As right-wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh loves to note, words mean things. What they mean isn’t always obvious, of course. Meanings change over time. Gaps between usage and reality are open to exploitation and abuse. One key task of any movement for change is to close those gaps — to help people accurately identify words with the phenomena they actually describe.
The Pew Research Center’s recent polling on public response to the words “capitalism” and “socialism” is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the frame of reference from which Pew itself poses the questions.
In an overview article on the polling, Pew asserts that “The recent Occupy Wall Street protests have focused public attention on what organizers see as the excesses of America’s free market system, but perceptions of capitalism — and even of socialism — have changed little since early 2010 despite the recent tumult.”
Do you see what they smuggled in there?
From Pew’s perspective, “excesses” are a matter of opinion … but the idea that America has a “free market system” is objective fact. And implicit in the questions is conflation of that “free market system” with “capitalism.”
Within the libertarian political movement, considerable debate continues over that conflation.
Most “right-libertarians” see free markets and capitalism as the same thing … and America’s un-free markets as therefore not capitalist at all. An interesting sub-species of “right-libertarian,” dubbed the “vulgar libertarian” by my C4SS colleague Kevin Carson, compounds the conflation by defending non-free-market entities like corporations as if they were free market, and therefore “capitalist,” entities.
Most “left-libertarians” see free markets and capitalism as not only not the same thing, but incompatible … and America, as a capitalist nation, as inherently non-free-market. The left-libertarian critique of capitalist entities such as corporations centers around their symbiotic relations with the state, through which they gain privilege and protection at the expense of freedom in the market around them.
The signal contribution of the Occupy movement with respect to this issue is that it’s closing the obvious perceptual gap in favor of the left-libertarian claim, at the expense of state involvement of any type in the economy (and therefore at the expense of the state, period).
Occupiers have come together from virtually every point of the political compass. Market anarchists, state socialists, you name it, they’re involved. What differentiates this movement from others in terms of direction is its internal dynamic — its dialectic, if you will.
Because no ideological faction has succeeded in bringing the movement under its control, its real function has become exposing (and thereby, sooner or later, collapsing) the apparent contradiction between the reality of actually existing capitalism and the perception of that capitalism as a “free market.”
If Occupy succeeds at nothing else — if the innovative tactical approaches they’ve pioneered come to nought, if a new wave of state repression sweeps them from the field as an organized force, if the stigmergic networking strategy that’s thus far kept them one step ahead of attempts to make them irrelevant fails them at some point (only to surely be taken up by others) — they’ve already given the world a great gift.
That gift is closure of a deadly perceptual gap, closure which will shape and re-shape global society in the years and decades to come.
Citations to this article:
- Thomas L. Knapp, Mic check: I see what you did there, Hernando [Florida] Today, 12/31/11
I sincerely hope that you are correct (closing the perceptual gap) and that the left-libertarian claim comes to be understood more commonly.
The conflation of capitalism and free market has always troubled me. I guess, from the reaction I usually get when attempting to differentiate for some who (I perceive) have internalized the contradiction, it is too much effort for some people.
So, while it is troubling enough that thinking people can struggle with the difference, it occurs to me that the real problem is that most people won't actually argue about it, preferring to identify with one side or the other and accepting any 'package deal' that includes the position they have decide to favor. (favor as opposed to reach through investigation and thought).
This reminds me of a quote (Leonard Reid – can't remember where I found this)
"The quality and influence of an idea, Ortega saw, was not so much in the idea as in a man's relation to it. Has he made the idea his own, or merely inherited it? … The man born into a culture confident of its knowledge is in danger of becoming a barbarian."
If I were in a self-congratulatory mood, I would say, I'm glad to be in the thinking middle and not on either extreme end of the spectrum, although I have been called extreme, radical and crazy by some.
Stuck in the middle… not really, stuck in the end game of a feckless and lazy TV (barbarian) society, unfortunately.
Glad I stopped in before work this morning.
Rich
Rich, Glad you stopped in too!
The historical evidence is clear. "Capitalism" has always been – if not a creature of the state exactly – at least so intertwined with it as to be virtually indistinguishable! Many "right-libertarians" take pride at being "economic historians" if not outright economists, so how they overlook this is totally bewildering.
Rocky, it is not bewildering. First, most of them have internalized the conflation, unable to treat 'capitalism' and 'free market' as being distinctive and antagonistic concepts. Most of them don't do it because they are trying to deceive others or themselves, or to cover up some atrocity or another. Mostly, with the rank and file, it is simple ignorance. Ignorance, willful or otherwise, is at least partially pardonable. They deserve pity, patience, and education.
Second, you have those who have a stake in this conflation; namely, the plutocrats who hide behind Spencerian rhetoric, while feeding at the public trough. This, of course, being to the detriment of Herbert Spencer and any other proxy for libertarian thought. It also deceives the public; the upper class has always needed the state to maintain its position. Therefore, any anti-state rhetoric emanating from them is pure shit. They deserve to be condemned, not for what they espouse, but for their hypocrisy in espousing it. For their selective quotations.
But, as left-libertarians emphasize, because capitalism and free markets are not the same, it means that opposing capitalism is not the same as opposing markets-or even property and exchange. Markets and property may be a necessary part of capitalism, but it is not sufficient by itself.
I have been a libertarian for 30+ years, (having discovered FEE in my 20's) but I confess I'm confused by this statement: "Most left-libertarians see free markets and capitalism as not only not the same thing, but incompatible."
I am apparently among the ignorant who presume that they are one and the same thing. If historically capitalism has been intertwined with the state, which I don't doubt, then I would say we've never seen pure capitalism, just as we've never seen purely free markets.
If someone is going to re-educate me, I'd appreciate the new definition of capitalism.
akaGaGa,
Thackeray coined the term "capitalism" to refer to a "mixed," state-regulated industrial economy.
Marx popularized the term as referring to the stage of his theory of history which comes after mercantilism and before the revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and ultimately communism.
There's always been a tendency on the right to conflate "capitalism" with "free markets," but it's really only in the late 20th century, and especially in the post-WWII right-libertarian movement, that the conflation has been a real article of faith.
Which work did Thackeray articulate or coined this word? Was it Vanity Fair?
It was The Newcomes.
*finds it on Gutenberg, downloads it* Thank you.
Where 'capitalism' is a description of an enterprise creating a material product or measurable service, and finding investors to fund the building of said enterprise and then repaying them with a part of the proceeds rather than just paying off the loans and cutting them loose … it has a valid meaning. Unfortunately, that "conflation" Tom references has led to it encompass "enterprises" consisting of nothing more than mere manipulation of paper (the entire banking "industry" as well as the majority of the stock market?), and even outright fraud (those bundled bad mortgages being only the most recent and obvious example). In addition, within the 'corporatist' culture, it has become far more an arm of government collusion (subsidy, bailout, etc.) in the name of promoting "proper business conduct." As a result, using the term to mean anything remotely related to free exchange of goods and services is just … well, BULLSHIT!
Amen to that, though that more positive definition is recent as well. Really, historically, it always had that meaning-policy and economy by and for the capitalists. Corporations, by their nature, are arms of the state-I mean, who approves their charters?