I appreciate where this thread is headed, but I think this is so much more complicated than it accounts for. https://twitter.com/NylaTheMusical/status/1254499747160821763

For one, "capitalist" has a specific meaning. Capitalists are people who own the means of production, thereby alienating laborers from the value created by their own work.

Capitalist does not simply mean "has some money."

A person, for example, who averages $150k/year via employment and is able to gift their children a few tens of thousands of dollars may be doing better than many, but is not a capitalist. Quite far from a capitalist.

One of the successes of our lack of class consciousness and capitalist hegemony is that we've learned to obfuscate "having money" with being a "capitalist," deflated what it means to "have money" and shift focus away from our true enemy.

We see people who make just into the six-figures, who may pass down some tens of thousands of dollars to their children, as the cause of income and wealth inequality and that frankly is just completely false.

Being an anti-capitalist in a capitalist society of course breeds incredible cognitive dissonance and in some ways may even demand making choices that seem antithetical to your belief system.

For example, saving money.

I see wanting to/being able to gift children with money in a same way. I save money. Not because I believe in capitalism or disparity. But because capitalism exists and our social safety net is trash.

Should we eradicate capitalism and my need for savings becomes obsolete? GREAT! That is the goal! But if we don't, I have to survive. Having savings helps me do that.

Similarly, passing down whatever coins I can stash away will help my child survive.

This became way more longwinded than intended, lol. But yeah. People with a little bit more money than other people aren't inherently capitalists. Bargaining for survival by saving and passing along money isn't inherently pro-capitalism.

Now two other things we can talk about another day:
- How having a little more money than others can make people more sympathetic to capitalists and a risk to the movement
- How we can make individual survival and supporting community intertwined rather than opposing goals