“Capitalism” Is about Freedom, Not Capital

by | Jul 23, 2024

“Why ‘capitalism’? Words have an unfortunate tendency to confuse. Free market capitalism is not really about capital, it is about handing control of the economy from the top to billions of independent consumers, entrepreneurs and workers, and allowing them to make their own decisions about what they think will improve their lives. So careless talk about ‘taking control of capitalism’ actually means that governments take control of citizens.

“But it doesn’t sound like it, does it? One of my intellectual heroes, Deirdre McCloskey, complains that the word capitalism gives the misleading impression that it is about the rule of capital, rather than liberating people to make their own economic decisions, which is really what the free market is about: ‘Capitalism’ is a scientific mistake compressed into a single word, a dramatically misleading coinage by our enemies, and still used by the sadly misled among out friends.’ So why do I use it? Because, no matter what we think of it, and no matter which word we would prefer for a system of private property and free markets, this is the word that has become inextricably linked to it, and if its supporters don’t fill that word with meaning, its opponents will.”

–Johan Norberg, The Capitalist Manifesto, 2023

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

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