Perhaps the most egregious capitulation in the science of Political Economy was actually committed by Adam Smith himself when he legitimized land rent flowing into the hands of the aristocracy of his day. But if he had not done so, then "The Wealth of Nations" would probably have never been published. We may well owe an additional debt of gratitude to Adam Smith simply for his ability to sneak the larger part of the dawning economic reality past the crowing aristocratic roosters of his day. Further capitulation of Richardo and Smith included the use of the word "capital" when referring to "inventory". This is probably the root of the notion that "money" is "capital". The capitulations (or perhaps the feints) of Smith were exposed by Henry George in the late 1800's and that seems to have prompted the well funded and much ballyhooed "Austrian School" in economics and the likes of "Murray Rothbard" and "Friedrich Hayek". Their role in support of the aristocracy was to promote a metaphysical pretense for land ownership (primarily Rothbard), but more importantly, it was to hide both of the major forms of Economic Rent by aggregating land and money with the term capital . The result, as was the objective, was to allow the aristocracy to claim that "rentierism" is "capitalism", to hide or justify all forms of Economic Rent by co-mingling rent with wages and true "interest" and calling the results "profit". The success of this effort is seen today as the right winged supporters of aristocracy use mudslinging and name calling to brand anyone attacking the "right" of the aristocracy to collect Economic Rent as an attack on the sacred cow of "capitalism". The name calling and branding normally consists of referring to to the attacker of rent as a "communist", or a "socialist", or a "leftist". The delusional nature of these tactics is based entirely on the destruction of the word "capital" as described in the definition of Real Capital .