ABSTRACT
The issue of the close relationship of capital and ownership has been repeatedly touched on in our preceding discussion of the various non economic forms of capital. These hints, naturally, testify perhaps to the underlying connection of ownership and capital as a component of the economy. Joan Robinson argued that the meaning of capital lay in the property owned by the capitalist class, which confers on capitalists the legal right and economic authority to take a share of the surplus created by the production process. L. Coser's discussion also brings out the sociological content of Georg Simmel's work, which as a matter of fact is a masterpiece in economic sociology: Economic exchange, Simmel argues, can best be understood as a form of social interaction. When monetary transactions replace earlier forms of barter, significant changes occur in the forms of interaction between social actors. People can be measured in an objective and absolute way entering a relationship with them represents.
