capitalism
capitalismA system of wage-labour and commodity production for sale, exchange, and profit, rather than for the immediate need of the producers. Plentiful examples of capitalism in the pre-modern era exist but, typically, capitalist exchanges were restrained by political and religious control. What has impressed students of modernity is the huge and largely unregulated dominance of capitalist enterprise (with its related monetary and market networks) across political and cultural frontiers. Capitalism provided the principal, but not the only means of industrialization, and should not be confused with it.
The list of defining attributes of capitalism still derives largely from the pioneering writings of Karl Marx and Max Weber. Marx took the production relations of capitalism as its most essential feature. Following Adam Smith he distinguished the...
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