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That looks a lot like an instance of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.


At first glance, you're right. The problem is, though, that the word "capitalism" has different meanings for different people, and has also undergone a general shifting of the meaning of the word. This is not unlike the word "liberal" (as in politically liberal), which has changed in a similar fashion.

This snippet from the Wikipedia entry for capitalism synthesizes it pretty well: "Classical liberals such as Mises, Rand, and Rothbard define capitalism as a market system with no interference by States (laissez faire). Some define capitalism as a system governed by capital accumulation regardless of the legal ownership titles."

anamax is referring to what could be referred to "classical capitalism," while you, ramchip, seem to be referring to "state capitalism".


Or as I like to call these posts YALK, yet another libertarian kiddie.




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