Get idea about capitalism by .Dr Sammy

Capitalism typically refers to an economic and social system in which the means of production (also known as capital) are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in new technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor.

The extent to which different markets are free, as well as rules determining what may and may not be private property, is a matter of politics and policy and many states have what are termed "mixed economies."[1] Scholars in the social sciences, including historians, economic sociologists, economists, anthropologists and philosophers have debated over how to define capitalism, however there is little controversy that private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit in a market, and paid employment are elements of capitalism.[2]

Capitalism as a system developed incrementally from the 16th century in Europe, although some features of capitalist organization existed in the ancient world, and early aspects of merchant capitalism flourished during the Late Middle Ages.[3][4][5] Capitalism became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism.[5] Capitalism gradually spread throughout Europe, and in the 19th and 20th centuries, it provided the main means of industrialization throughout much of the world.[6]

There is no consensus on capitalism nor how it should be used as an analytical category.[7] There are a variety of historical cases over which it is applied, varying in time, geography, politics and culture.[6] Economists, political economists and historians have taken different perspectives on the analysis of capitalism.

Economists usually put emphasis on the market mechanism, degree of government control over markets (laissez faire), and property rights[8][9], while most political economists emphasize private property, power relations, wage labor, and class.[1] While there is a general agreement that capitalism encourages economic growth,[10] political advocacy both for and against capitalism is based on many different arguments.Capital evolved from Capitale, a late Latin word based on proto-Indo-European kaput, meaning "head"—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 in the sense of funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money, or money carrying interest.[3][18][19] By 1283 it was used in the sense of the capital assets of a trading firm. It was frequently interchanged with a number of other words—wealth, money, funds, goods, principal, assets, property, patrimony.[3]

The term capitalist refers to an owner of capital rather than an economic system, but shows earlier recorded use than the term capitalism, dating back to the mid-seventeenth century. The Hollandische Mercurius uses it in 1633 and 1654 to refer to owners of capital.[3] Arthur Young was one of first to use capitalist in his work Travels in France (1792).[19][20] David Ricardo, in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), referred to "the capitalist" many times.[21] Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, used capitalist in his work Table Talk (1823).[22] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon used the term capitalist in his first work, What is Property? (1840) to refer to the owners of capital. Benjamin Disraeli used the term capitalist in his 1845 work Sybil.[19] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used the term capitalist (Kapitalist) in The Communist Manifesto (1848) to refer to a private owner of capital.

The term capitalism appeared in 1753 in the Encyclopédia, with the narrow meaning of "The state of one who is rich".[3] However, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term capitalism was first used by novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in 1854, by which he meant having ownership of capital.[19] Also according to the OED, Carl Adolph Douai, a German-American socialist and abolitionist, used the term private capitalism in 1863.

The initial usage of the term capitalism in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861.[23] Marx and Engels referred to the capitalistic system (kapitalistisches System)[24][25] and to the capitalist mode of production (kapitalistische Produktionsform) in Das Kapital (1867).[26] The use of the word "capitalism" in reference to an economic system appears twice in Volume I of Das Kapital, p. 124 (German edition), and in Theories of Surplus Value, tome II, p. 493 (German edition). Marx did not extensively use the term.

Marx's notion of the capitalist mode of production is characterised as a system of primarily private ownership of the means of production in a mainly market economy, with a legal framework on commerce and a physical infrastructure provided by the state.[27] Engels made more frequent use of the term capitalism; volumes II and III of Das Kapital, both edited by Engels after Marx's death, contain the word "capitalism" four and three times, respectively. The three combined volumes of Das Kapital (1867, 1885, 1894) contain the word capitalist more than 2,600 times.

An 1877 work entitled Better Times and an 1884 article in the Pall Mall Gazette also used the term capitalism.[19] A later use of the term capitalism to describe the production system was by the German economist Werner Sombart, in his 1902 book The Jews and Modern Capitalism (Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben). Sombart's close friend and colleague, Max Weber, also used capitalism in his 1904 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus
Globalization
Although international trade has been associated with the development of capitalism for over five hundred years, some thinkers argue that a number of trends associated with globalization have acted to increase the mobility of people and capital since the last quarter of the 20th century, combining to circumscribe the room to maneuver of states in choosing non-capitalist models of development. Today, these trends have bolstered the argument that capitalism should now be viewed as a truly world system.[36] However, other thinkers argue that globalization, even in its quantitative degree, is no greater now than during earlier periods of capitalist trade.