There’s been a good deal of debate recently in libertarian circles about the word capitalism. Is it compatible with libertarianism? A synonym for it? Should we use it? For example:

• Voice of Radical Dissent podcast, Episode 109: “Capitalism; an interview with Walter Block and Brad Spangler”
• Walter Block: Say ‘Yes’ to Capitalism and ‘Capitalism’ Yesterday, ‘Capitalism’ Today, ‘Capitalism’ Tomorrow, ‘Capitalism’ Forever
• Sheldon Richman: Block Says Yes to Capitalism
• Alexander Benjamin Ramiresonty, Against Block Against ‘Libertarians Against Capitalism’
• Sheldon Richman at FFF: “Capitalism” vs. the Free Market (Youtube video)
• Kevin Carson, Socialism: A Perfectly Good Word Rehabilitated
• Bryan Caplan, Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?
• Kinsella, Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?; The new libertarianism: anti-capitalist and socialist; or: I prefer Hazlitt’s “Cooperatism”; “Socialism,” the Tea Partiers, and Slate’s Political Gabfest

As some of my posts linked above indicate, I find this debate extremely frustrating because the nature of the debate is rarely made clear. In that respect it is reminiscent of the interminable debates over gay marriage and thick v. thin libertarianism. On the gay marriage issue, it’s often the case that the arguments of gay marriage opponents boils down to opposition to the word marriage being used by the state in the caption in the statute, though they usually won’t come clean and admit it. In my view (not shared by all my co-bloggers at TLS), the thick-thin paradigm adds nothing of substance and is used to equivocate–engaging in non-rigorous argument about what “libertarianism” “is” semantically and then using this to argue for one’s particular substantive positions; it’s like trying to prove that marriage implies slavery or wife-ownership because the word “my” is used in “my wife.”

The libertarian opponents of “capitalism” often engage in equivocation, I believe. If challenged they say they are just opposed to the word, as if this is a semantic or maybe tactical/strategic issue. But because of confused leftist beliefs, many of them are actually opposed to aspects of the underlying social order that we anarcho-libertarians refer to as (non-corporatist) “capitalism”–the modern industrial free market. They oppose “absentee ownership” (see my post A Critique of Mutualist Occupancy), favor localism and self-sufficiency, are leery of the division and specialization of labor, buy into Marxian ideas about “alienation” and “labor”; they accuse standard libertarians of putting undue stress on “capital” while they do the same with “labor” and “the workers”; some flirt with crankish Georgist ideas, and so on. Some of the opponents of the word “capitalism” seem to have genuine strategical or even semantic concerns, such as Sheldon Richman, instead preferring the term “free market.” But some of them seem to oppose even this term–preferring instead the bizarre and annoying term “freed market,” or outright opposing the word “market” in the phrase “free market” (see Markets vs Free Markets). …

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