I think capitalism can be understood as a living entity, a being composed of billions of smaller beings (people), essentially cells. It evolves (legally and through market innovations), has an immune response (police), and grows and reproduces itself (imperialism). The cells are independent life in their own right, but they exist almost wholely within the body of capitalism and the structure of their existence reinforces their participation in the greater whole of capitalism. All complex organisms are composites of smaller organisms and I think it makes sense to reason about capitalism and how to go about changing it or destroying it from this lens.
Capitalism is cancer and it is killing me
It’s called a “system” normally.
I mean sure, but what I was trying to get at was the adaptability and the evolution, along with the active defenses captialism employs.
Writer Charles Stross once commented that if aliens visited the US, they would see a country that had been conquered by corporations and was now living as an occupied territory with a traitor government (boardroom execs) and enforcers (police).
I’m deep and this is 14
And like Quell says, rip open the diseased heart of a corporation and what spills out? People.
I think most people would agree with you but would call it “the economy” since they can’t imagine a non-capitalist economy.
I’m not particularly opposed to calling it the economy, but since I’m starting from the view it should be changed into something else Capitalism fit
I’d say it’s more apt to think of capitalism as a parasite that turns all the functions (as you described them) of an organism into something that induces self-destructive behavior that only serves the short-term goals of the parasite - you know, like Cordyceps fungi.
