To Own Is Not Enough

«A capitalist is not someone who simply owns machines, but someone who owns machines, deploys those machines in a production process, hires owners of labour power to use them, directs the process by which the machines are used to produce things, and appropriates the profits from the use of those machines. A collector of machines is not, by virtue of owning those machines, a capitalist. To count as a class relation it is therefore not sufficient that there be unequal rights and powers over the sheer possession of a resource. There must also be unequal rights and powers over the appropriation of the results of the use of that resource.»

Erik Olin Wright