It seems to me that our passion for affixing a label to everything contributes to what is tearing at the fabric of our society.

I do not intend to add to the confusion, for I acknowledge that the more I read and study, the more aware I become of how little I know. So be forewarned — my intention here is to invite people who may be better informed than me to comment on what I believe to be true.

For example, does capitalism really exist anymore? When Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776, he sought to justify the premise that seeking gain for one’s self-interest was moral, and that the enterprise of people when free of regulation could inure to the material benefit of society. The market was self-regulating through the operation of the “invisible hand,” which was fueled by competition. That is my simplistic understanding of the most basic aspects of capitalism.

But, the world was far different in 1776 than it is today. Smith’s market was composed of small, individually owned enterprises that would compete against each other based on the quality of their respective products, the level of service and the relative prices of the merchandise. The entrepreneurs who owned those small enterprises were capitalists, which Musa Al-Gharbi defined as “someone who possesses the financial resources … that are used to acquire, exert control over, and extract profits from the means of (material) production.”

But today our economy operates under what Al-Gharbi calls “Symbolic Capitalism,” in which symbolic capitalists extract profits from the work performed by others, but do not themselves enter a factory or perform manual labor.

I am currently working my way through Al-Gharbi’s “We Have Never Been Woke,” but I believe that at even this initial level I have grasped the gravamen of this particular aspect of Al-Gharbi’s thesis, which may not be consonant with his ultimate conclusions, but which I find to have great relevance to my belief that the seven most dangerous words in the English language are “we are getting screwed by big business.”

It was big business, not the government, that sent jobs offshore to exploit the low wages and unsafe working conditions endured in less developed nations. It was big business, not the government, that decided it was more important for symbolic capitalists to get rich than it was to protect our environment, or pay living wages to our workers. It is big business, and the “dark money” it controls, that undermines the rights of workers to organize and form unions.

Recently, David Gelles chronicled the demise of General Electric as a manufacturer, causing the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs. (“The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America”).

Erica Stockman reported this month in The New York Times how the loss of manufacturing jobs in the steel industry diverted the labor of skilled factory workers to warehouses, at an enormous toll on self-esteem and a draconian decreases in wages and benefits.

And in another New York Times article, “The Powerful Companies Driving Local Drugstores Out of Business,” Reed Ableson and Rebecca Robbins report about how pharmacy benefit managers employed by companies such as CVS Caremark are driving independently owned pharmacies out of business, giving rise to “pharmacy deserts.” And, without government intervention, I predict that we will be forced into dealing with mail-order pharmacies for our prescription medicines, which is not a good thing for consumers, but a profit bonanza for symbolic capitalists.

So, while churches, including mine (the UCC), warn about greed and excessive attachments to money, power and prestige, their theology needs to be supplemented by a knowledge of the actual way our economy works, in order to find answers to questions such as:

■To what extent does dark money influence legislation and undermine our democratic institutions? (See “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer.)

■To what extent does big business “capture” the Supreme Court? (See “The Scheme” by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.)

■To what extent do monopolies dominate our economy? (See “Antitrust” by Sen. Amy Klobuchar.)

■To what extent are workers made to feel abandoned by employers and by their government? (See “Strangers in Their Own Land” by Arlie Russell Hochschild.)

■To what extent does Christian nationalism distort our sense of democracy when it insists that “there should be Christian primacy in politics and law.” ( See “The Crisis of Christian Nationalism: Report from the House of Bishops Theology Committee,” p. 20.)

I advocate for respectful dialogue among people of all faiths and political perspectives in the quest to eschew labels as we find answers consistent with our shared morality or, if applicable, in our belief in a power greater than ourselves.

Peace be with us.

Jim Palermo lives in Southampton.