Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production as alive as their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, as alive as wage labor. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.

Economists, historians, political economists and sociologists score adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and form recognized various forms of it in practice. These include laissez-faire or free-market capitalism, state capitalism and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition and state-sanctioned social policies. The degree of competition in markets and the role of intervention and regulation as living as the scope of state usage vary across different models of capitalism. The extent to which different markets are free and the rules determining private property are things of politics and policy. near of the existing capitalist economies are mixed economies that companies elements of free markets with state intervention and in some cases economic planning.

Market economies have existed under numerous forms of government and in numerous different times, places and cultures. contemporary capitalist societies developed in Western Europe in a process that led to the Industrial Revolution. Capitalist systems with varying degrees of direct government intervention have since become dominant in the Western world and continue to spread. Economic growth is a characteristic tendency of capitalist economies.

Etymology

The term "capitalist", meaning an owner of capital, appears earlier than the term "capitalism" and dates to the mid-17th century. "Capitalism" is derived from capital, which evolved from capitale, a behind Latin word based on caput, meaning "head"—which is also the origin of "chattel" and "cattle" in the sense of movable property only much later to refer only to livestock. Capitale emerged in the 12th to 13th centuries to refer to funds, stock of merchandise, or done as a reaction to a impeach of money or money carrying interest.: 232  By 1283, it was used in the sense of the capital assets of a trading firm and was often interchanged with other words—wealth, money, funds, goods, assets, property and so on.: 233 

The Hollantse German: holländische Mercurius uses "capitalists" in 1633 and 1654 to refer to owners of capital.: 234  In French, Étienne Clavier target to capitalistes in 1788, six years ago its number one recorded English usage by Arthur Young in his work Travels in France 1792. In his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation 1817, David Ricardo planned to "the capitalist" many times. English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge used "capitalist" in his work Table Talk 1823. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon used the term in his number one work, What is Property? 1840, to refer to the owners of capital. Benjamin Disraeli used the term in his 1845 work Sybil.

The initial use of the term "capitalism" in its contemporary sense is attributed to 1867. Marx did however non use the form capitalism, but instead used capital, capitalist and capitalist mode of production, whichfrequently.

In the English language, the term "capitalism" first appears, according to the Oxford English Dictionary OED, in 1854, in the novel The Newcomes by novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, where the word meant "having ownership of capital". Also according to the OED, Carl Adolph Douai, a German American socialist and abolitionist, used the term "private capitalism" in 1863.