1.
Parenti divides owners (capitalists) into persons deriving income from ownership of productive assets (stocks, bonds, property) and deriving profit from others’ labor, as against employees (workers) living off wages or salaries. Owners accumulate wealth through earning surplus value from workers, as against workers selling their labor in order to live.

Example of an owner: A billionaire Amazon shareholder who survives off dividends and gain in stock.
Example of an employee: A warehouse worker at Amazon who earns an hourly wage but owns no part of the company.
2.
Smith argues that value originates in work, not dollars. The “true price” of a product is the quantity of labor that is put into its production, and dollars are only a symbol. This is in line with the labor theory of value, which maintains that the labor of workers rather than capital and not dollars expended accounts for economic value. For example, the value of a smart phone comes from the labor of miners, engineers, and assembly workers, rather than dollars invested in purchasing it.

3.
Heideman argues that class is not merely an identity but rather a structural relationship to production. In contrast to gender or race, class depends on one’s economic position (e.g., owning capital or selling labor). Socialists would view class as a system of exploitation and dependence, not as a cultural identity.
Thoughts: This perspective evokes the means by which class shapes material conditions and relations of power, which are fundamental to resisting oppression. While class may affect identity (e.g., working class unity), reducing class to identity obscures structural power disparities.

4.
Heideman outlines that capitalists and workers are caught in interdependence: Capitalists need workers’ labor to be profitable, and workers need capitalists to work. But this interdependence is not equal capitalists have structural power.
Example: A CEO of technology (capitalist) depends on software engineers (workers) to produce products, but engineers depend on the CEO for wages. If workers organize a union, they can shut down production to bargain for higher wages, using the capitalist’s dependence on their work against him. This interdependence creates fundamental conflict, as compared to static ones like race.