andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the
> prophets! . . . But what avails lamentation in the
> face of historical necessity? If to classical economy,
> the proletarian is but a machine for the production of
> surplus-value; on the other hand, the capitalist is in
> its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this
> surplus-value into additional capital.
>
> Karl Marx, Capital, vol I, Ch. 24, sec. 3.
>
> But Paris Hilton is a rentier, not a capitalist.
I've never agreed with this division. Rentiers are a subsection of the capitalist class, not another class. They do own capital, and their use of it may always shift. Surely David Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller III wre not in different classes. And surely spouses of active capitalists are part of that class. No analytic power is gained, and some is lost, by making a sharp distinction between rentiers and other capitalists.
Carrol