Evil Space Capitalism
Frieza in a suit is super cute. Capitalism itself isn’t evil, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what Frieza does per se — keep in mind that he exists in a monarchy system, so he can throw his weight around in the galaxy.
Capitalism may or may not be evil (I think it’s vile, and inherently exploitative but that’s not really something that is reasonable to discuss like that).
However, it is not as easy to differentiate between a monarchy/feudalistic system and capitalism as you make it out. First of all: Just calling yourself a royal moniker doesn’t change much about the social structures within which you live. If Elon Musk called himself a king or a lord, he wouldn’t be one, he’d still be the capitalist/Paypal nerd. The thing is, though, that the traits of a royal person and a capitalist (in the sense of someone who owns capital, i.e. the means of production of something) overlap to a large extent. What do you think where capital originally comes from? Sure, some people create their wealth from little to nothing, but to a large extent you might want to take a peek at the history of imperialism and conquest (cf. Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital and similar works). Once you own the means of production and you can extract surplus value from people who don’t own such things and who sell you their labor, you can expand and so on and so on.
Getting a bit off topic, my apologies.
To answer the question whether Freisa is a capitalist (again, the social class, no the ideology someone holds), we need to look at two things: Does Friezer live in a society in which the means of production are/can be privately held? And if so, does *he*, personally, own any of them? And the answer is a bit difficult, I think.
What does Frezer and company do for a living? They conquer planets and sell them for profit. As far as I recall, we don’t know to whom he sells them. But we do know that he “delegates” the conquering of planets, i.e. he forces Saiyans to conquer them for him. I would argue that this fulfills both criteria, with an added twist:
-(the weaker argument) He conquers planet to sell to others as means of production. Once you own land, you have something to which you can add labor to create value. This implies a capitalist or proto-capitalist society, somewhat, but not necessarily. It could just be that there are feudal lords and ladies who buy the planets for their collection.
-(the stronger argument) He makes his employees (who may or may not also be enslaved to some extent) perform labor for him. But what means of production does he make them perform the labor on? Not the planets! He doesn’t own them yet! The means of production here is Frisers company, the infrastructure of identifying and selling conquered planets. And it is a sophisticated infrastructure. Remember why Goku was sent to Earth? To conquer it! There is sophisticated planning involved, not a trivial effort!
-(the weird argument) But also Big F conquers planets himself. So he is not just a capitalist but also a laborer in his capitalist company. Of course, capitalists generally don’t just idle, they gotta do a lot of things in order to keep the machine that extracts value from laborer running. So maybe it’s not weird after all.
Funny, I started writing this thinking that “Eh, Frezer is a space feudal lord, so more of a proto-capitalist at best” but I guess I changed my stance. Freez is a capitalist.
