Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

If Republicans Want to Win, They Must Stop Talking about Capitalism
American Thinker ^ | January 18, 2012 | Selwyn Duke

Posted on 01/18/2012 12:43:46 AM PST by neverdem

One of the simplest rhetorical truths is that the side that defines the vocabulary of a debate wins the debate. Yet, amazingly, we still see experienced conservative politicians with access to advanced polling operations and an array of advisors use the Lexicon of the Left. And this election cycle is no exception.

I could almost cringe when I hear -- as I did repeatedly during Monday's South Carolina GOP debate -- Republicans talk about "capitalism." "I believe in capitalism..." "Barack Obama doesn't believe in capitalism..." Capitalism this and capitalism that -- look at me with my plump wallet, walking stick, and tony top hat. Oh, it's not that I don't believe in free enterprise; it's that we shouldn't use words that conjure up sentiments akin to the preceding rhyme.

And polls inform that this is precisely what "capitalism" does. For example, Pew Research Center reports, "[s]lightly more than half (52%) react positively to the word 'capitalism,' compared with 37% who say they have a negative reaction." According with this is a 2009 Rasmussen poll showing that, shockingly, "only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better..."

--snip--

Some may now lament how we have allowed the left to demonize our terminology. But "capitalism" in the modern sense was never ours -- and the left didn't demonize it.

They spawned it.

In point of fact, it was originated by communism's founding fathers.

The two culprits were French socialists Louis Blanc and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. True believers both, Blanc claimed that man's evils were the result of pressures born of competition and gave us the principle "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" (Karl Marx stole it from Blanc), while the equally radical Proudhon believed that "property is theft." Of course, Marx the great imitator then popularized "capitalism."...

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: capitalism
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-55 next last
To: neverdem
It is true…capitalism has always been a commie expression. Our concepts are free market and liberty. It is true that many on the right have tried to turn things around and proudly proclaimed themselves to be in favor of capitalism, but this is similar to the word nerd: Some computer types also began calling themselves nerds at some point, and do not perceive it as a bad word anymore. However, for the broader public, people outside the computer “scene,” it still is. Same with capitalism.

Do not allow the left to form the language. They are too good at it.

21 posted on 01/18/2012 5:00:37 AM PST by cartan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: neverdem

I prefer to refer to “individual freedom”, since that is what capitalism really means. I am a strong advocate of the real capitalism that allows small businesses to grow and thrive, not the crony capitalism that the Dem party uses to control big business and to funnel tax dollars to their favorite donors, and not the pure laissez-faire capitalism in which there are no government regulations on business. I want government there just enough to prevent sleaze and deception but not actually picking winners and losers in the marketplace. To me, capitalism is one of the most beautiful concepts in human history, since it is a key to individual freedom, but I don’t use the word “capitalism” in most political discussions. I am pragmatic enough that I prefer to sell skeptics on the concept separately from selling them on candidates who will protect individual freedom.


22 posted on 01/18/2012 5:01:23 AM PST by Pollster1 (Natural born citizen of the USA, with the birth certificate to prove it)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 4rcane; JediJones
the word should be free market, free to choice where to spend/invest your money without controls like tax/regulations aka red tapes. Its a civil right issue. You’re not really free if someone else could force you to give up your property rights

And the freedom of Bain Capital to invest in companies, receive dividends, make a profit, sometimes succeed, and sometimes fail. And the freedom of lenders to loan money (or not) to Bain investments and not whine about what Bain does with the money if it's allowed under the terms of their loans.

Let Team Soetoro '12 make this a dispicable activity.

23 posted on 01/18/2012 5:18:06 AM PST by DTogo (High time to bring back the Sons of Liberty !!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: 4rcane

Throw down Hayek’s ‘Constitution of Liberty’ like Thatcher! That’s what we believe!

We shouldn’t cowering from a term like the ‘Progressives’ shed the label ‘Communists’.


24 posted on 01/18/2012 6:01:21 AM PST by griswold3 (Character is Destiny)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: 4rcane

The ‘Progressives’ shed the label ‘Communists’. Marcy Kaptur, D-OH says we need ‘state controlled capitalism’. The Pavolian response to capitalism is negative thanks to the left’s ‘10 minutes of hate’ conditioning.
Are the American voters capable of being educated about freedom? I don’t think so.
Throw down Hayek’s ‘Constitution of Liberty’ like Thatcher! That’s what we believe!


25 posted on 01/18/2012 6:10:49 AM PST by griswold3 (Character is Destiny)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: neverdem

I agree, they would have more success talking about private property rights. No one wants their assets taken away.


26 posted on 01/18/2012 6:45:22 AM PST by MomwithHope (Wake up America we are at war with militant Islam and progressives - 2 fronts.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: neverdem

Free enterprise would be a suitable replacement term.


27 posted on 01/18/2012 7:05:35 AM PST by JimRed (Excising a cancer before it kills us waters the Tree of Liberty! TERM LIMITS, NOW AND FOREVER!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: HiTech RedNeck

This has nothing to do with that communist lie. It has to do with not falling victim to communist manipulation. I’ll try this one more time.

“Capitalism” was invented for the EXACT PURPOSE of making economic freedom sound bad. And it’s working. People do not react all that negatively to “free markets” or “economic freedom.” They react very badly to “capitalism.”

Also understand that we had free enterprise in the early 1800s. But no one called it capitalism until the commies invented the word a bit later.


28 posted on 01/18/2012 8:12:26 AM PST by Paladins Prayer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: chuckee

Have you listened to Frank Luntz talk about this? Did you read the article? The communists INVENTED the word. It was never used by conservatives to refer to free markets before that time.


29 posted on 01/18/2012 8:14:27 AM PST by Paladins Prayer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: cartan

Yes, but none of these nimrods get it. Heck, maybe the left is right. Maybe conservatives are stupid.


30 posted on 01/18/2012 8:16:28 AM PST by Paladins Prayer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: dixiechick2000

Are you really a capitalist? You have so much capital that you can spend it in slave labor factories in China and then move it to Burma because their slave labor is even cheaper?

Do you abstain from restricting your capital to your own country by tying it up in land or resources here?

International bankers are capitalists, but if your money is tied up in home ownership and and the fed corrupted American stock market, you’re NOT a capitalist.


31 posted on 01/18/2012 8:20:00 AM PST by artichokegrower
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Paladins Prayer

From the web site: Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy:

The word ‘Capitalism’ and its related term ‘Capitalist,’ were not “first derived in the English vernacular from a translation of the pejorative term used by Karl Marx” (though he certainly used them pejoratively in his writings).

‘Capitalism’ was a word and a phenomenon neither used by, nor known to, Adam Smith. Capitalism was a wholly late 19th-century experience. The Oxford English Dictionary (Vol II, p 863) locates its first usage in English in 1854 by William Makepeace Thackeray in his novel, The Newcomes.

Karl Marx published, in German, Das Kapital, in 1867 and subsequent translations introduced the word ‘capitalism’ to his readers some years later (Moscow’s ‘Marxist’ editors during the Soviet era ‘interpolated’ the new word of capitalism into his works as if Marx himself had written it).

While Marx may have read Thackeray, it is unlikely that Thackeray read Marx in time to include the word, capitalism, thirteen years earlier in his novel.

Of the word ‘capitalist’, this was first used in English in 1792, by Arthur Young (Travels in France) and it was used by Turgot (in French) in his ‘Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches’ LXIII-IV, 1770.


32 posted on 01/18/2012 8:25:52 AM PST by demas415
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: demas415

Again, read the article. The author points out that the first ones to use “capitalism” in the MODERN SENSE were communists. When Thackeray and one or two others used it previously, it meant something totally different.


33 posted on 01/18/2012 8:45:38 AM PST by Paladins Prayer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: chuckee

And how does Webster’s describe free enterprise?


34 posted on 01/18/2012 9:06:19 AM PST by hedgetrimmer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: HiTech RedNeck

This country was founded on the concept of free enterprise. It is very different than capitalism.


35 posted on 01/18/2012 9:11:18 AM PST by hedgetrimmer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Pollster1

Free enterprise is individual freedom.

Capitalism is the one side of the Hegelian dialectic. Communism is the other.

You see that capitalism and communism work very well together- chinese communists are also capitalists.

But free enterprise doesn’t support communism. With free enterprise communism would be dead.

However that is why the capitalists oppose free enterprise and why they have tried to erase it from the national culture and memory in America. They profit very nicely from the slave laborers in communist countries.


36 posted on 01/18/2012 9:21:06 AM PST by hedgetrimmer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: demas415

Communism is just another form of Capitalism, where the State is has the monopoly on Capital.


37 posted on 01/18/2012 9:26:25 AM PST by dfwgator (Don't wake up in a roadside ditch. Get rid of Romney.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: dixiechick2000

It is called rehoritic and it is important to understand.

Republicans should talk about property rights and building “American based” businesses. Small, mom and pop business.

Corporate advocacy is deadly because Corporations have abused the US and are seen as internationalists/foreigners and elitists/fascists. (The banksters bail out, home loan scam, SOPA, export of jobs to foreign lands, open borders, limo liberal social agenda and anti-Americanism.) Corporation elitist abuse is associated with the word “capitalism.” Capitalism is defined in the public’s mind as elitist and unethical/ abusive/scamming/treasonous/abusive corporatism.

Don’t talk about deregulating banksters! It’s too complicated and it has been abused by banks and politicans deals in crashing the real estate market. Americans generally want banksters in jail for the real estate loan scam and want out from under the real estate losses of their loan scam.

Talk about Obama having his administration filled with croney corporatists and Golden Sacks banksters looking for a US Treasury shake down and special favors. Talk about Obama shipping stimilus money and jobs over to foreign countries for his corporatist pals.

Like it or not, this is the state of words and public impressions right now in the mainstream of the public as the economic crash has settled out. It plays a big part in winning elections. The argument for free markets can be had in either the realm of American small business advocacy or in the real of international corporations. Stiff arm advocating for the internationalists - corporations. The CEO’s screwed the pooch with their expressed insults of American workers, our constitutional Republic and their aggressive immorality. Their public representatives are seen as unethical - dishonest and suffering from a superiority complex. They are unpopular having too high opinion of their brilliant/wealthy limo-socialist selves. They are seen as fascists.

Self interest, hate and disrespect is a two way street with the big egos globe trotting Corporate elite. Corporations interacting with Americans today are political idiots and the GOP should hang them around the necks of Obama and the DNC - whom the CEO’s have supported.

This does not mean Republicans have to harm Corporations when in power. But being associated with loud mouth liberal elitists who think they are superior to everyone and who call themselves “capiatalists” is never a good idea.


38 posted on 01/18/2012 9:43:46 AM PST by SaraJohnson
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: DTogo

“And the freedom of Bain Capital to invest in companies, receive dividends, make a profit, sometimes succeed, and sometimes fail.”

There was no “sometimes fail”. When Bain purchased Worldwide Grinding Systems for $8 million they borrowed $12 million against the company, recouping their investment plus a healthy profit. Bain continued to receive dividends and management fees until the company failed.

So don’t worry, Bain didn’t lose a cent and it’s all legal. The sole whiners are the former employees of the steel firm, who had their retirement pay reduced by $400 a month.


39 posted on 01/18/2012 8:27:25 PM PST by Pelham (Vultures for Romney. We pluck your carcass)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: SaraJohnson

“Don’t talk about deregulating banksters! It’s too complicated and it has been abused by banks and politicans deals in crashing the real estate market.”

Banks, investment banks as opposed to commercial banks, got the deregulation they wanted during the Clinton administration. They wanted Glass-Steagall gone and so it was, with Republican support in Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the CFMA 2000.

To me it’s no surprise that less than 10 years later the economy was plunged into a major crisis with investment banks right in the middle of it. Glass Steagall was passed because of hard lessons the Depression Congresses learned. That was all un-learned by the geniuses who dismantled all of the walls separating Wall Street from Main Street.


40 posted on 01/18/2012 8:46:11 PM PST by Pelham (Vultures for Romney. We pluck your carcass)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-55 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson