A century ago the Marxists acknowledged the productivity of capitalism and its p reference to the feudalism it replaced, but

predicted that it would lead to grea ter material scarcity, it produces too much and is wasteful, hurts the environme nt. For the last century, capitalism s most ardent defenders the school of Mises, Haye k and Rothbard, and even the less radical followers of Rand and Friedman have be en clear that they mean the individual's freedom in property rights and exchange , and almost everyone understands this. The enemies have mostly meant the same t hing, when they weren t disingenuously conflating free enterprise with state-sanct ioned privilege. Conservatives pretend to support capitalism, but make exceptions for education, energy, agriculture, labor, central banking, borders, intellectual property, and drugs, to say nothing of national defense and criminal justice. Mises said "a society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not cho ose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the di sintegration of society." Hayek believed "the preservation of what is known as t he capitalist system, of the system of free markets and the private ownership of the means of production, as an essential condition of the very survival of mank ind." While always careful to critique state capitalism for its interventionism and violence, Rothbard espoused "free-market capitalism [as] a network of free a nd voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their prod ucts for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at." Capitali sm and freedom go hand in hand. Only through deferred consumption can we build civilization, by the amassing of higher order goods and the lowering of our orientation toward the present. This is the essence of the capitalist emphasis. However, unlike "real socialism," which Mises demonstrated was impossible on a l arge scale, capitalism simply exists wherever it is left unmolested. It is the p art of the market that is free. But regardless of how we define it, in terms of feeding the masses and sustaining society, I will take flawed capitalism over fl awed socialism any day. I will take state capitalism, crony capitalism, or corpo rate capitalism over state socialism, democratic socialism, or national socialis m. The capitalist portion of state capitalism is the part that works. The fruits of capitalism can be used for evil, and they are surely used this way by the state . For instance, the military-industrial complex s evil is due to the socialist sta te military feeding off the production of semi-capitalist businesses. The one do wnside to capitalism is that the state becomes richer in absolute terms than wit h any other system. If the military were fully socialist it would be less effect ive this is true. But this is merely a practical and moral indictment of the sta te, not the concept of capitalism. If this is the only real confusion that confo unds capitalism s detractors we should simply ask them: Are you for a complete sep aration of capitalism and state, then? Of course they are almost to a person vio lently opposed to such a prospect. For them the problem is not the state having weapons and law enforcers and soldiers and national boundaries. Instead, the pro blem is unfettered entrepreneurism and the inequality of profit. Anti-capitalism is best defined, to paraphrase Mencken, by the fear that someone, somewhere, is getting rich. Looking at the warfare state, the anti-capitalists object to some one making money off the militarism, and indeed they should be embarrassed that the state institutions they favor can only successfully mount a military machine by exploiting the profit system. Yet, tellingly, their primary objection is oft en not with the profiteers war; it is with the war s profiteers. Some words are harsh and the concepts they embody seem harsher. Some notions see

m too idealistic for many cynics. Peace, love, and freedom are all words that ge t a bad rap as head-in-the-cloud concepts that don t describe reality as it actual ly exists. But we do know that in a world where not all is peaceful, love is som etimes hard to find, and freedom is always in peril, all of these ideals, insofa r as they are allowed to flourish, point the way to a future of harmony and plen ty. The same is true of capitalism. Don t let its enemies spoil a good word for th e greatest economic system in the history of the human race. Under the joint leadership of Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Finance Minister Paul Martin, Canada underwent one of the most fiscally responsible periods in it s history. Debt reduction was a goal that figured prominently throughout the ten years of the Chretien administration and in the subsequent two years of the fin ance minister's administration. Taking power as Canada's debt levels were hittin g record levels, Martin made it clear from the start that the priorities of the government would be fixed squarely on eliminating the deficit and the record of the following decade leaves little doubt that this was a commitment that was del ivered upon powerfully. Martin went to great lengths to bring the public on board, televising the lobbyi ng efforts of interest groups and publishing dire reports on Canada's fiscal sit uation, and then embarked on what was in all probability the greatest reduction in government spending ever undertaken in Canada from its inception. Following a peak deficit of $42 billion in fiscal 1993 1994, the administration managed to re verse the deficit and produce a surplus by 1997 1998, and sustain the surplus over the following two years before posting a historical record of $17.1 billion in budgetary surplus in fiscal 2000 2001. "One of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on the public under the guise of ec onomic science has finally been put to rest." From that point, the government was able to produce a surplus every year up to 2 007 2008, at times finding itself alone among G7 administrations in doing so. This was a period during which several significant tax cuts were implemented includi ng a $58 billion tax-cut package in 2001[16] alongside the reintroduction of inf lation indexing for personal income taxes. Prior to the Chretien regime, the Mulroney-led Conservative Party had led Canada into a protracted period of economic decline due to its inability to shake off the prevailing Keynesian orthodoxy of deficit spending as a means of reducing un employment.[19] Incidentally, the dramatic spending cuts implemented by Martin w ere accompanied and followed by a steep decline in the unemployment rate from a high of 11.4 percent in 1993 to 6 percent in 2007.[20] Having raised Canada's le vel of debt-to-GDP to an unprecedented high of 67 percent,[21] the Mulroney admi nistration is a typical example of the futility of free-market rhetoric in shapi ng the course of the economy so long as practice remains bound by the spell of K eynesian doctrine. Together, the two episodes form an addition to the endless we alth of historical instances of economic outcomes occurring in precisely the opp osite manner from that predicted by Keynesian theory.