What does this even mean?

The author pretends to be sensitive to language and words only to depict an ideology based on non-aggression as a “raw, brute force”?!!

Certainly no “throw[ing] language aside” here…

The current economic system is more fascist than free market, it is based on the state funneling tax revenue to corporations to make war technologies in a guaranteed market, this feeds the Keynesian multiplier effect in consumer goods and the expansion of money supply and debt, benefiting the few and enslaving the many.

Capitalism is not a free market, because the robber barons control the market.
Socialism is not “worker’s ownership of their work,” because it is a lie that the government serves the workers.

Using the Joe the Plumber cliche, a proper economy would allow Joe Plumber to own his own plumbing business, but it would *not* allow him to make $200,000 a year profit, unless he needs it to support 10 kids and his elderly parents and in-laws.

This is correct. However, one has to be careful about distinguishing between two different ways of understanding a normative claim. One could take it to be a normative claim, that is, that the best social result just is the result that emerges from individual preferences pursued in a totally free market. Alternatively, one could take it to be a descriptive claim, that is, that is that individual preferences pursued in a totally free market will in fact produce the best social result, as judged by objective criteria independently of the process.

I don’t actually think either claim is right (there is a kernel of truth in both of them, but neither is true as an absolute). Nevertheless, it seems to make more sense to take the condemnations of this idea found in Catholic Social Thought to be condemning the normative as opposed to the descriptive claim.

Socialism, by contrast, is at heart prescriptive rather than descriptive, though it too can partake of descriptive meaning.

For Marx, capitalism is ‘generalized commodity production’, with ‘commodity’ understood to mean a thing produced solely for exchange, as opposed to immediate use. Capitalism exists when most production is for exchange instead of subsistence. All of this for various reasons presupposes the separation of the workers from the instruments of production. So that is the other defining feature of capitalism.

It might be accurate to say that for socialists, at least in the Marxian tradition, capitalism has always been understood primarily as a system of production, distinct from all those that preceded it.

In libertarian thought that I have seen, the production side is not nearly represented enough as the exchange side: if exchange is free, there is capitalism, and to whatever extent it becomes less free, it becomes more socialistic. In this way there can be some perennial, historical ‘conflict’ between capitalism and socialism that pre-dates the 19th century.

Historically, the Church has looked at capitalism as the employment of wage-labor by capital; it accepts that it is a ‘new’ economic form as opposed to what existed before, in feudal times or earlier.

This is why she could simultaneously declare that capitalism was not intrinsically immoral, and that liberalism – including economic liberalism, as is made abundantly clear by Pius XI – was. The idea that individual preferences pursued in a totally free market will lead to the best social result is explicitly condemned.

But the capitalist system of production is not condemned in itself, provided that employers respect the full list of workers rights outlined by the Church. The preference is for more workers to become owners so that all partake in the benefits of private property ownership.

I wrote the following at your old blog, but for the benefit of others I will reproduce it here:

It shouldn’t be surprising that “socialism” should have a better ring to it than “capitalism.” After all, both terms were created by proponents of socialism, and the name a group picks for itself is liable to be more flattering than a name picked by the group’s enemies.

I prefer whenever possible to speak about free markets rather than about capitalism (though I’ll admit that sometimes the latter must be used simply for lack of a better alternative).

“Capitalism” is kind of a weird term, in that it is an ‘ism’ that isn’t quite like any other ‘ism.’

A socialist is someone who believes in socialism.

A fascist is someone who believes in fascism.

A monarchist is someone who believes in monarchism.

And a capitalist is a guy who owns a bank or a factory and has a lot of money.

To quote Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others.

I also think that, to the extent people use “capitalism” to refer to a type of economic system or to a set of beliefs about how the economy should be run, the term is broader than what is typically implied by the phrase “free market.” One can speak without contradiction of crony capitalism, monopoly capitalism, and so forth, whereas using such adjectives before the phrase “free market” doesn’t quite sound right.