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Capitalism, a system of free markets, free enterprise, and private control of property, is sometimes given credit only for being open to abuse. As it allows freedom of choice and action, it admits greed and oppression as well. Many people, including members of the Church, have mixed feelings about capitalism, their perception of abuses of the system coloring their view of the system itself. Some conclude, for example, that careers in business necessarily imply materialistic values and a propensity for unethical decisions and immoral actions. An antimarket viewpoint is expressed by a number of LDS scholars who find in the capitalist system too little of the integrity and virtue that ideally should characterize the actions of those engaged in commercial pursuits. Moreover, while suggesting that we strive to implement the United Order, which founds economic activity on higher, divinely revealed principles, they compare that conceptually perfect system with the capitalist system actually experienced today. Not surprisingly, in a comparison of the ideal with the real, capitalism is found wanting. Of course, there are problems with the market system. But in trying to teach the Saints that greed is evil, some teach that capitalism is evil as well. When scholars find fault with capitalism, their readers may be led to believe that the market system itself is fundamentally flawed. Many LDS scholars, including myself, do not subscribe to anticapitalist beliefs. An alternative view of the nature of the market, or free enterprise, system is that free enterprise requires freedom, which can be misused or abused. Injustice and unethical behavior, which represent such abuse, should be condemned. However, it is, according to this view, inappropriate to equate unethical or immoral behavior with capitalism, free enterprise, or business. Let us, instead, call this behavior what it plainly is—sin. The inequalities of income distribution, the environmental effects attributed to “market failure,” and the nature and persistence of vice markets need not produce abhorrence for markets per se. A market is really just a social arrangement or institution enabling people to buy and sell products and services according to free choice. Markets are morally neutral. The market mechanism is merely the freedom to buy and sell. Markets are flexible and spontaneous. They provide powerful incentives to be creative and industrious. They produce new jobs and new products, promote the satisfaction of work, and permit more abundant consumption, saving, and investment for society as a whole. Since markets are merely the activities and efforts of individuals, they do not preclude regulation. Even in a free market, regulatory efforts and effective institutional arrangements can, within bounds, redistribute incomes, subsidize underprivileged individuals and groups, restrict vice markets, protect the environment, and so on. As Adam Smith observed, the market system assures that all members of society will ultimately be better off, even if, within the framework of law and competition, individuals generally pursue only their personal interests. Those of us who have this positive view of capitalism even dare to hope that free markets will make the world’s peoples healthier, better educated, and more prosperous until a millennial order is ushered in by the Redeemer of the world. In this article, I hope to show that leaders of the Church in our dispensation of the gospel support capitalism as the best economic system now available for the good of free men. After reviewing their written statements on private property, money and wealth, socialism, economic agency, capital, and the United States Constitution, I conclude that the prophets were prepared to condemn the capitalistic sinner but not the capitalist system; they found much to be praised in the market system. These views can be of assistance in our formulation of social viewpoints for today’s economy. Private Property Private property—material goods or ideas belonging to an individual or a nongovernment group—is fundamental to capitalism. One prominent LDS scholar, Hugh Nibley, takes an essentially negative view of private property, claiming that it stands in the way of a perfect, celestial society. Indeed, many Latter-day Saints wonder about the value of a system of private ownership. Support for such concerns seems to come from Acts 4:32, which reports that the earliest disciples of Jesus “were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things in common.” The first prophet of the modern dispensation to address the concept of common property was Joseph Smith, who wrote, “I answered the questions which were frequently asked me, while on my last journey from Kirtland to Missouri, as printed in the Elders’ Journal, Vol. 1, Number 2, pages 28 and 29, as follows. . . . ‘Do the Mormons believe in having all things in common?’ No.” A partial elaboration of “common stock principles” followed later when the Prophet suggested “that there be no organization of large bodies upon common stock principles, in property, or of large companies of firms, until the Lord shall signify it in a proper manner, as it opens such a dreadful field for the avaricious, the indolent, and the corrupt hearted to prey upon the innocent and virtuous, and honest.” One might argue that at this point the potential for abuses and free-riding was strong and that the Lord had not as yet announced the inauguration of the United Order. But Joseph’s statements appear to indicate that “having all things in common” was not the Lord’s plan. This expression may serve as a shorthand way of describing how none of the early Saints claimed that “ought of the things which he possessed was his own” (Acts 4:32; italics added). The Lord’s plan for this era actually called for a division of all the consecrated assets into private stewardships, with the Lord owning what stewards possessed. Brigham Young, who was instructed by Joseph, taught that the “true principle” was to place emphatically everything we possessed upon the altar for the use and benefit of the Kingdom of God, and men shall be as stewards over that which they possess, not that everything shall be common or that all men shall be made equal in all things, for to one is given one talent, to another two, and to another five, according to their capacity. In our time, Harold B. Lee gave a more modern flavor to some implications of the United Order that seemed to be too little understood. He taught that “the United Order will not be a socialistic or communistic setup; it will be something distinctive, and yet it will be more capitalistic in its nature than either socialism or communism, in that private ownership and individual responsibility will be maintained.” Undoubtedly, conditions will be different in an eternal world in which time and other sources of desirable goods are unlimited. But in a mortal world in which humans are to learn and operate within the sphere in which they have been placed, private stewardships are part of the fabric of this creation and its purposes. According to Brigham Young, private property plays a positive role in the plan of happiness for mortals: Efforts to accumulate property in the correct channel are far from being an injury to any community; on the contrary they are highly beneficial, provided individuals, with all that they have, always hold themselves in readiness to advance the interests of the Kingdom of God on the earth. Let every man and woman be industrious, prudent, and economical in their acts and feelings, and while gathering to themselves, let each one strive to identify his or her interests with the interests of this community, with those of their neighbor and neighborhood, let them seek their happiness and welfare in that of all, and we will be blessed and prospered. John Taylor rejected Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s challenge that property is theft. To President Taylor, writing in 1852, private ownership was to be encouraged, and thus public confiscation of individual property without a compelling public interest was tantamount to theft. He exclaimed that “to level the world . . . to say the least, is a species of robbery; to some it may appear an honorable one, but, nevertheless, it is robbery. What right has any private man to take by force the property of another?”