Question Assumptions.
Question Premises.
If I’m not mistaken, the very word “capitalism” was coined by Marx. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Even by using the word, you are accepting Marx’s premises.
To me Liberty and Freedom (which are much older words and concepts) are the points to be debated. If you are not free to buy and sell goods and services then you are not truly free. Or so it seems to me.
Methinks Wikipedia doth protest to much on the etymology of the word capitalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Etymology_and_early_usage
They seem to go to lots of trouble to find citings of the word before Marx and Engels and then go on to say that Marx and Engels used the word and leave it at that.
Maybe Marx and Engels weren’t the very first to use some word that had “Capital” in it - but then algore wasn’t the first to think about the internet either - but we all know he gets credit for its invention. ;)
I disagree.
The term "capitalistic production" was in widespread use long before Marx and referred simply to any process that employed capital (tools) to enhance the raw labor of man.
And "Capitalism" is a perfectly valid description of a system where individuals own those tools -- the means of production, i.e., capital. Capital is not just big gobs of money, it is a farmer's barn and his tractor. It's his seed corn and his cows. Everything he uses to produce the goods which we buy.
Capital is also the money saved up by the entrepreneur (or borrowed from funds others have saved) to purchase raw materials and pay his employees' wages while waiting for production to be completed and his products sold.
Marx's premises were completely wrong, illogical, and unworkable. Without private ownership, trade, profits, and prices, economic calculation is impossible and a socialist system must eventually collapse under its own mounting inefficiencies.
It's also important to remember that Marx admired capitalism and credited it with the amazing increases in production and living standards already seen by the mid-19th century. He believed it would end naturally and be replaced by socialism simply as a result of new production methods which would render it obsolete.
At any rate, I think we should explain capitalism and revel in it. Not try to paper it over with other less-loaded terms. We're just caving to the socialists if we do.