How Communists hijacked the term “Capitalism” and reframed liberty as greed

By Michael Hancock | Commentary, Michael Hancock’s Undercurrent

The Forgotten Story of How Marx Turned Freedom into a Vice

Adam Smith, the moral philosopher who helped end the slave trade, has been posthumously slandered by the very ideology that claims to speak for the oppressed. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith described what he called a System of Natural Liberty — a moral and economic order in which free people pursue their own interests within the bounds of justice, producing prosperity for all. It was not a celebration of greed; it was an argument for dignity. Yet, over time, this moral vision was stripped of its name, smeared with vice, and relabeled with a single word that Smith himself rarely used: capitalism.

That linguistic theft was not accidental. It was strategic.

The Moral Vision of Liberty

To understand what was stolen, we must first recall what Smith actually built. His economic masterpiece was never divorced from his first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Together they form a single philosophy: that society thrives when individuals, guided by conscience, exchange freely and live within moral boundaries. His “invisible hand” was not a blind market force but the social consequence of virtue and trust.

Smith despised slavery precisely because it violated that moral order. Coerced labor was an affront to the natural liberty he believed was the birthright of every person. True wealth, in Smith’s world, came not from conquest or exploitation but from voluntary cooperation — the baker, the brewer, and the butcher, each serving others to serve themselves.

This was not laissez-faire anarchy; it was ordered freedom. Government had duties — defense, justice, and certain public works — but not dominion over the human will.

The Communist Rebranding

Then came Karl Marx.

Marx did not refine Smith’s ideas; he inverted them. He needed a villain for his grand moral drama of oppressor and oppressed, and he found one in what he called “capitalism.” The term became a moral cudgel, a word chosen to isolate, distort, and condemn the very liberty Smith had championed.

Where Smith saw self-interest disciplined by morality, Marx saw greed.

Where Smith saw enterprise serving human need, Marx saw exploitation.

Where Smith saw trade knitting nations together, Marx saw imperialism.

The rhetorical genius of Marx was to make freedom look sinful and envy appear righteous. By labeling the moral engine of prosperity as corrupt, communism declared virtue to be vice and recast coercion as compassion. The outcome was not just a new vocabulary — it was a new moral universe, one where theft could be called justice and tyranny could masquerade as equality.

The Art of Co-opt and Reframe

Communists quickly perfected a practice that remains central to ideological warfare today: co-opting moral language, emptying it of meaning, and refilling it with ideological content.

Their playbook is simple:

1. Take words that inspire — justice, equality, freedom.
2. Hollow them out.
3. Recast them to sanctify power.

Thus, “justice” became state redistribution rather than fairness under law.

“Equality” meant enforced sameness, not equal dignity.

“Freedom” meant liberation from moral responsibility, not from tyranny.

It is the same sleight of hand that turned Smith’s System of Natural Liberty into “capitalism” — a word now loaded with suspicion, as though moral agency and voluntary exchange were crimes.

Communism’s triumph was not merely political or economic; it was semantic. It mastered the art of moral hijacking. Every failed revolution left behind a new vocabulary of virtue corrupted — people’s republics ruled by one party, workers’ paradises built on forced labor, economic justice achieved through confiscation. Words once sacred were reprogrammed to defend the indefensible.

The Fruits of Each System

History delivered the verdict.

Smith’s vision, though imperfectly practiced, unleashed the most rapid expansion of prosperity in human history. Free enterprise — the true expression of natural liberty — ended serfdom, elevated labor, and abolished the slave economy that had chained men for centuries.

Marx’s vision, by contrast, produced mass starvation, gulags, and police states. Where Smith trusted moral choice, Marx trusted the state. Where Smith built markets of cooperation, Marx built bureaucracies of fear.

The irony is exquisite: The philosophy that began by condemning “exploitation” ended by perfecting it.

No honest observer can deny the moral contrast. The System of Natural Liberty depends on consent. Communism depends on compulsion. One elevates the person; the other erases him.

The Language War Today

The old tactic survives, wearing new slogans. The same ideological descendants who once demonized “capitalism” now baptize their causes with similarly inverted words: “equity” for enforced outcome, “inclusion” for ideological conformity, “social justice” for selective guilt. Each is a moral counterfeit, trading on the prestige of the original while quietly changing its meaning.

This is the enduring genius — and danger — of the communist method: win the words, and you win the world. Once a culture adopts the enemy’s vocabulary, it begins to think in the enemy’s categories. Defending “capitalism” on their terms is like defending “selfishness” in a debate about charity; the battle is lost before it begins.

Reclaiming the Moral Language of Liberty

It is time to abandon the borrowed word. Smith never fought for “capitalism.” He fought for liberty — moral, civil, and economic. What he proposed was not a system of accumulation but a system of accountability: individuals pursuing their good within the rule of law, accountable to conscience and community.

We should speak of free enterprise, of voluntary exchange, of moral economics rooted in human dignity. Because what Smith defended — and Marx defamed — was not merely an economic idea. It was a moral one.

Economic liberty is the practical expression of moral liberty. The freedom to work, trade, and create is inseparable from the freedom to think, believe, and speak. To poison one is to poison them all.

Conclusion – Recovering Adam Smith’s Revolution

The great war of ideas is not fought with bullets but with words. When communists redefined liberty as greed, they didn’t just malign a system — they rewrote the moral code of civilization.

 

READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT MICHAEL HANCOCK’S UNDERCURRENT

 

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