The core difficulty in much modern academic writing on capitalism lies in its unwillingness to anchor the concept in concrete and falsifiable terms. What you describe here is a prime example of definitions that dissolve on contact with scrutiny. When capitalism is framed as both everywhere and nowhere as both a specific economic form and an amorphous social order it ceases to have diagnostic value. That vagueness allows the author to stretch the label across any historical period or social practice which leads to the everything counts problem you identified.
The insistence on an omnipresent state role is similarly questionable not because the state has never shaped markets but because asserting capitalism as inherently state centric ignores entire traditions of thought and historical cases where market order developed outside of or in tension with state control. By treating the state and capitalism as inseparable the author precludes serious engagement with voluntary and decentralized economic arrangements which undermines the utility of the analysis.
Your critique of the language is important as well. Terms like commodification or accumulation are not inherently meaningless but when stacked without clear operational definitions they function more to signal ideological alignment than to clarify mechanisms. Solid economic history depends on tracing cause and effect between real institutions incentives and actions not weaving together abstract categories that can be stretched to fit any conclusion.
The core difficulty in much modern academic writing on capitalism lies in its unwillingness to anchor the concept in concrete and falsifiable terms. What you describe here is a prime example of definitions that dissolve on contact with scrutiny. When capitalism is framed as both everywhere and nowhere as both a specific economic form and an amorphous social order it ceases to have diagnostic value. That vagueness allows the author to stretch the label across any historical period or social practice which leads to the everything counts problem you identified.
The insistence on an omnipresent state role is similarly questionable not because the state has never shaped markets but because asserting capitalism as inherently state centric ignores entire traditions of thought and historical cases where market order developed outside of or in tension with state control. By treating the state and capitalism as inseparable the author precludes serious engagement with voluntary and decentralized economic arrangements which undermines the utility of the analysis.
Your critique of the language is important as well. Terms like commodification or accumulation are not inherently meaningless but when stacked without clear operational definitions they function more to signal ideological alignment than to clarify mechanisms. Solid economic history depends on tracing cause and effect between real institutions incentives and actions not weaving together abstract categories that can be stretched to fit any conclusion.