Explanation number one. If you use the
conventional definition
you're going to have a kind of
easy time that you won't have
with the correct, the better, definition.
Let me explain. With my definition, and
the one that people like me use (the
employer/employee relationship)
you immediately, if you use that, you're
going to have a problem.
Why? Because this arrangement
is very clearly and obviously
undemocratic. It's worse.
It's anti-democratic. Why?
Because a tiny group of people make all
the decisions
for a large group of people. And the
large group of people
are excluded from those decisions.
If you go to work in a capitalist
enterprise
you don't control the executives. You
don't control the board of directors.
You don't vote on them. You don't put
them in or out of office.
You have no authority at all.
In contrast, they have absolute
authority over you.
They can tell you on a Friday afternoon
"Don't come back here Monday.
You don't have a job here anymore." They
can take your job, they take your income,
they throw you out of your situation, you
may have to leave the area,
you lose your house, your kids lose their
school... You understand the importance.
These people have enormous
power over you
and you have none over them. If you were
to define capitalism
as you ought to, with a definition
that does
the job definitions are supposed to do,
you would be vulnerable to the critique
that this system that you're defending
is the antithesis of democracy.
And you know something? They don't want to have to defend it.
Much better to define it in terms of
free enterprise
and hope you don't know that free
enterprises existed
in slavery, feudalism and communism. 
And free markets too.
All right. The second reason. If you
understand the employer/employee
relationship to be the key
defining relationship of capitalism,
you're going to have a thought that
comes to your mind pretty quickly after
that.
That there's a certain arresting
parallel, isn't there,
between capitalism,
feudalism and slavery.
It's easy to distinguish them because
only capitalism has the employer/
employee relationship.
The other two don't. Capitalists pay
their workers,
the other two don't, etc. But you are
going to notice something
similar. In all of those systems,
capitalism, feudalism, and slavery,
there's a striking similarity
despite their differences. In each of
those systems the key relationship 
between people,
among people,
in the production of the goods and
services everybody depends on in all
those systems,
it's a dominant-subordinate.
Small group at the top. Large group at
the bottom. Small group has all the power,
large group takes it all. The masters
control the slaves. 
The lords control the serfs.
And guess what? The capitalists control
the working class.
You've probably noticed that in your own
life. And why is this a problem for the
defenders of capitalism? 
It's a huge problem.
And that's because of history. Capitalism
comes into the world making a revolution.
In this this country, as I mentioned
earlier, it revolts against slavery
and it presents itself as the system
committed to
"freedom, liberty, equality,"
all of that. Capitalism in the other
parts of the world,
for example in France, comes about
through the French revolution
back in 1789
that had on the banner of the
revolutionaries "liberty, equality,
fraternity."
In other words capitalism wants to be
associated with [these principles].
And the leaders and revolutionaries, like
Thomas Jefferson and
Benjamin Franklin in this country, wanted
and believed in
democracy, equality, and all of those
things.
They therefore do not want to defend
this system
that looks alarmingly like the very
feudalism they thought they had broken
from,
that looks alarmingly like the slavery
they thought they had broken from, that
they wanted
to break from. They confront the
possibility that by having gotten 
rid of master/slave
and having gotten rid of lord and serf
and having replaced them with
employer/employee
they may have betrayed the very
big, wonderful objectives
of liberty, equality, fraternity, and
democracy
that they had in their minds. 
I'm taking them
at their word that they were sincere
in wanting these wonderful, humane
values. But then I have to conclude, and
so would the defenders of capitalism
if they understood
the definition of employer/employee
as key to understanding capitalism,
they would have to admit that the
promises
made during the revolution that
established capitalism
have never been fulfilled. We don't have
equality, fraternity, democracy,
or liberty. We have a system
in which a tiny group of people sitting
at the top of the corporate ladders
run this society, and that's because of
the nature
of the employer/employee relationship
