Standing on the
shoulders of
Giants that lived
centuries ago is always a hazardous pastime. Both
Karl Marx and
Adam Smith had deep flaws in their
systems and
theories because they had never actually seen them in action -- they were
geniuses and
ahead of their time, but tbey could not possibly
predict the exact course of
human history.
Both men came up with radical and independant economic models and named them capitalism and communism completely unaware that a few years down the road, they would become the two dominant warring ideologies in the world.
Both men were very specific about their respective systems -- The Wealth of Nations is a huge book, not to mention the multi-volumed Kapital of Marx.
Today we use the terms capitalism and communism very lightly, capitalism meaning loosely control of the material world by individuals and communism meaning the control of material by a collective. That's it. Both systems are bound to work correctly under the right circumstances, and both seem artificially limiting -- and are different definitions that the creators would have used. Smith would never have allowed for his economic model to be used to describe anarchy, and yet anarchy under the definition I have given is, by default, a form of capitalism.
Economic models are artificial distinctions, the truth ALWAYS lies somewhere in between.