I hate to defend Red Deathy, but it is unavoidable.What is a class? It is an arbitrary set of things. Is it completely without meaning? No. A class is formed through the application of a rule. Those things bound by that rule fall within that class; those that do not, are not part of that class.
Also, there is a tendency to a 'fuzziness' in classes. The class of birds, for example, would be bound by rules such as 'has a beak' and 'flies'. Penguins do not fly, but they have enough 'birdness' to be considered part of the class of birds.
Capitalists fall within the class of 'those that engage in speculation', 'those that employ labor to produce wealth, hoping to profit from the exchange', and so forth. What socialists apparently want to abolish is this 'trade'. The idea is to abolish capitalism, i.e. to make impossible the rules that allows for a set of capitalist activities/behaviors/people to exist. The new socialists see trade as a form of competition, an adversarial relationship that is detrimental to society. For example:
A female has access to breeding rights. A male desires these. In a marriage (in the feminist sense), males and females come to an arrangement that is not based on economics. They, in a sense, 'love' each other. In a capitalist system, the male acquires wealth, then trades this for services rendered. Prostitution is a more 'capitalist' arrangement, and is the basis of the feminist argument against 'bourgeouis' marriage (male earner/female breeder).
I, as a capitalist, think the argument is bogus, not on the basis of class being meaningless, but on the idea that people act altruistically. The arrangement will always be capitalistic, no matter how well it might be disguised as something else. 'Love' is a product of exceptionally satisfied traders, no more. See?
Rand explains this better. You should wade through her sometime.
