Is it time to stop using the word capitalism?

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StudentMI

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What I mean in the question of the title is whether market advocates should stop using it. St John Paul II differentiated between two types of capitalism in Centesimus Annus:
If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”. But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.
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The encyclical mentions the free market approvingly. Though anarchism is not an option for Catholics, I find the following article by one convincing myself.


In my opinion, the term capitalism brings with it so much baggage that perhaps it would be better to stop using the term. However it has been used to refer to the free market for so long that it is embedded in many minds.

I was just wondering what others think.
 
There are different types of capitalism, but the core is a process where profits are invested to increase production, which in turn increases profits, and in turn reinvested.

A free market is one where there are no rules imposed by an authority such as a government. That means no laws and regulations.

The problem is that with technology (including the use of money), a free market becomes larger and more complex, and with that legal systems become necessary, especially for fiat money, land ownership, etc. And that technology is also what leads to capitalism as defined above.

That means capitalism stems from free markets and requires government.
 
Just read this in The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc.
In an England thus already cursed with a very large proletariat class, and in an England already directed by a dominating capitalist class, possessing the means of production, there came a great industrial development.
Had that industrial development come upon a people economically free, it would have taken a cooperative form. Coming as it did upon a people which had already lost its economic freedom, it took at its very origin a capitalist form, and this form it has retained, expanded, and perfected throughout two hundred years.
It was in England that the industrial system arose. It was in England that all its traditions and habits were formed; and because the England in which it arose was already a capitalist England, modern industrialism, wherever you see it at work today, having spread from England, has proceeded upon the capitalist model.
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He is arguing for a society of property owners, where property ownership is widespread and not concentrated through state privilege in the hands of a few. His analysis starts with slavery, how it gradually disappeared under Christianity and produced a group of people who, though not entirely free, enjoyed wider ownership than they did at the time he described after the monastic lands were seized and sold.

This essay gives a good breakdown of what he’s talking about.

http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm

Belloc even gets a mention in that essay. “Plans for agrarian reform became part of the English radical tradition from Paine and Shelley through Cobbett down to G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc (among others).”
 
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Thank you, but that doesn’t answer my question. When Belloc conjectures about what would have been the outcome of industrial development among a “people economically free”, does he give examples of countries that he deems to be “economically free”, either in his own time or at an earlier stage of industrialization? Does he name, for example, France, Germany, Belgium, or Sweden? Or the United States? What countries, in Belloc’s view, enjoyed greater economic freedom than Britain?
 
I haven’t finished the book yet so I’m not sure. I believe he’s mostly talking about England and not Europe as a whole.

Could you answer the thread topic please? I’m curious what you think.
 
StudentMI said:
I was just wondering what others think.
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No need to change the term, the negative connotations you’ve mentioned will quickly be added to any new term for ‘capitalism’ by the advocates of socialism/communism.
 
“Capitalism” is a word that, historically, has been almost exclusively used by its opponents. Its supporters usually call it “a market economy.” If you see the word “capitalism” being used in a favorable sense, it’s probably just someone seizing a momentary opportunity to take the wind out of the other side’s sails.

The Soviet economic system was labeled, in the West, “state capitalism,” which was an accurate description. The Soviet government, from its earliest years under Lenin, always proclaimed its aim of bringing economic prosperity to the whole nation, and decisions naturally had to be made about which industries and which products were to be prioritized for investments. The difference from the typical Western democracy was that decisions that in the West are made in boardrooms or at stockholders’ meetings were made, in the USSR, by Communist Party officials. They sincerely believed that they would make a better job of it than the West did, but in practice they never caught up.

China is now gradually catching up — though it still has a long way to go — by ditching state capitalism and adopting a version of free-market capitalism instead. In this sense, from the time of Deng Xiaoping onward, you could say China ceased to be a Communist country in the strict sense.
 
StudentMI said:
What I mean in the question of the title is whether market advocates should stop using it. St John Paul II differentiated between two types of capitalism in Centesimus Annus:
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StudentMI said:
In my opinion, the term capitalism brings with it so much baggage that perhaps it would be better to stop using the term. However it has been used to refer to the free market for so long that it is embedded in many minds.

I was just wondering what others think.
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No, part of the problem is that every time the left chooses to destroy an institution that should legitimately exist, they start with changing the language, making the definitions of things meaningless. As an example, trans-gender advocacy groups changed the meaning of the words “sex” and “gender” to divorce the idea of gender from the biological reality. Same-sex marriage occurred when they divorced the centuries old meaning of marriage being between opposite genders. They do the same thing with economics. You see Bernie Sanders trying it in our elections. I’m not a communist, I’m a democratic socialist, nevermind that he adheres to all the principles of socialism while advocating for the destruction of the Republican institutions that our country is founded on. We need to insist upon using the proper definitions of things because otherwise the resulting confusion allows people to be easily fooled by bait and switch tactics.
 
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BartholomewB said:
"Capitalism” is a word that, historically, has been almost exclusively used by its opponents. Its supporters usually call it “a market economy.” If you see the word “capitalism” being used in a favorable sense, it’s probably just someone seizing a momentary opportunity to take the wind out of the other side’s sails.
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Agreed. One critic of capitalism was the free trade activist Thomas Hodgskin.
 
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