this is what i’m talking about. i haven’t read the book and don’t think anything about what it’s about. i’m referring to the arguments made like yours above.

You may be referring to it, but you don’t seem to have understood it. The argument that I made above has nothing essentially to do with whether you should choose to call market freedom or individual property “capitalism” or whether you should choose to call them something else. That was your argument (that “we” should not be so hasty, or so lazy). I have my own views and I’ve made my own choices on that, but neither the main argument of the book, nor the argument I just posted above has anything to do with that rhetorical choice. The primary argument I’m making above is that whatever you call market exchange, individual ownership, entrepreneurial discovery, etc., those things do not necessarily produce the set of substantive economic outcomes (large inequalities of wealth, the concentration of capital in the hands of a few highly centralized corporations, the predominance of rent and wage-labor, the corporate economy, etc. etc.) that many people (both pro-”capitalist” and anti-”capitalist”) have traditionally said that they produce. You can signal the distinction by distinguishing “the market form” from “capitalistic patterns of ownership” (as we do), or you can signal it with some completely different set of terms (“laissez-faire” vs. “corporatism,” “clean” capitalism vs. “crony” capitalism, “zaxlebax” vs. “brabubrabu”, whatever). What I care about is the capacity to clearly see and explain the difference between the market form and stereotypically “corporate” or “capitalist” outcomes in the patterns of ownership and employment. Use whatever set of terms makes it easiest for you to see that and explain it.

most of us can agree that capitalism, for everyday purposes (the ones that matter) means “the private ownership of the means of production”.

I entered into the “terminology debate” about what “capitalism” means and where the term comes from only because you brought it up, in the course of making the completely unsourced and factually mistaken claim that we were introducing a “replacement term” for the traditional term “capitalism,” apparently because we are too lazy to defend a meaning that is “already sorted out.” Actually, the meaning of the term “capitalism” is very much more complicated than that, and your terminological dispute against our usage — is, as far as I can tell, a matter of completely unsourced, and factually mistaken claims about the way the term has been, and is currently, used.

… most of us can agree that capitalism, for everyday purposes (the ones that matter) means “the private ownership of the means of production”.

Well, I’m glad that most of you can agree. But the point of mentioning actual sources was to provide evidence that actually a lot of people have used the term in different ways from the way you think “most of us can agree” on. In any case, your proposed definition doesn’t actually solve the problem of conflating market forms with the wage-labor system and the corporate economy. You could use it to mean the former, or you could use it to mean the latter, or you could do what most people do, which is to simply jumble both together as if they were the same thing. My main interest, again, is to un-jumble the mess, and to defend the claim that the one part (market process) does not necessarily produce the other part (concentrated control of ownership and employment). If our particular set of terminological distinctions don’t help you out in getting clear on that point, but some other set does, that’s fine. I’m interested mainly in the economic argument, not in the language that is used to express it.

Fun fact: Marx himself actually hardly ever uses the word — “capitalism” (Kapitalismus) appears all of about 2 or 3 times in the whole three volumes of Das Kapital, and hardly anywhere else in all of his work. But he does talk about “capitalists” and the “capitalistic mode of production” all over the place, and when later Marxist writers took up the term “capitalism” from Blanc, Proudhon, and other early adopters (mostly French), it was fairly straightforward to treat the term as more or less equivalent in meaning to Marx’s “capitalistic mode of production” (i.e. a mode of production based on concentrated absentee ownership of capital and the hiring of employees to work it).

None of these folks, incidentally, understood the term to mean “a free market in land and means of production.” Some (Blanc, Marx) believed that a free market in land and the means of production would inevitably tend to produce capitalistic patterns of ownership and control. Others (Proudhon, Warren, Tucker) dissented, and argued explicitly that a free market in land and the means of production could possibly, or even would naturally tend to, undermine capitalistic patterns of ownership and control (in the sense that large-scale inequalities of wealth would tend to dissipate, absolute poverty would largely disappear, and the working class would become the owning class, no longer subject to perpetual rent or debt, and no longer dependent on relationships with absentee owners of capital in order to make a living); hence (they held) if you were serious about being an anti-capitalist, then you ought to be serious about freeing markets and abolishing the state. On this one, I side with the Anarchists.

I call myself a free marketer, not a capitalist.

It must confound the right libertarians (I know, I know you don’t like left/right, but you’re right of me)

I reject the left-right spectrum so disagree with you on this. I am anti-state, anti-war, anti-drug war, not religious, pro-gay marriage, anti-IP.

that we are a broad milieu with many different approaches to the legitimacy of markets, business, corporations, capital, etc.

This is vague language. I mean a commie or fascist could say this too–they just have a different “approach” to the “legitimacy” of markets. So this says little.

One of the reasons why a book like this could come out from the work we’ve been doing over the last (at least) ten years is because we’ve been engaged in dissecting and debating these matters — we’re not content just to settle on arbitrary definitions and then beat others over the head when they define differently.

Anarcho-libertarians, e.g. Rothbardians and Misesian austro-libertarians, do not just “settle” on “arbitrary definitions” nor “beat others over they head” for “defining differenlty.” So this seems to be irrelevant, or a straw man.

I’d have to say my fundamentalism about markets has degraded quite substantially.

This is indirect language. All the anarcho-libertarian qua libertarian is concerned with is whether you respect property rights–period. Respecting property rights does not mean you are a “fundamentalist” about “markets” (whatever that means anyway).

I think there’s ample evidence to show that our ways of thinking about meeting our needs are pretty narrow and often unimaginative. Markets are a tool, a social construct;

I disagree. Markets are not a tool or a “social construct.” A market is what results when you have freedom and property rights.

they are not some sort of heroic ideal separate and apart from the culture they exist in.

So? Straw man.

As such, left libertarians place equal emphasis on the surrounding context of market economics as we do on the rote economics itself.

“Place” “equal emphasis” (whatever that means) on whatever you like. As long as you do not commit or condone aggression against private property claims, go ahead and “place” “emphasis” all you like.

This is actually what I tried to hint towards in my essay: that even completely free markets might lead to an egalitarian world noticeably lacking in the capitalist or even market-oriented trappings so prevalent in this day and age.

“trappings”? Any advanced industrialized society that has private property will have seen money emerge and the division and specialization of labor, and the private accumulation of capital. the rest is degrees and details. And predictions.

So you are right, Stephan — some of us do not fetishize the market, and some of us even prefer different modalities and cultural means of meeting the needs of peaceful people.

We Rothbardians do not “fetishize” “the market”. We revere individual freedom and justice and propety rights, and we have enough consistency, honesty, and economic literacy to realize what this means for a social order–it means a free market order with private ownership of capital, with profit and loss, with employment, with firms, with division and specialization of labor.

As somebody who has an essay in this book (Let the Free Market Eat the Rich!) I’d have to say my fundamentalism about markets has degraded quite substantially. I think there’s ample evidence to show that our ways of thinking about meeting our needs are pretty narrow and often unimaginative. Markets are a tool, a social construct; they are not some sort of heroic ideal separate and apart from the culture they exist in. As such, left libertarians place equal emphasis on the surrounding context of market economics as we do on the rote economics itself.

This is actually what I tried to hint towards in my essay: that even completely free markets might lead to an egalitarian world noticeably lacking in the capitalist or even market-oriented trappings so prevalent in this day and age. So you are right, Stephan — some of us do not fetishize the market, and some of us even prefer different modalities and cultural means of meeting the needs of peaceful people. Our vision of what is possible, to say it the way it’s been said so well before, is not Walmart minus the state.

Well, I don’t think I was denying that government benefits from inflation…. The claim that some companies also benefit, and do so at the expense of other economic actors, is hardly rivalrous with the claim that government benefits too.

Right. YOu were not denying it. I just find it odd that those aware of the baleful effects of this kind of money supply inflation always focus on this early-recipient advantage, and often leave out the much more major advantage that the state as money creator has.

Suppose an individual A gains the ability to counterfeit US dollar bills. So let’s say he prints up $10 million a year, and spends them on houses, yachts, partying. Now he is basically receiving these goods and services from people in the economy, for free. Is he “stealing” it from the people he pays the money too? No, he steals it from everyone in the economy in general, by eroding the purchasing power of their money. YEs the price increase ripples spread out like the ripples from honey that you pour into a jar, and yes, the early recipients get the money and are able to re-spend it before its power is eroded. But is this a huge advantage, really? Suppose B has his house for sale for $500k. Now A prints the money and buys B’s house. B probably could have sold his house to some third party C if A had not come along. So B is not much better off than he would have been. Yes, he had one extra customer bidding for his house–so maybe he sold it for slightly more than otherwise. Maybe he would have sold it for $480k to C. So he is $20k better off. And yes, now he has the $500k to spend, at current prices, before they get micro-inflated and the price inflation spreads to the rest of the economy. So if he spends the $500k now, he gets $500k worth of products at current prices. If he got the $500k a year later, it might only be worth $499k because of price inflation. So he is $1k better off.

I mean, the early recipients are really not that much better off, IMO. Or the “benefit” seems trivial to me–for inflation/early money purposes. A more significant benefit to them is that now they have a guaranteed or more customers/demand, letting them charge higher prices in the first place–as my example above gave it, the hosue was sold for $20k more than otherwise, while the early-inflation advantage was only $1k. (I am admittedly making these numbers up, but to illustrate my point.)

But the $21k of benefit receives by B is dwarfed by the $500k of benefit received by A.

But it came up in this thread specifically in connection to a question about ways in which large corporations are subsidized; so it seems relevant to point out that early receipt of inflationary money-surges is one of those ways.

I agree; I just view this advantage as relatively trivial in the scheme of things, compared to a host of other ways state actions and policies benefit them.

The benefits which the state derives, while perhaps larger and certainly morally worse (since e.g. they pay for murdering Afghans and other noble projects), are somewhat less relevant to that particular topic of conversation, and hence less likely to get mentioned….

Agreeed, but I was making a general point as, as I said, almost every time I see this early-inflation advantage mentioned, it’s odd that the much huger advantage to being the first SPENDER (as opposed to first “recipient”) seems to be ignored. The first recipient still has to provide some good or service to the buyer, to get the money, so at most they make a profit: the difference between their cost basis, and what they are paid. But the first SPENDER is printing the money for free so he captures a 100% gain of the money printed, by stealing that much from society-at-large in the form of money-clipping.

Well, I don’t think I was denying that government benefits from inflation…. The claim that some companies also benefit, and do so at the expense of other economic actors, is hardly rivalrous with the claim that government benefits too. But it came up in this thread specifically in connection to a question about ways in which large corporations are subsidized; so it seems relevant to point out that early receipt of inflationary money-surges is one of those ways. The benefits which the state derives, while perhaps larger and certainly morally worse (since e.g. they pay for murdering Afghans and other noble projects), are somewhat less relevant to that particular topic of conversation, and hence less likely to get mentioned….

As for how “real” the “real advantage” is, well, it depends on the line of business you are in, and where you are in the queue. In any case the state does not simply print up money and use it to buy durable goods; rather, what happens is that one branch of government invents balance-sheet money, loans it out to banks in the Federal Reserve system, and then those banks turn around and purchase up a number of investments, very prominently including bonds from other branches of government. Then, downstream, the state uses that money to buy buildings, bombers, prison-camps, etc. The state gets these things for “free,” but not (directly) because of the invented balance-sheet money (which they have to pay back with interest), but rather because they can “pay it back” by taxing the rest of us. The bond-buyers essentially benefit (in part) by having one branch of government lay out artificially cheap financing by which they can buy into a share of tax farming from another branch of government. This is a rather different position to be in than your hypothetical builder. Unlike in a Greenbacker scheme, they are in fact upstream from state fiscal policy, not downstream from it, and the issue is not so much that their line of business would be less profitable as that it would simply be impossible. First recipients like Chase (say) essentially have no line of business at all except for the manipulation of sources of artificially easy credit, and have repeatedly shown that the main consequence of credit tightening up to reflect market realities is that they suffer from catastrophic cascading business failures, and would be bankrupt if not for literally trillions of dollars of assistance from both fiscal and monetary policy-makers.

if you want to start over educating people from scratch, because an etymology book says something 99.9% of people will never know about, go ahead. i, on the other hand am going to clarify existing terms and promote the movement from there.

there wasn’t a terminology problem and there still isn’t. this is, in my opinion, a ruse by some to gain recognition for advances in a philosophy that is, by and large, already sorted out. i appreciate chartier’s (and much of the other c4ss folks) contributions, in general, but this terminology debate is holy…um, i meant silly.

The reference to the “inflation spigot” is a reference to the streams of fiat-currency purchasing power proceeding from central banks outward to their clients. The companies immediately at the spigot are almost all banks and financial corporations like CitiGroup, Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, et al. Those “near” the spigot are the companies that receive the most significant influx of loans and investment from the financiers who are right at the spigot. (So, for example, Fortune 500 companies as a group tend to be pretty close — due to their reliable access to, and constant dependence on, heavy external financing, institutional investment, and very big lines of cheap credit from big international banks. Capital-intensive heavy industry, for example. Smaller companies tend to be somewhat further away. Wage-workers and consumers tend to be furthest away (although bubble-money can always reach some segment of wage-workers — e.g., homeowners, during the mortgage-financing bubble — it comes at the expense of all the other segments, through ratcheted-up costs of living, relative declines in real wages and the purchasing power of savings, etc.).

Charles Johnson wrote above: “…including the massive subsidy to companies at or near the inflation spigot….” What companies are at or near the inflation spigot?

My critical observation was comparing the term “market-capitalism” vs. “anarchocapitalism”. One of these terms obscures the role of coercive involuntary governmental intervention in a capitalistic system. I was pointing out (indirectly) that eschewing the use of the word “anarchy” was a bad idea, especially if the stated goal is to contrast the term against “crony-capitalism”

Comprende?

Very interesting clarification, thanks

Rather, if attempting to be persuasive, I would humbly suggest to either define your terms upfront, or alternatively discuss ideas without using labels/terms which are known to be interpreted differently.

PS Discussions about historical definitions of words and ideas are slightly interesting but I believe that they should be separated from attempts at persuasion.

I could go on… and on. But I’ll tl;dr on my own time. Suffice it to say that WE GOTTA REHAB PROFIT. Not just the word but the concept of it. The collectivists have demonized profit and only by undoing that are we going to break the hypnosis of the masses and reverse the slow crawl toward neofeudalism.