My (extremely tentative!) thesis is that there’s been a shift in language over the last decade or so in left/liberal culture, and this is part of that. “Leftists” are often very down on “liberals” -- in the telling of Left Twitter, liberals are basically centrists and centrists might as well be right-wing -- yet what “The Left” believes is, by and large, pretty much what I believed as a “liberal” two decades ago. (I suspect a lot of this is generational, driven by disillusionment at perceived failures on the part of the Clinton/Obama establishment.)
Likewise, I think what’s seen as “capitalism” has made a linguistic shift. I’ve always thought of small business owners and solo entrepreneurs, from the little bookshop on Main Street down to freelance artists selling their prints at the dealers’ rooms in science fiction and comic conventions, as quintessentially capitalist, but at least on the left, that doesn’t really seem to be how it’s used anymore. The focus is squarely on the worst features of “big” capitalism, on the principle that exploitation and destruction is where capitalism always leads. Since a two-person indie software company doesn’t fit that narrative of capitalism, it’s…something other than capitalism? Frankly, I don’t think the logic fully holds up there.
Back in my day [waving cane], I would have distinguished between entrepreneurship and corporatism -- which is, more or less, that “Main Street” vs. “Wall Street” distinction. (I also think it’s worth acknowledging that there are some small businesses out there which, depending on the yardstick you’re measuring by, can be truly, truly dreadful.) But, this is a hill I don’t have a real interest in dying on. If someone wants to argue that a dealer’s room at a furry con full of freelance artists selling sexy catgirl pinups isn’t capitalism but “market socialism” or whatever, then godspeed.
As a unrelated note, re-reading your last sentence, though:
> I think the real split is going to be more about authoritarianism vs. libertarianism, and the libertarian track record on avoiding things like mass famine and consequent societal destabilization is perhaps not the best.
The authoritarian track record here does not seem to be sterling, either.