Capitalism can be defined accurately in different ways depending on context, but industrial-era economists Adam Smith and Karl Marx, who spent their lives analy

Capitalism can be defined accurately in different ways depending on context, but industrial-era economists Adam Smith and Karl Marx, who spent their lives analyzing capitalism, understood it as a matter of political economy. In other words, it is nothing like natural law. It is a political matter. Of the aforementioned experts, Marx was the most critical of capitalism, but most who are unfamiliar would be taken back by the amount of common ground shared between him and Smith. Some basic working class complaints about capitalism in a very economic sense are concisely introduced in this essay: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour... Like most HN readers, Marx believed work is an integral part of a healthy human life. His concern was about the relation of humans with the value they produce. He gave a prescient analysis of what we appear to be experiencing today, in his Theory Of Alienation. See: https://www.marxists.org/subject/alienation/ https://www.marxists.org/subject/alienation/