Before we can address the kind of capitalism which is desirable, and before we can address the debates surrounding capitalism, its successes and its failures, we must first ask: what is capitalism?

There have been very many different traditions of capitalism. There is the concept of free enterprise. There is free trade and exchange. There is the principle of private ownership. There is liberalism in the traditional sense. Classical liberalism attempts to reconcile its tenets of predominant 'individual rights,' especially the right of property, with limited constitutional government which exists to guarantee those rights, claiming that this arrangement is a free market. The tradition of laissez-faire capitalism is a loose idea based on the principle laissez faire, to let [things] alone. There are various schools of economics with their own developments on the theme of capitalism, such as the Chicago school economists, or the Austrian school economists. Recently, there has also been the idea of capitalism as a moral system according to Objectivism and its derivative movements. And then there is capitalism simply as making money, and a capitalist simply as one who makes money.

And how is the word capitalism generally understood today?

A dictionary will define the word this way, or similarly:

1. An economic system, marked by a free market and open competition, in which goods are produced for profit, labor is performed for wages, and the means of production and distribution are privately owned.

2. A political or social system regarded as being based on capitalism.

(source: American Heritage)

Most of the first definition above is extraneous, or misleading. The system commonly regarded as capitalism today does not have a free market (unhindered, voluntary exchange) or open competition. Some labor is not performed for wages (for example, an approximate average of one-third of labor is the U.S. is 'owed' to the state), and a large proportion of the means of production and distribution are not privately owned, they are state-owned.

And, if capitalism is just "an economic system" among other possible systems, why choose it over others? If it is characterized by producing goods for profit and performing labor for wages, why not experiment with other possibilities such as labor performed without wages, or goods produced without profit? Why not tinker with a market; why not experiment with partially-free markets or less-than-open competition? And why not have all or some of "the means of production and distribution" outside of private hands?

This has all been done and continues to be done, and it has all failed in terms of beneficial impact on human lives. This experimentation has led to the condition of so-called 'capitalism' today. There has been a failure to understand the essence of the issue; there has been a failure to understand capitalism. There has been a failure to understand what is at stake, and there has been a failure to understand what is really of value.

The second definition more accurately describes what is called capitalism by most people today, and gets at the heart of a problem: what most people call capitalism as a sociopolitical system is merely something regarded as such, rather than a sociopolitical circumstance which follows from the economics of what capitalism really is, at its root — or what it should be.

The dictionary definitions I quoted above, as well as most economic, social, and political discourse on capitalism, is removed, theoretical, cold, impersonal, even antiseptic — everything but realistic and human and immediate. But the real point of it all is immediate, and it is human, and it is personal.

What distinguishes capitalism is first of all simply an absence of something, and the consequences which follow. That something is compulsion in matters of economics — matters of trade and ownership. Capitalism is founded on choice for each person over themselves and their own affairs, as well as their interactions with others, rather than considering domination and interference to be acceptable.

Capitalism as a tradition is essentially individual economic freedom, a tradition with ancient roots around the world. That this has been diluted, and at times discarded, does not change that capitalism represents the economic aspect of a wider regard for individual freedom, which has also found many other expressions. 'Capitalism' today is not capitalism as a fulfillment of this theory.

I identify certain elements as essential to the tradition of capitalism, all connected and inseparable dimensions of what we might call economic individualism:

1. Individual private ownership of person, and whatever material possessions can be recognized to belong, rather than the rights of other people (or group rights) to individual person and property.

2. Voluntary labor and effort by each person, i.e. the absence of compulsory labor (also known as slavery).

3. Voluntary exchange, whether through barter or the use of an agreeable medium of exchange.

4. Free trade across artificial lines which divide individuals into groups. The advantages of free exchange between people imply the unimportance of division, and the erosion of official borders as well as collective divisions which exist only in belief, such as religion, race, ethnicity, etc.

Capitalism as a tradition of freedom emphasizes the individual over the collective group, prefers free and voluntary interaction to compulsory, and is tolerant of diversity among individuals and in practical terms, favors and rewards it (especially specialization, but also the ability to adapt and draw upon multiple capacities).

The logical fulfillment of this would be the most radical of all possible elimination of restriction on individual economic freedom. It would imply the most radically individual understanding of economic identity. It would also foster the greatest possible individual diversity.

Given the essence of capitalism: the logical destination of the tradition of capitalism is real free-market capitalism, a stateless free market based on individual rather than group identity, on individuality, and on individual freedom.

Thus in Promethean Capitalism I have chosen the phrase "Promethean capitalism" to describe a radical, true free market of individuals, which I believe is the economic circumstance most conducive to individual accomplishment and improvement.

Some will still wonder: why use the word 'capitalism' if capitalism is now considered to be something other than Promethean capitalism — why use the phrase "Promethean Capitalism?" Why not abandon 'capitalism' to what is today a perversion of individual freedom, even if I am right about the unfulfilled 'soul' of capitalism as it should be?

In every great tradition, every tradition founded on something essential, important, and beneficial, there will evolve the complexity of distortion and obfuscation as that tradition evolves (more so if the potential of such a tradition has never been fully pursued and realized). But that does not condemn the essence of such a tradition, or prevent us from defending that essence from its corruption and ultimately returning it to its worthiest meaning. We should preserve and continue what has been great and beneficial, and object to what has not. We should continue the tradition of what has been contributed toward personal freedom in the name of capitalism — not abandon the name of capitalism to what really belongs to authoritarianism, or to exploitation, or to the impersonal, or to the half-realized life. Capitalism belongs to us.

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