Anyway, I began to think a little bit differently about business and I -- being a part of the left, it was very uncomfortable for me beginning to think positive thoughts about capitalism and I resisted it. I didn't want to tell my wife about it. I certainly didn't want to tell my friends.

HATTIE: You were a closet capitalist. You're a closet capitalist, Michael.

MICHAEL: The first piece I wrote, A Closet Capitalist Confesses, I did, in the Washington Post, 1977; but, I just realized I couldn't be a socialist. I couldn't find an example of socialism anywhere in the world that I admired. And, so I backed into capitalism. I wasn't pro-capitalist, but as I was trying to make up my mind. Am I a socialist, which is what I thought. Am I really a socialist? Do I want America to become more socialist? And I thought no, I don't want that. And so I backed into capitalism by abandoning socialism. If not socialism, then what.

HATTIE: Okay. What is capitalism?

MICHAEL: When I began I didn't know and I looked up in the dictionaries and they all have, I checked seven or eight of them, they all have the following definition. Different words.

(Voiceover) Three characteristics, market system, private property and private accumulational of wealth, the profit motive as I said.

But after awhile I thought that can't be right. That's what everybody says, but that's not right because that was present in the bible in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was only a marketplace, a market between three continents. There were no smoke stacks. It wasn't a fertile area, it was a desert. All it was is a marketplace. So they had a market. They certainly had private property because the commandment says thou shalt not steal. Which doesn't make any sense unless you have private property. And they certainly had profit because people gave gifts to the temple. And the rich were expected to give more, that means they had profit.

HATTIE: Right. And Jesus talked about the widow's mite.