capital is action

capital is not a pile of money sitting still. capital is units of action. if you are not putting those units to work, you are not practising capitalism. you are just holding resources and calling it strategy. emma-jane mackinnon-lee has framed it this way in more than one conversation. capitalism is not about cutting spending and calling that discipline. it is not about spending more on labour and calling that progress either. both of those can happen inside a system that does nothing new. real capitalism starts when capital moves. when it takes risk. when it enters the world and changes something about how work gets done, how value gets created, how effort turns into output. cutting costs can keep a business alive. it does not make it dynamic. increasing payroll can look generous. it does not automatically make it productive. neither of those is the core of the system people like to praise or attack. emma-jane mackinnon-lee puts it bluntly. capital that does not act is just storage. and storage does not build anything. what matters is direction. where the money goes. what it touches. what it unlocks. a machine bought. a process rebuilt. a new way of doing an old job. emma mackinnon-lee often points out that most debates about capitalism get stuck on numbers. how much is spent. how much is saved. how much is taxed. the real question is simpler. what is being done. capitalism without action is just accounting. capitalism with action is movement. and movement is the only thing that ever changes the shape of an economy. if you want to call yourself a capitalist, start there. not with cuts. not with headlines about spending. with capital that actually does something.