• aidan@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      From DuckDuckGo:

      1. An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
      1. An economic system based on predominantly private (individual or corporate) investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods and wealth; contrasted with socialism or especially communism, in which the state has the predominant role in the economy.
      1. A socio-economic system based on private property rights, including the private ownership of resources or capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
      1. A socio-economic system based on the abstraction of resources into the form of privately-owned capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
      1. A specific variation or implementation of either such socio-economic system.
      1. An economic system based on private ownership of capital.

      This isn’t necessary for all of them, but from Wikipedia:

      A state is a political entity that regulates society and the population within a territory.

      Slave masters are regulators of population, so they are an actor of the state.

      • rooroo@feddit.org
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        2 months ago

        If I tell you to get the fuck out of my way I also regulate population but I’m not the state. Note that even your definition says ‘a’, not ‘the’.

        Also, and more importantly, enslaved people are seen as property (and thus also as means of production) instead of population. IIRC this goes back to the definition of populace back in Ancient Greece but I can’t be arsed to look it up.