Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos recently announced that the editorial pages of his newspaper will defend “personal liberties and free markets.” It is an admirable commitment. Our only complaint is with his choice of words: Instead of “personal liberties and free markets,” he should have written “capitalism.”
Bezos himself has certainly benefited from personal and economic freedom. So, too, have the rest of us. Indeed, nothing has done more to raise living standards around the world and enable people to flourish. But we are squeamish to use the one word that defines this progress.
The reluctance to embrace the term “capitalism” is the result of a sustained rhetorical attack by freedom’s enemies.
Karl Marx famously denounced the “capitalist mode of production” and “capitalist society,” believing capitalism to be a system of exploitation. Modern critics…
