Capitalism is often defined in the popular mind as – accumulation of wealth by any means necessary. This is because this definition describes the reality of living in countries that ‘have a capitalist system.’ It is easy to see why this is objectionable.

The definition of capitalism means that it is important to point out non-capitalist activities masquerading as part of our great capitalist system.

I personally like the term Free Enterprise. I think it is clearly anti-state and implies that I can do what I want with my life and my property, including cooperating with others and giving to charity. It implies capitalism properly defined.

But aside from what I consider its intellectual dishonesty, this strategy, it seems to me, does more than postpone anti-economic prejudices; it implicitly promotes them.

I’m intellectually dishonest because I disagree with Murphy’s and Mises’s definitions and characterizations of capitalism? If only I had attended Mises University! ;-)

When I see Austrians doing serious work on the viability of the corporate form sans state privilege, and when they start using capitalism to denote an economy that doesn’t privilege certain structures of capital aggregation (limited liability, anyone?), I’ll reconsider. But I followed the Kinsella / Quasibill debate, and I think the pro-corporate argument is extremely weak. Until it is strengthened, the corporatist leanings of capitalists are more than enough to turn me off to the term.

I’d say capitalism as a word used to communicate with people to whom we should be reaching out is inextricably tied to patterns of capital structure, accumulation, and calculation that presuppose state intervention. It’s a great luxury that you, I, and the rest of your readers can debate these terms. It’s not a luxury we have when reaching out to form coalitions to crush privilege.

Perhaps the term needs a qualifier, given that it is simply too squishy and comes with so much baggage (talk to the socialists once in a while). Carson and Chomsky both use the term “state capitalism” to denote the current system of privilege.

If we’re going to reclaim a term, I’d rather reclaim socialism, personally – the idea that ownership of capital is intimately tied to the scale of capital involved. Often this is defined as state or collective ownership of the means of production. But only if you think the state is the best realization of the collective (anarchists don’t) and you assume capital must be aggregated to levels that don’t naturally conform to usufruct standards (mutualists, for example, don’t) and you have a preconceived notion of what constitutes advancement and progress that presupposes centralization (for God’s sake, nothing pisses me off about anarcho-capitalists more than this – who is going to respect the corporate identity without state compulsion and regimentation?).

I’m not the most sophisticated economics student, but that would be my personal answer. That is all to say, there are very real reasons we reject capitalism, mostly dealing with the fact that we consider Mises’s opinion to be just another one among many.

Many genuinely pro-free market libertarians promote an ideal form of capitalism that does not actually exist in reality. When they get into promoting their idealized form of capitalism by way of correctly opposing newly proposed state-socialist measures, they often make the mistake of conflating the features and consequences of the currently existing state-capitalist system with a free market, thus unintentionally defending the current anti-free market status quo.

This, I think, has resulted in some considerable confusion.

http://fskrealityguide.blogspot.com/2007/06/communist-manifestos-successful.html

I consider “capitalism” and “free market” to *NOT* be synonyms.

It’s my understanding that THAT is the reason for distancing themselves from the term “capitalism,” not “to conciliate the heirs of the New Left, to tease out of them a more consistent individualism without tripping their anticommercial reflexes.”

And I rather see their point.

I’d wager that when self-described capitalists stop doing that, then the free market anti-capitalists would not have any problem using the “reclaimed” term themselves.

So my hurried late-night opinion of the matter is this: Capitalist thinkers don’t really care who holds capital, so long as they got it fairly; while anti-capitalist thinkers are concerned with creating institutions that give as many people as possible direct access to capital. They want to make owners out of everybody.

And tangentially, I think conciliating with the New Left is quite a laudable goal. There are a whole lot of enthusiastic Obama supporters right now who will end up sorely disappointed…

Peabody: What was Norman Vincent Peale’s favorite work of Austrian-school economics?

Sherman: I don’t know, Mr. Peabody…

Peabody: Why, Bohm-Bawerk’s *Positive* Theory of Capital, of course…

I’ll define a “free market” as a market where nobody has a monopoly on anything. For example, the State has a monopoly on police protection. Therefore, the current system is not a free market.

The important point is that “capitalism” DOES NOT EQUAL “free market”.