“Capitalism”: another socially engineered misnomer?

The label “capitalism,” a staple of anti-free market propaganda since the days of Das Kapital, reinforces the idea that history consists of a series of stages of which “capitalism” is but one, scheduled for displacement by another. It’s a misnomer but, as Hayek suggested, it’s one we’re probably stuck with.

Capital is what wealth becomes when traders do not consume the yield of their labor or trade, but invest it in an enterprise so as to earn interest or (as it was once called) “usury.”[1]

Capital is a factor of production, alongside two original factors, land and labor. “Capitalism” should clang in our ears as would “landism” or “laborism.” There is no justification for referring to any stretch of human history as “capitalism,” as though once upon a time people did not exchange property titles and will one day “return” to a marketless, and propertyless social order, all the wiser for having passed through the hell of “class society.”

In many ways it is misleading to speak of “capitalism” as though this had been a new and altogether different system which suddenly came into being toward the end of the eighteenth century; we use this term here because it is the most familiar name, but only with great reluctance, since with its modern connotations it is itself largely a creation of that socialist interpretation of economic history with which we are concerned. The term is especially misleading when, as it often the case, it is connected with the idea of the rise of the propertyless proletariat, which by some devious process have been deprived of their rightful ownership of the tools for their work.[2]

But are we stuck with “capitalism”? Must bad words drive out good as though in obedience to the linguistic equivalence of Gresham’s Law? Here’s the danger I perceive in acquiescing in the devaluation.

I remember hearing in the 1990s Monsignor William Smith (1939-2009), who taught moral theology at Saint Joseph’s Seminary, articulate this aphorism: social engineering begins with verbal engineering. The epigram may not have originated with him, but an article on the topic connects him to it and notes Chesterton’s insights into the verbal barbarism underlying the physical consequences of adopting it:

Whenever widespread social engineering of this magnitude occurs, it is invariably preceded by skillful verbal engineering. The late Msgr. William Smith observed that the argument about contraception was basically over as soon as modern society accepted the deceptive phrase, “birth control” into its vocabulary. “Imagine if we had called it, ‘life prevention’,” he once remarked. The great Gilbert Keith Chesterton put it this way: ” They insist on talking about Birth Control when they mean less birth and no control,” and again: “Birth Control is a name given to a succession of different expedients by which it is possible to filch the pleasure belonging to a natural process while violently and unnaturally thwarting the process itself.”[3]

The pursuit of “equity” leads to unequal treatment under the law. Champions of “inclusion” and “diversity” exclude and oppress nonconformists. There’s nothing more illiberal than what marches under the banner of “liberalism.” Like military justice, “social justice” is to justice as military music is to music.[4] Any social order grounded in respect for persons and their right to acquire and exchange property profitably deserves a better tag than “capitalism.”

Notes

[1] As Jesus taught in His parable of the talents, it is sometimes morally imperative to earn interest (τόκῳ, tokō) (Matthew 25:27). Mosaic law, however, under which Jesus and his audience lived, prohibited an Israelite from charging interest to fellow Israelites. (Deuteronomy 23:20) In effect, the Israelite lender was obliged to make a gift to his fellow Israelite out of the foregone use of the loaned money.

[2] F. A. Hayek, “History and Politics,” in Capitalism and the Historians, Hayek, ed., The University of Chicago Press, 1954, 14-15.

[3] Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., “Verbal Engineering and the Swaying of Public Conscience,” Catholic Education Resource Center, 2009. (One can see Smith teach here.) See also Greg Schleppenbach, “Verbal engineering always precedes social engineering,” Southern Nebraska Register, February 21, 2014.

[4] Apologies to Robert Sherrill.