We should stop using the words "Capitalism", "Free Market" and "Anarchy".

Miscellaneous General
1

Namely, because of what the meaning is of these words that statists associate with. I feel like the meanings of these words have been corrupted, and often scare people away when we use them in a conversation with statists. “Free Market” and “Capitalism” are too associated with “State capitalism”. I was even in a debate with my grandfather recently who said that “the drug cartels and drug lords are the only ones who WANT free enterprise”, and he ignored that drug trade and the black market IS a result of statism, NOT the free market.

I think there’s a problem with people in their 80’s and 90’s from the last generation who were living lower standards of living the middle class is today, because if you notice a lot of elderly and older people dislike free enterprise and think business is evil for some reason. However, this is the context people seem to associate free market with.

Whenever someone says “free market” people think of how the insurance industry is corrupt, how the pharma’s are corrupt, how walmart is corrupt, and how the finanical crisis was caused by businessman who were corrupt.

Its ssoo hard to ease people off of those ideas when thats what their High School economics and social studies teachers tell them.

We even have comedy sketches, sitcoms, cartoons, and movies that make fun of evil business, rich people, and capitalism. The Oblongs is a comedy cartoon about how rich people apparently are the problems for all socioeconomic impoverishment. Family Guy has a lot of episodes about some corrupt corporation.

Hell, even conterculture movements like the hippies, punks, and goths think that Capitalism is pro-culture and that its core is selfish profit and exploitation. Which pisses me off when a band rants about how Capitalism is evil at some concert, but has no damn clue what the hell he is talking about, but thinks he is shouting at poverty and injustices when he attacks Capitalism.

I think Stefan Molyneux was correct, “Statism is dead”. As a scientifical theory dies out, a new one comes up. So as Statism dies, socialism and fascism will seem like more new appealing ideals.

The problem is in a Democracy, has excersized some form of Newspeak here, and as Noam Chomsky states “Democracy works accordingly to how informed is the public”. So what we have is a public informed and scared public taught to fear the truth from the beginning to the end of their education. We then have intellectuals and pundits, the “elite class” of society if you will who we find convincing because of their credability when they attack “freedom” of any kind, and make it seem like regulation or new legislation is a good idea.

With a society being kept informed as it is by pundits, colummnists, intellectuals, an education system, and the media. I have concluded that these words are dangerous, and we should instead embrace the term “Voluntarism” instead of Anarchy or Capitalism, and say “mutual exchange” isntead of free markets.

2

Molyneux sounds like an idiot to proclaim this. It may be “dead” within the social circles many people here & he may frequent, but it is very much on-going in reality.

It would be far more accurate to say that the accumlation of necessary data to challenge statism is ocurring at a more exponetial rate, as more fields of science cross polinate & more individuals become more intertwined with their research, to the point where memetically, the ideas of anarchists, libertarians & so forth no longer sound so absurd because they can now be tested, challenged, observed, etc. with more knowledge.

The embodiment of this exponetial rate could be currently the Internet, which is why it is so important for a New Dark Age (for Information) to occur, for the state to perpetuate itself.

3

Thats not why he said it was dying. He said as a sciencifical theory dies, a new one is usually accepted. In this case the new theory being embraced would be socialism and fascism. Namely, the US Federal debt is what is bringing about its decline. I garuntee you, the popular opinion will be MORE taxes to help curve the federal debt, while deficit spending (if they say it will help the poor) is fine.

4

Popular opinion is not the same as scientific theory. Rationalization will occur no matter how much scientific theory is given to dissprove irrational beleifs.

Imagine the people under Weimar Inflation finding more solace because scientific theory dissproved inflation, or because the NS promises to better their situation on their campaign, probably under other rationalizations that might’ve sounded scientific.

What Molyneux has said is, as usual, nothing really profoundly original that couldn’t have been observed before without his help.

Technically, we’ve disproven Statism quite frequently by other means, & by no means is that done in a scientific way (where, once in for all, in cold hard, non-political fact, thestatist framework is proven defective), but even if it was achieved, it’s not going to instantly make people believe otherwise.

Remember Galileo? Yea…

5

lol! Abandon the words Free Market and Anarchy! Why? Free Markets, Anarchy and Laissez-Faire are beautiful words. Now I kinda understand Capitalism, because it isn’t the best word for expressing ourselves, but we definitly should not abandon it either. If we abandon our words we shall have no way of expressing our ideas. We’d be far more easy to strawman. These ideas are always gonna be unpopular and misunderstood by some people; we just have convince 'em. It’s not just the words they’re misunderstanding it’s the ideas. We have to fight with all the words we’ve got! We need more words not less. We can definity use words like “Voluntarism” and “mutual exchange” as well, but those words don’t really have the power or the grace of free-markets, anarchy and laissez-faire. Abandoning those words would be suicide.

6

“Voluntaryism” is a nice term for slowly easing someone into critical thinking without bringing in preconceived notions, but I wholeheartedly disagree that we should abandon terms like “capitalism” or “free market.” The problem isn’t that the words have bad connotations in and of themselves, but that the meaning behind those words has been distorted by capitalism’s enemies. I think Ayn Rand had the right idea with reclaiming such words and using them as a way to reference that which is heroic and great.

7

I agree with the original poster here, and with the last two posters also.

In convos with regular folks who don’t appreciate the foundational meanings of the words, and are likely to associate them with their corrupted meanings, it is best to use uncorrupted words. So a fresh lexicon will do some good things there.

In convos with folks who DO understand these words (like us! yay!), they work very well because they DO have history, context, depth, and resonance.

8

Most of the people who have recently been opposing the word “capitalism” I deem anti-liberty. Still, “libertarianism” and “capitalism” only have meaning in reference to the anti-human practices of statists. I am ready to cast them all off and live in a free (human) society.

9

I think ‘capitalism’ is a perfectly fine word, and so are ‘the free market’, and so on. I believe the trouble is not with the meaning of the word, but what people think are the consequences of mutual exchange, the free market, and capitalism. People believe the consequences of the free market are indeed a corrupt insurance industry, a corrupt pharma industry, and even a corrupt war-machine. People believe these consequences are all due to a lack of regulation. This means that they believe the markets are too free. This means that there’s no misunderstanding with the meaning of those words, but with the connection with reality. The markets are usually far from free, and of course are they corrupted because they are partly free or because of their regulation? Those are things we have to explain to the public.

10

Capital–ism is named as such for a very important reason.

Those who want to rid of it may not have stopped to consider the fundamental roll that capital plays on the overall wellbeing of an economy. Capital is fundamental and it implies everything libertarians hold dear. We already lost liberalism, why forfeit a perfectly good name when it means precisely what it should, regarding capital and the accumulation there of.

11

We haven’t lost liberalism. Read Hayek’s essay, “Why I’m Not a Conservative.”

I’ve talked to plenty of PolitSci people (virtually all Europeans, however) who associate liberalism with straight market enterprise in the classical liberal way.

Buts that’s because they actually might know history of the word.

Secondly, I agree with filc; Mises in Human Action, when defining Capital with the entreprenuerial process of deciding what are to him as a producer capital goods and what are consumption goods, explained Capitalism is the heart of the market (as thought Gossen, to a lesser extent).

12

"Capital–ism is named as such for a very important reason.

Those who want to rid of it may not have stopped to consider the fundamental roll that capital plays on the overall wellbeing of an economy. Capital is fundamental and it implies everything libertarians hold dear."

Very good point, filc. Thanks.

13

Yes, capital is vital in an economy. Social behavior is vital for a society, too, and perhaps more central to over all wellbeing than even capital. We oppose anti-social behavior, such as murder and theft. Yet this is not a good reason to call libertarianism socialism, is it?

14

And think about this. These are only terms of recent origin in which the effort to hijack and subvert their meaning has happen (by recent I mean the last two hundred years or so). Natural law of the private property kind has been in a semantic battle with Marxists and other statists (Hobbes, Spinoza) for at least 500 years. It’s why it is of importance to not get stuck on superficial names, ie. semantics, and let words in and of themselves determine what is meaningful. The substance of what some people actually mean takes place when truth is valued. This goes for anybody no matter what they are talking about.

15

JAlanKatz, The accumulation of capital implies division of labor and social cooperation. So again, capital–ism implies all of that.

16

There is certainly a time to change the vocabulary when society has co-opted the underlying meanings or definitions. However, I would argue for an attempt at educating the public before changing words that have meant something for decades or longer.

17

The avoidance of anti-social behavior leads immediately to trade, division of labor, and social cooperation. So, again, social-ism implies all that.

18

Cushing, what would you like to educate the public about? How does one find the correct meaning of a term? In the case of capitalism, it originally meant what it means today, and its just a few people who use it to mean free markets. What makes that definition correct?

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"There is certainly a time to change the vocabulary when society has co-opted the underlying meanings or definitions. " (quote link not working with new toolbar?)

Perhaps we should fight fire with fire by co-opting vocabulary that we reject?