Should a Libertarian be a Capitalist?

First of all I should say that "capital" (for Marx, in general, and for this piece of writing) has a very concrete meaning: capital is a good or goods that help people accelerate the amount of wealth they have. So, a wrench, a road, or a building are very good examples, or a tunneling machine, or a shovel, or a cell phone insofar as it is used to do business. Capital, or capital goods, are the opposite of consumer goods.

The most common definition of capitalism runs something like this: A society in which the means of production are owned privately. This is not a very good definition because almost every term is too vague. One unorthodox way of defining capitalism is to see what happens in self-labled capitalist societies. 

Capitalist governments are not perfectly 'free market' as you might expect. They take such actions as subsidizing or nationalizing industries (like telephone companies or train systems) if and only if the intervention is meant ultimately to extend the enjoyment of capital investments (rails and telephone lines) to all the citizens. For this reason capitalist governments have felt it was legitimate to 

• tax and spend on "key" capital investments (such as public works), 
• control the monetary unit along the lines of Keynesian or Neo-liberal/Monetarist managed inflationism (e.g. the FED or the European Central Bank), and 
• spend excessively to raise aggregate demand in times of 'crisis' (for example stimulus packages, and bail outs)
• etc.

"Capitalism" in this historical sense is the body of reasoning that legitimizes government power that socializes the enjoyment and cost of large capital investment.

In this sense, "socialism" stops being the opposite of capitalism but merely a further degree of government power. In socialism the government has the power to intervene violently or with the threat of violence not just to extend the social enjoyment of capital investments but also to extend services that assure a varying set of privileges under the umbrella of "social justice." 

Communism, in this historical sense, means the argument and body of reasoning (now deeply shaken by historical experiments) that universal government violence is the "best" way to extend all services and goods capital or consumer to all people. 'Best' in this sense might include, 'most ethical,' and to some deeply deranged theorists even, 'most efficient.'

One step before capitalism on this hypothetical line of government violence would be called Freedom, where governments are used only to police life, liberty, and property, or, in otherwords, governments sole raison d'etre is to assure the sanctity of self-ownership in the present, past, and future.

One step before Freedom would be anarchy, where violence and the threat of violence is completely banished from society: a city with no guardians.

Why draw such a line of violence? One answer is to frame the question, which Thomas Jefferson believes is most important and most perennial political question which is "What is the legitimate role of government?" Another is to pose and define the terms of Freedom and limited government in the framework of a stragegic pragmatists, essentially the admirable and charismatic basis of President Obama's rhetoric and thinking. A third reason is to pose as a possibility that more centrally planned violence, such as capitalism, socialism and even communism (in the case of China and Vietnam) were okay plans to extend the enjoyment of industrial capital improvements to all people (as well as extend citizenship universally); however, that admitted, to raise the issue that now, at this point in human history we are coming to a time technologically, spiritually, and sociologically, when less and less violence is actually a prerequisite of the further advancement of justice and living well.

The violent organizations which were necessary and good in worse times, such as central banks, import and export tariffs, minimum wage laws, and income taxes are being out-moded, and are have now become, or will soon become a drag on future human satisfaction, both spiritually and materially. Just as slavery was outmoded economically even before its bloody abolishment by the automatic cotton picker and the industrial revolution, so too the recent economic crisis shows how Keynesian economics and central banking are more a hurting than a helping hand for the majority of people. The continued socialization of roads and highways have hidden the costs of using a car and eating trucked food and has thus been a huge contributor to global warming as well as alienating food sources from communities.  And, I predict confidently, that genetic and electronic medicine will make the social systems that now provide healthcare to many first world nations redundant and inefficient, or already have begun to do so.  

What would be best is of course a just society with as little violence as possible; whether Freedom is the best choice at this point is an open question, but a question that needs to be opened.