THC Science

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Capitalism Portal

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, economic freedom, consumer sovereignty, profit motive, entrepreneurship, commodification, voluntary exchange, wage labor and the production of commodities. In a 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 have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include laissez-faire or free-market capitalism, anarcho-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 well as the scope of state ownership, vary across different models of capitalism. The extent to which different markets are free and the rules defining private property are matters of politics and policy. Most of the existing capitalist economies are mixed economies that combine elements of free markets with state intervention and in some cases economic planning.

Capitalism in its modern form emerged from agrarianism in England, as well as mercantilist practices by European countries between the 16th and 18th centuries. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century established capitalism as a dominant mode of production, characterized by factory work and a complex division of labor. Through the process of globalization, capitalism spread across the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially before World War I and after the end of the Cold War. During the 19th century, capitalism was largely unregulated by the state, but became more regulated in the post–World War II period through Keynesianism, followed by a return of more unregulated capitalism starting in the 1980s through neoliberalism.

Market economies have existed under many forms of government and in many different times, places, and cultures. Modern industrial capitalist societies developed in Western Europe in a process that led to the Industrial Revolution. Capitalist economies promote economic growth through accumulation of capital, however a business cycle of economic growth followed by recession is a common characteristic of such economies. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article

Norwich Market (also known as Norwich Provision Market) is an outdoor market consisting of around 200 stalls in central Norwich, England. Founded in the latter part of the 11th century to supply Norman merchants and settlers moving to the area following the Norman conquest of England, it replaced an earlier market a short distance away. It has been in operation on the present site for over 900 years.

By the 14th century, Norwich was one of the largest and most prosperous cities in England, and Norwich Market was a major trading hub. Control of, and income from, the market was ceded by the monarchy to the city of Norwich in 1341, from which time it provided a significant source of income for the local council. Freed from royal control, the market was reorganised to benefit the city as much as possible. Norwich and the surrounding region were devastated by plague and famine in the latter half of the 14th century, with the population falling by over 50%. Following the plague years, Norwich came under the control of local merchants and the economy was rebuilt. In the early 15th century, a Guildhall was built next to the market to serve as a centre for local government and law enforcement. The largest surviving mediaeval civic building in Britain outside London, it remained the seat of local government until 1938 and in use as a law court until 1985. (Full article...)

More selected articles

Selected biography

Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist, and the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Swedish Royal Academies stated, when awarding the prize, that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in economic theory". Economic historian Randall E. Parker calls him the "Father of Modern Economics", and The New York Times considered him to be the "foremost academic economist of the 20th century".

Samuelson was likely the most influential economist of the later 20th century. In 1996, when he was awarded the National Medal of Science, considered America's top science honor, President Bill Clinton commended Samuelson for his "fundamental contributions to economic science" for over 60 years. Samuelson considered Mathematics to be the natural language for economists and contributed significantly to the mathematical foundations of economics with his book Foundations of Economic Analysis. He was author of the best-selling economics textbook of all time: Economics: An Introductory Analysis, first published in 1948.

He served as an advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and was a consultant to the United States Treasury, the Bureau of the Budget and the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Samuelson wrote a weekly column for Newsweek magazine along with Chicago School economist Milton Friedman, where they represented opposing sides: Samuelson, as a self described "Cafeteria Keynesian", took the Keynesian perspective but adapted it accepting what he felt was good. By contrast Friedman represented the monetarist perspective. (Full article...)

More selected biographies

Selected quote

“

Because Soviet enterprises were not under the same financial constraints as capitalist enterprises, they acquired more machines than they needed, "which then gather dust in warehouses or rust out of doors," as the Soviet economists put it. In short, Soviet enterprises were not forced to economize-that is, to treat their resources as both scarce and valuable in alternative uses, for the alternative users were not bidding for those resources, as they would in a market economy. While such waste cost individual Soviet enterprises little or nothing, they cost the Soviet people dearly, in the form of a lower standard of living than their resources and technology were capable of producing.

Such a waste of inputs as these economists described could not of course continue in the kind of economy where these inputs would have to be purchased in competition with alternative users, and where the enterprise itself could survive only be keeping its costs lower than its sales receipts. In such a price-coordinated capitalist system, the amounts of inputs ordered would be based on the enterprise's most accurate estimate of what was really required, not on how much its managers could persuade higher government officials to let them have.

”

— Thomas Sowell (1930)
Basic Economics , 2015

More selected quotes

General images

The following are images from various capitalism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1The Rothschild family revolutionised international finance. The Frankfurt terminus of the Taunus Railway was financed by the Rothschilds and opened in 1840 as one of Germany's first railways. (from History of capitalism)
Image 2British East India Company 1801 (from History of capitalism)
Image 3The Industrial Workers of the World poster "Pyramid of Capitalist System" (1911) (from Capitalism)
Image 4The New York stock exchange traders' floor (1963) (from History of capitalism)
Image 5Gustave Doré's 19th-century engraving depicted the dirty, overcrowded slums where the industrial workers of London lived. (from History of capitalism)
Image 6The New York Stock Exchange. (from History of capitalism)
Image 7The subscription room at Lloyd's of London in the early 19th century (from Capitalism)
Image 8The Spinning mule, built by the inventor Samuel Crompton. (from History of capitalism)
Image 9The gold standard formed the financial basis of the international economy from 1870 to 1914. (from Capitalism)
Image 10The economic model of supply and demand states that the price P of a product is determined by a balance between production at each price (supply S) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand D): the diagram shows a positive shift in demand from D₁ to D₂, resulting in an increase in price (P) and quantity sold (Q) of the product. (from Capitalism)
Image 11A painting of a French seaport from 1638 at the height of mercantilism (from Capitalism)
Image 12The Watt steam engine, fuelled primarily by coal, propelled the Industrial Revolution in Britain. (from Capitalism)
Image 13The gold standard formed the financial basis of the international economy from 1870 to 1914. (from History of capitalism)
Image 14Decaying hedges mark the lines of the straight field boundaries created by an Inclosure Act. (from History of capitalism)
Image 15Map of a medieval manor. Notice the large commons area and the division of land into small strips. The mustard-colored areas are part of the demesne, the hatched areas part of the glebe.
William R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, 01923 (from History of capitalism)
Image 16Adam Smith (from Capitalism)
Image 17Augsburg, the centre of early capitalism (from Capitalism)
Image 18Cosimo de' Medici (pictured in a 16th century portrait by Pontormo) built an international financial empire and was one of the first Medici bankers. (from Capitalism)
Image 19Robert Clive with the Nawabs of Bengal after the Battle of Plassey which began the British rule in Bengal (from Capitalism)
Image 20Sir Josiah Child, an influential proponent of mercantilism. Painting attributed to John Riley. (from History of capitalism)
Image 2119th-century Great Britain become the first global economic superpower, because of superior manufacturing technology and improved global communications such as steamships and railroads. (from History of capitalism)
Image 22The Anglo-Dutch Wars were fought between the English and the Dutch for control over the seas and trade routes. (from History of capitalism)
Image 23The city of Genoa, one of the birthplaces of capitalism. (from History of capitalism)
Image 24The New York stock exchange traders' floor (1963) (from Capitalism)
Image 25An industrial worker among heavy steel machine parts (Kinex Bearings, Bytča, Slovakia, c. 1995–2000) (from Capitalism)

Did you know

... that John C. Osgood strongly opposed labor unions and tried welfare capitalism at his company town of Redstone, Colorado, to discourage his workers from forming unions and striking?
... that William Douglass was an 18th century American physician whose pamphlets on paper money led Adam Smith to call him "honest and downright"?
... that Japanese historian and economist Taguchi Ukichi has often been referred to as the Adam Smith of Japan?