Not true. The guest is misinformed or lying. The term “capitalist” was used many times by many authors (see David Ricardo for just one example) for many years before Marx. My guess is that Johnson’s guest is lying because a good faith argument on the various forms of capitalism is too hard and nuanced. Laissez-faire proponents (the so-called ”freedom capitalists”) set up Marxism or socialism as straw men because laissez-faire capitalism versus a modern mixed capitalist economy is a losing argument. Mixed economies are wildly popular and have been for a hundred years, from the very beginnings of FDR’s New Deal right up to the present day.
I'd go with the uninformed hypothesis here. Since posting the above, I looked him up online. I found him being interviewed by Alex Jones and elsewhere being outed as an "alt-right" activist. I like him. He's a good black advocate of change, just willing to take the extreme positions for the jive.
But, while I don't care to dispute your citations of earlier usages, I'll side with him to the extent that the term "Capitalist" has been hijacked politically by the agenda wonks for elitist governance. In the interview I listened to, which I got to hear twice, he clearly describes how it's been used politically. I'm certain he doesn't giveadamn whether the word was in a dictionary before the agenda wonks woke it up and made it front and center on the bogeyman parade of human evils.
He says that the political method uses it to vilify personal initiative and to promote social or government management. He's absolutely spot on.
and, oh, for the record..... I have watched my wife's Jane Austen movie collection, and right there, circa 1802, Jane Austen has fat gents using the word "capital" like it's the best thing ever, or at least since suspenders. So, technically, you are correct about the existence of the word, in social polite society, decades before Marx.
I get the drift you are a fan of mixed economic systems part socialist and part capitalist. I don't know much about you. Are you a Rio Tinto exec? In that crowd you'd have to stick pretty close to the positions I've seen you take. Should I buy stock in Rio Tinto?????
I always hated Kennecott, or whatever the hell it was being called. Bought up and worked into a cartelist operation by the Rockefellers, who sold to the Gugenheims who sold it and whoever the hell ever had it sold it on out and down to BP and the Queen, influential as hell in Utah. I knew some of the people. Owns the whole damn mountain. Not sure who owns who now, the Mormons own the Queen or the Queen owns the Mormons, which is it.
But kept Magna from going suburban or even being a real city. All kinds of people there. One of the best places for somebody like me, who won't fit in, really, anywhere.
I like mining, though. I favor the idea of a mine actually taking down the mountain and processing it for every resource that's there. And, now, Daybreak is a fine development.
