Labels are counter-productive. In a democracy, capitalism requires a socially sanctioned infrastructure. The public law must protect private property. If it does not, then capitalism is impossible. That makes such questions as who “owns” the means of production completely irrelevant. “Ownership” is a vague, legal notion. What matters existentially is who has the power to prevent those means from being profitably deployed. Whoever has that power, even if it is wielded entirely by inaction, “owns” the capital, because that person can negotiate terms on which those means will be made useful.

As the old joke goes, once we acknowledge that in a democracy the people determine how the means of production may be deployed and rewarded, we know what kind of girl capitalism is, and we’re just talking price. No binary categories remain, only degrees of “social” interference with laissez-faire. People can label themselves and each other to their hearts’ content, but the struggle remains incremental.