, then out again to the rest of us clinging and pinging along its merry way. The cash registers of Capital big and small are adding `value' to their pockets all the way over to my house.
Noticed that many publishers routinely require manuscript submissions be formated in MSWord, specifically. If you look through various publisher web pages they usually have a submission guidelines tag somewhere. If you go there and read their guidelines, you will see how far the evil Gates has penetrated into the means of production of English.
Gotta go...
CG