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Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals own and control most of the factors of production—the resources used to produce goods and services. Individuals also own and run most companies, which compete with other companies for business. Capitalism differs from centrally planned, or command, economies, in which the government owns companies and the factors of production. Many countries—including the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan—practice some form of capitalism.

The word capital refers to one of the factors of production. It describes all the man-made resources that people use to produce goods and services, such as factories, machinery, tools, and computers. The other factors of production are land, labor, and entrepreneurship. Land includes both the land itself and any resources that come from it, such as oil, natural gas, iron, and timber. Labor is the human effort that is needed for production. Entrepreneurship, or enterprise, is the act of combining the other factors of production—land, labor, and capital—to produce goods and services. People who invest money in a company in exchange for potential profits in the future are known as capitalists.

Capitalism is also known as a free-market economy. In the most literal sense, a market is a place where things are bought and sold. In a broader sense, however, the market is not a particular place. Rather, it includes the whole geographical area in which sellers compete with each other for customers. Buyers, sellers, money, land, machinery, labor, and channels of distribution all work together to form such a market. A capitalist market is called “free” because people are comparatively free to decide how to use their wealth and skills. Companies decide which goods and services to provide as well as how much to charge for these goods and services and where to sell them. Consumers decide what to buy and how much to spend. Companies make their economic decisions based on market forces—that is, the forces of supply and demand. They aim to supply things that consumers want to buy at a price they are willing to spend. Companies do this to make money—a profit—for their owners.

Characteristics of Capitalism

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In addition to personal freedom and private control of the factors of production, capitalism is characterized by private property rights, innovation, the specialization of jobs (known as the division of labor), a price system, profits, and generally accepted rules. None of these originated with capitalism. They have existed as long as people have performed economic functions. The difference lies in the distinctive roles they were made to play in a free-market economy.

Private Property

Private property rights are essential to capitalism. This is a crucial difference between capitalism and communism, in which there is no private property. Under capitalism, individuals and businesses must be able to own property and to do what they wish with it, as long as they stay within the law. If people and businesses were not able to own property, they would not be able to acquire capital, which means they would not have the resources required for production. Furthermore, the owner of property under a capitalist system is entitled to any value that comes from that property. Therefore, owners have an incentive to make their property as valuable as possible—in other words, to make a profit. This encourages innovation and production.




Division of Labor

At one time nearly all work was agricultural. (In less developed countries it still is.) As civilizations developed and cities were formed, the role of agriculture as an employer of people began to diminish. Individuals undertook new tasks: mining, handicrafts, trade, and weaving cloth, for example. This simple division of labor paved the way for a greater creation of wealth because it permitted people to specialize in certain types of work, thereby creating more efficient ways for producing the wares required in daily life. Greater quantities of goods, in more varieties and of better quality, were produced for commerce and trade.

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In contrast to the earliest agricultural societies, the division of labor in the contemporary world is extraordinary, represented to consumers by the great diversity of products and services available. The division of labor is more clearly evident in the factories that make these products. A look into an automobile plant, in which cars are assembled in a series of steps, will show specialization along a production line. Managers have decided which tasks each worker will perform, and they have also determined which production tasks can be handled by machines and which must be performed by humans.



Just as products command a price, so money, too, can be obtained for a price—the price of borrowing it. This price is called interest. The rate of interest varies with the supply of money available for investment in an enterprise. Like money, the factors of production are also not in unlimited supply. When the price mechanism is free to react to market conditions (such as supply and demand), it proves to be an efficient way of allocating all the factors of production. For example, a large labor supply in one place tends to depress wages, so workers go to other places where they can obtain a greater price for their labor. A shortage of a resource such as copper tends to raise its price, while the discovery of new copper mines lowers it by increasing the supply. When replacement materials for commodities such as copper are either discovered or invented, these so-called substitute commodities also reduce prices. Thus, the development of fiber-optic cable reduced dependence on copper wire, just as kerosene and electricity had eliminated the reliance on whale oil for lamps and lighting.

In a perfectly free market (which exists only in theory), prices tend to be stable. Resources are allocated to those who can make best use of them at the time. The level of employment also tends to be relatively stable and high because workers will go where they are most needed. If the carriage maker’s factory closes because automobiles are making carriages obsolete, the labor force will shift to the new industry.







Goods and Services

Given the great variety of items sold in a capitalist economic system, a distinction must be made between goods and services. In the case of goods, something is produced: food, clothing, cars, houses, and more. Goods are also called products or commodities (though sometimes commodities are natural resources). Services are not products, though services use many products. A motion picture, for example, is a product, but some means of delivering that product are defined as a service. To show the movie publicly is to provide a service that involves film or digital files, a projector, and a theater. Customers see the movie but do not take anything home with them except the memory of the entertainment. By comparison, a Blu-ray copy of the same movie purchased for home use is considered a product.


Consumers and Value

Just as producers sell goods and services, customers buy value for themselves. In a capitalist economy the consumer is thus the dominant partner in the relationship, because it is the consumer who ascribes value to his purchases—or he would not make them. Products and services that consumers do not want have no market value, no matter how highly the producers regard them.




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Capitalism has existed to some degree since ancient times—for as long as people have bought and sold goods. Ancient Rome, for instance, had what could be considered a capitalist economy, with many privately run businesses. Before 1500, however, land, labor, resources, and money were for the most part under government control or under the control of wealthy elites with close ties to government. During the European Middle Ages, under the system called feudalism, land remained the property of an elite family for generations. Similarly, ordinary people were locked into specific jobs that were carried on by their descendants generation after generation: being a farmer or artisan was passed from father to son and from mother to daughter. Economic production was undertaken to support the state and religion, and the very little left over had to sustain the mass of people.

Rise of Capitalism

Capitalism gained importance in the 1500s with the growth of international trade, industry, and banking. During this period governments encouraged the development of capitalism through a policy called mercantilism. The goal of mercantilism was to use trade to increase a country’s wealth and power at the expense of rival countries. Because trade was considered so important to a country’s status, the government took a very active role in regulating the economy. Countries behaved like merchants—they tried to sell more goods to foreign countries than they bought from those countries. This emphasis on profit was fundamental to the development of capitalism. Further, countries began to use profits to expand production in ways that could create even greater wealth. Before this, profits were just as likely to be spent on luxuries or invested in economically unproductive projects, such as the construction of monuments, palaces, pyramids, and cathedrals.

The rise of capitalism also brought changes in the organization of labor. Over time, Europe’s feudal system gave way to a new social and economic order: land was sold by kings and nobles in desperate need of money. Workers and craftspeople, driven from the land that had been owned by their lords and masters, became a landless class of poor subsistence workers. But as a market economy started growing, these poor were able to hire themselves out as laborers for whatever wages they could command.

“Laissez-Faire” Capitalism

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In the 1700s and 1800s the Industrial Revolution brought about a great expansion of manufacturing. It introduced the use of machine power to replace human and animal power. Inventions such as the steam engine and the cotton gin improved methods of producing goods. By the 19th century mercantilism was disappearing, as businesspeople came to believe that government interference in trade and industry was harmful. They wanted to run their own affairs. This policy of little or no government control was called laissez-faire, a French phrase meaning “allow to do.” Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, promoted the idea of laissez-faire capitalism.

The main features of laissez-faire capitalism, along with private ownership and use of wealth, were competition, the desire for profits, and individual freedom to make business decisions. Under this system, each person was sometimes a producer and seller of goods or services and at other times a consumer of goods or services. Each company competed with rivals, deciding what to produce and how much, according to what it thought consumers wanted. Individual workers sold their labor to whoever paid the highest wages, while individual capitalists attempted to offer the best products or services for the lowest prices in order to attract the most consumers.

Consumers also competed. Those with the most wealth could buy the best products and services. When a product was in short supply, demand for it pushed the price up. In contrast, when there was a great supply of a product on the market, or only a few consumers wanted to buy it, competition among the manufacturers forced the price down. This is the law of supply and demand.

Reactions to Capitalism

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The laissez-faire philosophy reached the peak of its popularity around 1870. It led to great advances in industry and trade, and some people made huge fortunes. However, ordinary workers earned low wages while working long hours, sometimes in dangerous conditions. These problems spurred the development of labor movements, as workers banded together in unions to demand better treatment from companies. These conditions also led to the spread of socialist ideas. Under socialism, a government controls the economy by owning companies and property, and wealth is supposed to be divided fairly among a country’s citizens. Many countries followed some socialist ideas in the 20th century. Some, including the Soviet Union and China, adopted a form of socialism called communism.

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Laissez-faire capitalism mostly ended during the 1930s, during the Great Depression. In response to that economic catastrophe, many people—not just socialists—came to believe that governments had to play a role in the economy. Governments began to pass new laws to prevent unfair business practices and to regulate conditions for workers, such as hours of work and workplace safety. Many governments also introduced social welfare programs to assist the aged, the unemployed, and the needy.

Capitalism Today

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The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union ended with the collapse of the Soviet state in the early 1990s. This outcome left the United States as the world’s sole superpower and marked the victory of capitalism over communism. Following the Cold War, many developing countries sought to model their economies on the U.S. free-market system. However, the worldwide financial crisis that began in the United States in 2007 raised doubts about the stability of the U.S. economy and even about the viability of capitalism itself.

Some countries have experimented with different forms of capitalism. Several countries with large and emerging market economies—notably Brazil, Russia, India, and China—have adopted an economic system known as state capitalism. The government owns large industries, but it allows private ownership of some companies. This strategy is not primarily intended to improve efficiency and production but rather to build the country’s political power. China is a prominent example of state capitalism. The government controls key industries, such as telecommunications and energy (oil and gas). It allows private ownership of smaller companies and encourages competition between them, but it still plays an active role in managing the privately owned part of the economy. The government also encourages foreign trade and foreign investment in Chinese companies. This strategy allows China to achieve some of the benefits of capitalism while still maintaining strong government control of the economy.

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No country practices capitalism, or any other economic system, in a “pure” form. Even in the United States and other strongly capitalist countries, the economy incorporates elements of other economic systems, such as socialism. In these so-called mixed economies, most companies are privately owned but some enterprises, such as public health or education systems, are controlled by the government. In addition, the government influences the economy through regulations, subsidies, tariffs, and tax policies.

Critics of Capitalism

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Supporters of capitalism declare that economic freedom is the most basic of human liberties because it creates greater opportunities for advancement for the greatest number of people. Yet the market system has been strongly criticized for inequalities of income and wealth among the population.

Capitalism has also been denounced for having business cycles, periods of “boom and bust.” Individuals and societies tend to prefer security and stability, and it is true that capitalism is always changing. But an economy is never a finished process. A market economy is dynamic, flexible, and always in flux, because its continuation depends to a great extent on technological change, new information, and innovation. New needs emerge and alternate means of producing established products are devised. Just as industrializing economies saw losses in the number of farming jobs, later the number of manufacturing jobs shrank as countries shifted to service-based economies. Such dislocations are inevitable as the economy continually corrects and readjusts itself.

Additional Reading

Downing, David. Capitalism (Pearson, 2009). Frisina, D.B. Capitalism vs. Communism (Classroom Complete Press, 2007). Grant, R.G. Capitalism (Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 2001). Grant, R.G. Protesting Capitalism (Raintree, 2004). Henneberg, Susan. The Wealth Gap (Greenhaven, 2017). LaPierre, Yvette. Economy 101 (Essential Library, 2020).