Most “right-libertarians” see free markets and capitalism as the same thing ... and America’s un-free markets as therefore not capitalist at all. An interesting sub-species of "right-libertarian," dubbed the "vulgar libertarian" by my C4SS colleague Kevin Carson, compounds the conflation by defending non-free-market entities like corporations as if they were free market, and therefore "capitalist," entities.
Most "left-libertarians" see free markets and capitalism as not only not the same thing, but incompatible ... and America, as a capitalist nation, as inherently non-free-market. The left-libertarian critique of capitalist entities such as corporations centers around their symbiotic relations with the state, through which they gain privilege and protection at the expense of freedom in the market around them.
The signal contribution of the Occupy movement with respect to this issue is that it’s closing the obvious perceptual gap in favor of the left-libertarian claim, at the expense of state involvement of any type in the economy (and therefore at the expense of the state, period).
Here's the whole thing.
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