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Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 02:00:07 -0400
From: tombrown@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Thomas F Brown)
Subject: Re: Marxian Theory: Continuing Validities
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
Message-id: <199710080600.CAA08693@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
>Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production.  

This is way too simple. Some folks require the existence of a market 
system as the rock-bottom minimum, but most also include a market for 
labor as the fundamental qualifier.

If you reduce it all the way down to private ownership of the
means of production, then you are including practically every
society in history that gets more complex than hunting/gathering.
Even many hunter/gatherers have social rules about who owns
the fruits from which trees and so forth.