Capitalism is left-wing - right-Libertarian claim

[IcarusAngel]

Has anybody heard this one before? The argument goes something like this: There was a relatively pointless Frenchman who sat on the left in French National Assembly in parliament, Frédéric Bastiat, a historically insignificant figure compared to someone like Robespierre, who was actually conservative in most areas even by those standards, but who happened to write something that is actually capitalism. Because his ideas sounded a lot like what some classical-liberals in England wrote, he is actually a classical liberal, all of whom advocated capitalism in this type of thinking. And thus, because he sat on the left, and was a classical-liberal, he was a leftist, and thus capitalism holds a claim as being a leftist theory, as would apparently classical-liberalism I guess.

This seems to put more actual emphasis on symbolic and trival matters than actual theoretical distinctions between left and right. I've never heard this standard used at all anywhere including in PolSci, but nonetheless some libertarians who advocate capitalism claim that capitalism is left-wing.

I wish I was making this up, but I'm not:

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0706b.asp

From the "Future of Freedom" foundation, another right-wing organization with "Freedom" in its name like the "Freedom fighters."

the von Mises and Lew Rockwell homepages have a lot like this in them.

http://anarcho-mercantilist.blogspot.com/2008/08/ron-paul-is-fascist.html

Here's a left-libertarian claiming ron paul is an example of a "Fascist libertarian."

"States rights do not make free. States rights is shifting the populatory contest from the federal to states. It is still a popularity contest. Ron Paul does not even support states rights by the federal regulations and tax incentives which are corporate welfare. "

What's wrong with democracy?

Anyway, in my opinion, only democratic-capitalism comes close to left-wing values, because democratic-capitalism can be transformed. Remember, many socialists advocated using the government to destroy capitalism - which may (or may not) be a tenant of communism as well.

The other one is that kind of capitalism where equality is the goal, and there isn't massive concentration - Rothbard, who tried to unite with the new left, considered these ideas to be "nonsense" and supported "private courts" defending a Libertarian "constitutional law" - constitutional laws such as self-ownership and private property.

Crazy stuff, but I'd like to hear opinions on this including from OIers.

[IcarusAngel]

I forgot to mention, in this type of thinking, "Socialism" is actually conservative and is "inbetween" capitalism, on the far left I guess, and the far right theories:

"Thus, with Liberalism abandoned from within, there was no longer a Party of Hope in the Western world, no longer a “Left” movement to lead a struggle against the State and against the unbreached remainder of the Old Order. Into this gap, into this void created by the drying up of radical liberalism, there stepped a new movement: Socialism. Libertarians of the present day are accustomed to think of socialism as the polar opposite of the libertarian creed. But this is a grave mistake, responsible for a severe ideological disorientation of libertarians in the present world. As we have seen, Conservatism was the polar opposite of liberty; and socialism, while to the “left” of conservatism, was essentially a confused, middle-of-the-road movement. It was, and still is, middle-of-the-road because it tries to achieve Liberal ends by the use of Conservative means. "

[Demogorgon]

If you see anybody arguing this, tell them to look up "anachronism" in a dictionary.