The fundamental definition of capitalism is that all means of production are privately owned.

The reason I say that it’s theoretical and hypothetical is that you won’t find any real economies where that’s the case.

When we discuss capitalism, we are discussing existing systems that are based on the capitalist mode of production.

We have no interest in fairy tales.

I’m not sure why you would site “product stratification” as a requirement of capitalism.

I believe you misquoted the text. I apologize if I originally submitted an inaccurate representation of the intended language.

Capitalism produces forces that impose systemic inequity across the population, and also, capitalism would collapse if somehow the inequity were resolved.

Thus, capitalism produces and requires inequity, on a massive scale.

Most modern economic theory does involve marginalization, but probably not the way you think.

We are concerned with facts, not just wishes.

The requirement is just that either consumers have different preference curves or producers have different production abilities.

Marginalization is cohorts of a population being systemically separated, disempowered, and disenfranchised.

Deprivation isn’t a requirement of capitalism either. It’s a basic assumption of economics. The idea is that we have unbounded capacity to consume but bounded capacity to produce.

Again, we discuss reality. Capitalism depends on cohorts of the population lacking access to the more desirable opportunities of employment available to others, thereby becoming forced to accept less undesirable employment. It also depends on most of the population needing to be employed to earn the means of survival. Wealthy business owners require no employment to survive, because they survive from the labor provided by their employees.

Thus, capitalist society is structured by a class disparity between owner and worker, and of further systemic stratification across the working class.

Asserting the intractable necessity of similar stratification for any system represents an argument from ignorance.

difference between Communism and Capitalism is in how they prioritize using limited resources.

The difference is based on control over production. Naturally, if workers control production, then they direct it toward their own interests, as the whole public, not the interests of a narrow cohort of society that has consolidated immense wealth and power.

You can cite a single statistic on food scarcity but the data is very clear that we’re living in an era of unprecedented food excess.

Food scarcity is the degree to which certain cohorts of the population have inadequate or insecure access to food, not the total amount of food with respect to need.

Statistics are easy to find if you search.

If you look at data sets that cover more than a few decades you’ll see strong trends of decreased malnutrition, both within the US and around the world.

Much has improved over time, however, precarity and insecurity have exacerbated by most measures in recent years and decades.

The US subsidizes food production. That’s generally a good thing since it improves food security.

The relationship is weak. Food security depends on stability and equitability of distribution. A society producing enough food to support the population is considered as resilient, but such an achievement is not sufficient to ensure security for the entire population.

Inequities in distribution are harmful to the population, by producing food insecurity.

The US deals with this by having the government buy up excess food at guaranteed minimum prices.

Much food is wasted.

Retailers discard food to keep prices inflated, even as many remain hungry. The practices you are describing, of government making purchases to keep prices stable and also distributing according to need, for households unable to meet the retail price, are not occurring in practice, to any meaningful degree, to address the problems.

In the US, over one in ten are food insecure.