One of the ways ignorant politicians sustain continuous innovation in the realms of Saying Stupid Things and Being Wrong, even after so much saying of stupid things and so much being wrong, is their impressive ability to misuse and conflate terms. The latest and most talked about example is the conservative-dominated Texas Board of Education, whose recent vote to re-write history textbooks according to a mixture of sometimes reasonable but mostly downright ridiculous takes on American history has caused quite a stir. The New York Times writes it up here.
PMB understands if, in economics curricula, the Texas Board wants to include prominent "free-market" economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek alongside equally-if-not-more-influential economists like Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. One should really have knowledge of all of these economists after taking an economics curriculum. And while PMB is not sympathetic to the dropping of the seminal figure Thomas Jefferson from curricula on the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions, particularly in favor of that unenlightened and counter-Enlightenment hack John Calvin, if Texas Boarders really want to teach some theology they might adopt Thomas Aquinas, a serious thinker.
But what really makes PMB want to bare his teeth and claws is the completely imbecilic notion of replacing the word "capitalism" in textbooks with the phrase "free-enterprise system."
PMB should explain for conservatives that capitalism and free-enterprise (or free markets) are not the same thing. Fundamentally (because many conservatives like the Texas Board of Education's rightist faction lack fundamental knowledge of the things on which they vote), capitalism is a system in which the means of production (land, capital) are privately owned. Capitalism as such is often associated with free markets or laissez faire economic policies, though these are not actually necessary components of capitalism. In fact, the most successful capitalist country today is a communist country. In China, a mix of deregulation and draconian regulation and social measures have produced the world's most dynamic mode of capitalist production. Further, that the one-party (you guessed it, Communist) government maintains a degree of ownership of the means of production (contra traditional understandings of capitalism), doesn't overshadow the incentivizing of Chinese industry leaders with such high shares of the profits that the system is, in a very strange way, also kind of privatized.
Not knowing anything about Marxism, socialism, or communism aside, when "free-market" conservatives say things like "we've already witnessed the failure of Marxism/socialism/communism" in defense of capitalism, they get at least one thing right: we have indeed witnessed failures of non-capitalist systems of government--the failures of governments that own the means of production. In fact, there's hardly anywhere in the world where non-capitalist systems of government exist. This bit of information, which conservatives would be the first to point out, should serve as glaring evidence for conservatives that in fact there are many different ways for governments to regulate and manipulate capitalist systems to produce a vast range outcomes. There's a tremendous difference between government ownership of the means of production and heavy government regulation. This difference enables heavily regulating, even totalitarian governments to exercise capitalist systems. It also means that capitalist systems are not necessarily "free" or deregulated. After all, if Communist China can outperform the great beacon of capitalism, the freedom-loving utopia of the United States, in the great sport of capitalism, all of these conservatives should be second- and third-guessing themselves about equating "capitalism" with "free enterprise." They should likewise begin to let go of the ruinous assumption that capitalism as such necessarily makes for the freest societies. A glance across the globe reveals flourishing capitalist social-democracies in Western Europe, flourishing socialist-capitalist democracies in Scandinavia (where, I should add, the means of production are still mostly privately owned), and even a flourishing non-democratic-capitalist communist regime in China, in which the existence of capitalism has actually exacerbated many human rights problems instead of bringing "freedom" (widening gap between wealthy elite and poor; censorship; astonishing government execution rates, etc.). From these observations we can learn two important lessons: one, the redistribution of social resources isn't at all anti-capitalist; two, capitalism does not ensure democracy, freedom, or any other channels for the sustaining of basic human rights.
Even within American history, capitalism has not necessarily meant "free enterprise." Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury under America's first president, George Washington, within America's first government, fought to nationalize debt and establish a Federal bank. There were eventually LBJ's Great Society program and FDR's New Deal. Let's not forget the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, or the Glass-Steagall banking act of 1933 (later repealed), though "free-market" conservatives would like us to ignore these important moments in American history.
But can PMB really expect members of the Texas Board of Education to have been educated?
