A new member of the audience has asked me to expand on a previous comment I made where I mentioned in passing the phrase that is the title of this post. I think this warrants some expansion.

When we are talking about Capital we are talking generally about non-trivial means of production, factories and the like. These are things which the owner has no capability to use himself but has rather used the laws of private property to prevent others from using themselves.

The sole reason why any person would ever want to withhold a productive facility from being used freely, is if he wishes to force the people who would work there, to be exploited. What, in effect the Capitalist is doing is preventing the use of the factory which creates the passive coercion necessary for people to accept exploitation. To simplify this example, think of it as a person moving into an oasis and buying up the land the water rests in. That person then gives the people who live around the oasis the choice to either work 16 hours per day for him in the nearby coal mines or die of thirst.

Giving people the freedom to “buy the water” so to speak, is what allows them to exploit other people.

The inequality of this accumulation rises naturally in this situation. Under Capitalism money is power and Capital is the only way to turn money into more money. The more Capital one owns, the more money one makes. And when one has more power over other humans, this is inequality. This inequality is what skews all market exchanges and makes them unfair. Unfair to the benefit of those who have the Capital of course. There is a reason why the poor get poorer and the rich, richer and this is it.

It is this inequality that creates the misery in our society, not the bogeyman of the state or the caricature evil of organized religion. Both of these are toothless if no person in life has power over another person. Take away the state and leave the relations of Capitalism intact and almost immediately, new lords will arise, either through force of arms, or through force of ownership.