Which “capitalism”? The word is used to mean too many things.
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense that has been around since the Dutch and British East India Companies: the synergy, at the national level, of military force and private investment to meet those ambitions of the national elite that could not be funded by the hereditary conqueror class alone?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of Adam Smith — an independent private business sector, enabled by government regulation to prevent collusion and fraud, but freed from nationalist mercantilism?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of Marx — a globalizing economy focused around the ownership of capital by a shrinking minority class; with the non-owning class eventually reduced to possessing nothing of value but their labor, and their eventual privation through mechanized overproduction?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of Ayn Rand — an economy in which the greatest human aspirations are realized through the unshackling of great men from their subjection to unworthy men, and from irrational ideologies such as altruism?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of the “first world”, the Western faction in the 20th-century Cold War, with its particular institutions, ideologies, and alliances — but particularly with its opposition to the “communist” Soviet and Chinese geopolitical axes?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of particular current political parties or forces which are opposed to social-democratic measures (e.g. national health care) and various forms of industrial regulation (e.g. environmentalism)?
Which “capitalism”? The word is used to mean too many things.
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense that has been around since the Dutch and British East India Companies: the synergy, at the national level, of military force and private investment to meet those ambitions of the national elite that could not be funded by the hereditary conqueror class alone?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of Adam Smith — an independent private business sector, enabled by government regulation to prevent collusion and fraud, but freed from nationalist mercantilism?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of Marx — a globalizing economy focused around the ownership of capital by a shrinking minority class; with the non-owning class eventually reduced to possessing nothing of value but their labor, and their eventual privation through mechanized overproduction?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of Ayn Rand — an economy in which the greatest human aspirations are realized through the unshackling of great men from their subjection to unworthy men, and from irrational ideologies such as altruism?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of the “first world”, the Western faction in the 20th-century Cold War, with its particular institutions, ideologies, and alliances — but particularly with its opposition to the “communist” Soviet and Chinese geopolitical axes?
Do you mean “capitalism” in the sense of particular current political parties or forces which are opposed to social-democratic measures (e.g. national health care) and various forms of industrial regulation (e.g. environmentalism)?
I mean capitalism as the empirically observed economic organization of the world’s richest countries for the past couple of centuries.