Sociology Student Writes to Salient

In the last issue of your gorgeous (ahem) newspaper, a certain letter referred to a painting on level 2 of Rankine Brown. The scene was described as "a sadistic capitalist beating the proletariat with a whip". I feel this is a gross abuse of Marxist terminology, as a capitalist is described in this philosophy as a person controlling capital (i.e. money). In this picture, the guys with the boot administered to them are the ones with the money.

Therefore it would seem far more reasonable to say the proletariat were beating the capitalists — if indeed the painting was representing Marxist conflict. It isn't, wither, because the original dispute depicted was a moral, as opposed to a political or economic one.