Capitalism

“”The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

— Winston Churchill

Capitalism is an economic system based on private property and free markets. Capitalism believes that the means of production should be owned and operated privately, not by the state. In Capitalism, competition is key. Those who work hard or smart reaps the rewards of their labor, and those who are lazy or not willing to work do not get free money from the government. Success gets rewarded, innovation is driven, and billions get lifted out of poverty. Capitalist economies tend to experience a business cycle of economic growth followed by recessions. Yet, all economic miracles of countries (in the modern age) stem from Capitalist policies.

Capitalism needs four basic institutions to function: private property, free exchange, competition, and division of labor. Other ingredients necessary for the development of Capitalism include contractual freedom, constitutional (limited) government, free financial markets and access to capital, ease of starting and managing a business, and a good and efficient law system.

Capitalism is usually portrayed as a businessman or rich boss. He loves luxury, dresses in business suits, and wears a top hat, monocle or sunglasses. He has never promised or ensured that every citizen would have a roof over their heads or will be fed, yet his citizens are the most prosperous compared to the citizens of any other economic system. The whole point of Capitalism is that if you want a good life, you have to earn and work for it. It won't be handed to you on a silver platter. Those who do promise all their citizens ensured material substance, on the contrary, find the very same citizens trying to leave for Capitalist countries.

History

Proto-Capitalism, Early Capitalism

See also: Proto-Capitalism

Capitalism, in his modern form, can be traced to the emergence of Agrarianism in England as well as Mercantilism in city-states like Florence during the 16th-18th centuries. During the Islamic Golden Age, the Arabs promulgated capitalist economic policies such as free trade and banking. They used Indo-Arabic numerals to facilitate bookkeeping. These innovations migrated to Europe through trade partners in cities such as Venice and Pisa. Italian mathematicians traveled the Mediterranean talking to Arab traders and returned to popularize the use of Indo-Arabic numerals in Europe.

Capitalism didn't suddenly appear fully formed. For many centuries, small bits of him already existed in everyday life.

• Merchants bought and sold goods for profit.
• People rented land or property.
• Moneylenders loaned money and charged interest.
• Some small workshops paid workers wages.

These activities are early, small-scale forms of capitalism. Also, people have been trading goods (buying and selling products) for a very long time, and this basic trade is what eventually allowed capital (money used to make more money) to grow and turn into full capitalism.

The economic foundations of the feudal agricultural system began to shift substantially in 16th-century England as the manorial system had broken down and land began to become concentrated in the hands of fewer landlords with increasingly large estates. Instead of a serf-based system of labor, workers were increasingly employed as part of a broader and expanding money-based economy. The system put pressure on both landlords and tenants to increase the productivity of agriculture to make profit; the weakened coercive power of the aristocracy to extract peasant surpluses encouraged them to try better methods, and the tenants also had incentive to improve their methods in order to flourish in a competitive labor market. Terms of rent for land were becoming subject to economic market forces rather than to the previous stagnant system of custom and feudal obligation.

Mercantilism

Main article: Mercantilism

From the 1500s to the 1700s, the main economic system in Europe was mercantilism. During this time (the Age of Discovery), European countries like England and the Low Countries sent merchants around the world to explore and trade. Mercantilism focused on making profit through trade, especially by exporting more than importing. However, most goods were still made using traditional, non-capitalist methods (like small workshops), not factories. Many historians say this period of merchant capitalism and mercantilism was the beginning of modern capitalism.

However, the economist Karl Polanyi disagreed. He said true capitalism only exists when land, labor, and money are treated as things that can be bought and sold in open markets (he called these "fictitious commodities"). According to him, this didn't fully happen until 1834 in England, when a competitive labor market was created. Therefore, he believed industrial capitalism (capitalism as a full social system) did not truly exist before 1834.

In the late 1500s ( Elizabethan Era), England started using mercantilism in a large and organized way. Thomas Mun, an English economist, explained how this should work in his book England's Treasure by Foreign Trade (written in the 1620s, published in 1664). He argued that a country becomes wealthy by having more exports than imports—this idea is called the balance of trade.

Under mercantilism, the government supported merchants with monopolies and subsidies. The goal was to increase trade, grow manufacturing, prevent laziness, stop wasteful spending, improve land use, and control prices, as Francis Bacon described. After early industrial growth ("proto-industrialization"), two powerful companies were created with the same name: East India Company belonging to Britain and East India Company belonging to Netherlands. These companies were heavily supported by their governments, allowed to colonize and expand overseas. They gained huge wealth especially from places like Bengal Subah in India. Merchants who used to trade under mercantilism now invested their money (capital) into these companies and colonies hoping to make a profit, and this marked the shift from simple trade to large-scale global capitalism.

Industrial Revolution

In the mid-18th century, a group of economic theorists led by David Hume (1711-1776) and Adam Smith (1723-1790) challenged fundamental mercantilist doctrines such as the belief that the world's wealth remained constant and that a state could only increase its wealth at the expense of another state.

During the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, industrialists replaced merchants as a dominant factor in the capitalist system and effected the decline of the traditional handicraft skills of artisans, guilds and journeymen. Industrial capitalism marked the development of the factory system of manufacturing, characterized by a complex division of labor between and within work process and the routine of work tasks; and eventually established the domination of the capitalist mode of production.

The rise of Industrial capitalism during the 19th century led to unprecedented economic growth, urbanization, and technological innovation. This period saw the expansion of global trade networks and the consolidation of free-market principles, though often accompanied by harsh labor conditions.

Industrial Britain eventually abandoned his protectionist policy formerly prescribed by mercantilism. In the 19th century, Richard Cobden (1804–1865) and John Bright (1811–1889), who based their beliefs on the Manchester School, initiated a movement to lower tariffs. In the 1840s Britain adopted a less protectionist policy, with the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws and the 1849 repeal of the Navigation Acts. Britain reduced tariffs and quotas, in line with David Ricardo's advocacy of free trade.

Modernity

Broader processes of globalization carried capitalism across the world. The imperialism of the 18th-century decisively shaped globalization. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a series of loosely connected market systems had come together as a relatively integrated global system, in turn intensifying processes of economic and other globalization. Industrialization allowed cheap production of household items using economies of scale, while rapid population growth created sustained demand for commodities. The colonial powers wielded vast amounts of natural resources from their colonies in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

From the 1870s to the early 1920s, the global financial system was mainly tied to the gold standard. The United Kingdom first formally adopted this standard in 1821. Soon to follow were Canada in 1853, Newfoundland in 1865, the United States and Germany (de jure) in 1873. New technologies, such as the telegraph, the transatlantic cable, the radiotelephone, the steamship and railways allowed goods and information to move around the world to an unprecedented degree.

Modern capitalism (the kind we see today) grew mainly in Western countries from the 1950s onward. Different countries adopted this modern form at different times, for example there's United States after the 1950s, France after the 1960s, Spain after the 1970s, and Poland after 2015. Many other nations followed similar paths.

Today, most capitalist economies are considered developed. This means they usually have well-established stock markets (buying and selling company shares), strong systems for borrowing and lending money (debt markets), a high standard of living, powerful investment institutions (like pension funds or mutual funds), and strong, well-financed banks.

Trivia

• Many " big businesses" are often not in favor of capitalism, and instead actively pushes for government regulation, knowing that it will cripple potential competition and allow them to get away with forcing consumers to pay excessively high prices for lower quality goods and services.

Relationships

Business Partners

• Propertarianism - Right of private property is inalienable!
• Monarcho-Capitalism - He has an eye for luxury.
• Liberalism - The freer the markets, the freer the people!
• Conservatism - You worked with me for so long… Ok, I will give you a discount. Sorry if I have to cancel stuff to protect my profits.
• Fiscal Conservatism - My favourite customer, always paying in time.
• Meritocracy - I aspire to be like you.
• Calvinist Theocracy - Your book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is really good.
• Enlightenment Thought - You made me possible!
• Classical Liberalism - My elder who shares my love for free trade. I remember when you cradled me in your arms.
• Ilminism - Capitalism is why South Korea is more prosperous than the North!
• American Model - Great example of my economic system. He's now the greatest superpower ever in history!

Competition

• Mercantilism - You're my predecessor, but I wish you were more pro-free trade, though.
• Social Capitalism - One of my variants, but why do you support this welfare thing? Welfare makes many people who would've taken care of themselves dependent on the government while making my taxes pay for them. Please remove the "social" part of your name, but good job in Germany.
• Feudalism - You had your day, now it's my turn. We are compatible though, it's the Marxist who keeps pushing the idea we are representatives of separate time eras all on the road to communism.
• Dengism - He denies to be me, and I would not like to get associated with him, but we do have many points in common… Still, he claims to have promising markets and opportunities for foreign investors and let me tell you the illusion of big Chinese monies drives people stupid. Maybe one day you will allow some ACTUAL competition and not crack down on foreign businesses to confiscate their money so you could add to your fat and corrupt bank accounts.

Inefficient

• Socialism - Who would've known that having lazy bureaucrats lead the economy instead of the smartest and most successful would fail, ya lazy janitor? You say I cause poverty even though I lifted billions out of it, and you should take a look at yourself when you speak such things.
• Marxism-Leninism - You're nothing but a failure. Yet for some reason you're popular with college kids. Thats good, hahahahahaha!
• Marxism - You're just a lazy college student who's never lived in a real communist country. Also, what is dialectical materialism other than a religion made into a political ideology?
  • Without me this page wouldn’t exist. I popularized the term "capitalism" as a critique of the existing economic order. Also, real communism has never been tried!
  • The terms capitalism and bourgeoisie existed long before you, you just reintroduced them as abusive labels. You created a strawman of your various enemies' common points, but on the contrary, it let them unite to me.
• Leninism - I sold him a rope and now he's trying to hang me with it…
• Fascism - Thinks I'm a degenerate or whatever, but did a damn good job at crushing those commies (even though he was created by a former commie, so it's best to be wary). But he nationalized many industries and was second behind the USSR, which is why I am skeptical about him.
• State Socialism - In socialism, you line up for bread, in capitalism, bread lines up for you.
• Marxist Feminism - You call yourself a feminist, yet you want to steal the rich female CEOs' property. Curious.
• Anarcho-Communism - Yeah, nice try. The "utopias" you've created are nothing but lawless failures rancid with drug addicts, prostitutes and violent gangs.
• Stalinism - Your mass starvations were proof that collectivization doesn't work.
• Utopian Socialism - You're better than the tankies, but that's not saying much.
• Maoism - Humiliated me and forced me into commiting suicide. Killing all of us won't solve anything but make your people starve to death.
• Pol Potism - Hands off my monocle, stupid commie maniac!
• Illegalism - Stop trying to rob me and squatting my property you moron!
• Anti-Capitalism - You live off the riches of me and then denounce me? Most of you don't hate me, you hate crony state corporatism. You are just too economically illiterate to see the difference.

How to draw

Flag with capitalist symbolism

Capitalism has a drawing rating of easy.

1. Draw a ball.
2. Fill it with yellow.
3. Draw a green dollar sign ($) in the middle.
4. Add the eyes.
5. Add a top hat and a monocle and you are done.

Color Name		HEX
	Yellow	#FFCC00
	Green	#008000

Gallery

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