We return to the belabored c-word... (no, not the cunts...)

New entry up on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), and it's a complete farce.

Cordelli’s article is loaded with content from the Marxist or socialist far left. Space devoted to critics of capitalism far outpaces even basic descriptions of the economic concept, and proponents of capitalism are reduced to shallow parodies.

"Cordelli’s prose functions as an anti-capitalist advocacy piece rather than a neutral and descriptive encyclopedia entry."

Instead of attempting some semblance of balance, the new SEP entry author Chiara Cordelli, a professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago, used this platform to air her own personal grievances with capitalism as an economic system

Such imbalances could only emerge from an academic environment in which an ideological echo chamber supplants rigorous peer review, and the fashionable socialist perspectives of the professoriate lead it to mistake bad caricatures of a market economy for descriptive fact.

"In an era when academia is under fire for a well-documented leftward ideological shift as well as declining standards of scholarly rigor, the publication of an encyclopedia entry with a pronounced anti-capitalism skew only confirms the public’s declining trust in our university system."

yup, just exit academia already #1419510, #1087308

Heavy skew in the supporting article/authors: of 169 authors cited half are outright hostile, 8% supportive; for the "Socialism" entry, it's two-thirds of 160 extremely supportive and only two overtly critical.
Maybe, just, maybe you're failing to live up to the standards of an "encyclopedia"

In addition to the Marxists, Cordelli’s entry gives ample space to a stream of non-Marxian socialist and anti-capitalist thinkers such as the sociological historian Karl Polanyi, the far-left economist Thomas Piketty, and self-citations to Cordelli’s own writings in the “democratic socialist” tradition.

ridiculous. Word counts, too, excessively skewed toward negative accounts/criticism:

The author was clearly more concerned with highlighting every minute facet of anti-capitalist academic writing imaginable than with helping readers understand what the concept means, or the reasons that people defend it.

and, ooops:

Whatever criticisms may be offered of capitalism, its underlying economic theories have coincided with an unparalleled rise in prosperity and well-being between the late 18^th century and today, often known as the Great Enrichment. By comparison, the Marxist perspectives that dominate Cordelli’s work carry the ignominious baggage of mass atrocity and economic ruin in the 20^th century, though the phrase “Soviet Union” never appears in her entry.

ALSO, and this will shock the stackers, she's repeatedly incorrect in her entry text:

Almost all the sources used to defend free markets are given superficial treatment, and even those superficial references tend to be wrong. She gives short shrift to economist Friedrich Hayek's work, yet manages to misrepresent those positions that she does discuss, such as when she depicts him as a theorist of equilibrium instead of as a theorist of coordination and information, which are distinct and often contradictory approaches.
In an illustrative thread on X, Ben Golub, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, identified a number of other basic factual errors in the entry, such as the author’s claim that Hayek and Milton Friedman believed that, for capitalism to exist, “there must be complete, private, and unregulated markets for all ‘factors of production,’ including capital and labor,” despite both making allowances for regulation and market rules.

The labor theory of value just assumed

Cordelli also opens the first section of her entry with Marx's definition of capitalism and makes reference to the “labor theory of value” without acknowledging that this concept has been considered obsolete by mainstream economists since the 1870s.

yesyes, we know: Marxian economists still thinks this is a reasonable and valuable approach #1471628

Yet Cordelli proceeds as if Marx’s economic theories remain intact, ultimately devoting some 800 words spread across two different sections of the entry to exegesis on “surplus value.” That’s more verbiage on a single debunked Marxian concept than she provides to the entirety of Friedman’s work.

"This is a philosophical equivalent of treating geocentrism or flat-earth theory as valid and useful ideas."

Another world is possible

a better entry might include serious engagement with the Scottish Enlightenment precursors to the emergence of market capitalism in the late 18^th century, with references to David Hume’s work on trade and currency, as well as something more than superficial references to Adam Smith.
It might also discuss how the ideas we call “capitalism” came to supplant an older mercantilist economic order that used government policies to steer an economy for nationalistic objectives.

== "As it stands, this rich and complex academic literature receives nary a mention beyond a few passing citations."

This is a pretty basic and reasonable ask:

Since capitalism is fundamentally an economic concept, one could reasonably expect to see mainstream economic voices discussed, and competently so, by someone versed in economic theory. There would be a clear description of how profits work both as signals of demand and incentives for entrepreneurship, how competition between firms disciplines market actors, how market prices make economic calculation possible by signaling the relative scarcity of goods in a common denominator, and how government policies contribute to the creation of monopolies
Welfarist arguments for capitalism would not be confined to a single paragraph, and would describe in detail how free-market capitalism has been responsible for lifting the world out of poverty. The way that capitalism incentivizes entrepreneurship, and the role entrepreneurs play in arbitrage and the creation of new goods and services, would play a more important role than the entry’s single paragraph on Joseph Schumpeter, the first economist to make entrepreneurship central to the understanding of economic development and change.

I don't know why people keep insisting on fairytales... Ms Cordelli, Mr. Beckert, Mr. Piketty et al -- have you guys tried feeling differently?

also, Handre's tweet summary was excellent:

The word "capitalism" smuggles in the assumption that without deliberate institutional design, voluntary exchange produces exploitation. We tacitly accept that assumption every time we use the word uncritically.