>"Capital" in the sense we usually mean it - factory machinery and the financing to buy it - wasn't really a thing in agrarian capitalism or mercantile capitali

>"Capital" in the sense we usually mean it - factory machinery and the financing to buy it - wasn't really a thing in agrarian capitalism or mercantile capitalism. This issue of capitalism changing its form, and capital not being same in one period as another, is only caused by your own interpretation and definition of "capitalism" which doesn't seem to be accepted by anyone else. In political economy and political philosophy circles, capital is defined as a social relation, not a thing. The things it does refer to concretize the relation, but they are not the relation itself. The idea that capital is "whatever gives one an advantage" seems so general that it cannot be sensibly used to talk about the concrete historical birth of capitalism and its expansion. A more accurate view, keeping with history, is that capital tends to subsume things, so now we talk about "human capital" or "information capital".