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Given the progress Marxists have been making lately in their attempted takeover of the Democratic Party—and the need to rebut the ideas that have caused so much misery over the past century—it’s important to make clear what the alternative to an all-powerful state really is. A reader responds to a recent item on polling results showing that free enterprise is much more popular than either capitalism or socialism: In Reagan’s
autobiography, he uses the word capitalism exactly zero times. Milton Friedman talked and wrote for decades about free enterprise. Meanwhile, in 2026, “freedom” polls exceptionally well across the political spectrum. When Louis Blanc used le capitalisme in 1850, it was to describe “the appropriation of capital by some to the exclusion of others.” When Karl Marx later railed against capitalists in Das Kapital, it was the label he gave to those he derided as corrupt and exploitative. Marxists have never meant this label as a neutral descriptor, let alone as a compliment. Free enterprise, in contrast, is plainly descriptive. With its French cognate entrepreneur, it connotes not a system but individual initiative. Those who would defend capitalism ought to be talking about “free enterprise” instead. There is more at stake here than phrasing things in ways that poll well. The ideas underpinning socialism are essentially utopian, premised on the ability of the state to overcome the human
failings of greed and selfishness. Most religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, have the same aspiration, with the important distinction that they look to God rather than the state for the inspiration to overcome mammonism.
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