Capitalism

Introduction

When we think about capitalism we think about Inequality in income, human right violation, money making opportunity etc. In this topic we would learn about capitalism with its history in contrast and production due to it and how industrial capitalism changed it.

Meaning

So capitalism is an economic system but as well as a cultural system. It is characterized by innovation and investment to increase wealth. In simple it is an economic system that relies in investment of capital in machines and technology that are used to increase production of marketable goods.

How it happened

It all started in 1200 C.E when mercantile capitalism started in which often businesses started taking loans for the operation's of there businesses when they earn the money they pay it to the banks to repay there loan. After that the merchants in the Netherlands and England has setup the joint stock companies. But industrial capitalism is much different the mercantile capitalism. 

Types of Capatalism

Advanced Capitalism

Advanced capitalism is the situation that pertains to a society in which the capitalist model has been integrated and developed deeply and extensively for a prolonged period. Various writers identify Antonio Gramsci as an influential early theorist of advanced capitalism, even if he did not use the term himself. In his writings, Gramsci sought to explain how capitalism had adapted to avoid the revolutionary overthrow that had seemed inevitable in the 19th century. At the heart of his explanation was the decline of raw coercion as a tool of class power, replaced by use of civil society institutions to manipulate public ideology in the capitalists' favour.

Finance Capitalism

In their critique of capitalism, Marxism and Leninism both emphasise the role of "finance capital" as the determining and ruling-class interest in capitalist society, particularly in the latter stages.

Rudolf Hilferding is credited with first bringing the term "finance capitalism" into prominence through Finance Capital, his 1910 study of the links between German trusts, banks and monopolies—a study subsumed by Vladimir Lenin into Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), his analysis of the imperialist relations of the great world powers. Lenin concluded that the banks at that time operated as "the chief nerve centres of the whole capitalist system of national economy". For the Comintern (founded in 1919), the phrase "dictatorship of finance capitalism" became a regular one.

Mercantile capitalism

Mercantilism is a nationalist form of early capitalism that came into existence approximately in the late 16th century. It is characterized by the intertwining of national business interests to state-interest and imperialism; and consequently, the state apparatus is utilized to advance national business interests abroad. An example of this is colonists living in America who were only allowed to trade with and purchase goods from their respective mother countries (e.g. Britain, Portugal and France). Mercantilism was driven by the belief that the wealth of a nation is increased through a positive balance of trade with other nations—it corresponds to the phase of capitalist development sometimes called the primitive accumulation of capital.

Free Market Economy

Free market economy refers to a capitalist economic system where prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand and are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by government policy. It typically entails support for highly competitive trmarkets and private ownership of productive enterprises. Laissez-faire is a more extensive form of free market economy where the role of the state is limited to protecting property rights.

Social Market Economy

A social market economy is a nominally free market system where government intervention in price formation is kept to a minimum, but the state provides significant services in the area of social security, unemployment benefits and recognition of labor rights through national collective bargaining arrangements. This model is prominent in Western and Northern European countries as well as Japan, albeit in slightly different configurations. The vast majority of enterprises are privately owned in this economic model.

Rhine capitalism refers to the contemporary model of capitalism and adaptation of the social market model that exists in continental Western Europe today.

State Capitalism

State capitalism is a capitalist market economy dominated by state-owned enterprises, where the state enterprises are organized as commercial, profit-seeking businesses. The designation has been used broadly throughout the 20th century to designate a number of different economic forms, ranging from state-ownership in market economies to the command economies of the former Eastern Bloc. According to Aldo Musacchio, a professor at Harvard Business School, state capitalism is a system in which governments, whether democratic or autocratic, exercise a widespread influence on the economy either through direct ownership or various subsidies. Musacchio notes a number of differences between today's state capitalism and its predecessors. In his opinion, gone are the days when governments appointed bureaucrats to run companies: the world's largest state-owned enterprises are now traded on the public markets and kept in good health by large institutional investors. Contemporary state capitalism is associated with the East Asian model of capitalism, dirigisme and the economy of Norway. Alternatively, Merriam-Webster defines state capitalism as "an economic system in which private capitalism is modified by a varying degree of government ownership and control".

Corporate Capitalism

Corporate capitalism is a free or mixed-market economy characterized by the dominance of hierarchical, bureaucratic corporations.

Mixed Economy

A mixed economy is a largely market-based economy consisting of both private and public ownership of the means of production and economic interventionism through macroeconomic policies intended to correct market failures, reduce unemployment and keep inflation low. The degree of intervention in markets varies among different countries. Some mixed economies, such as France under dirigisme, also featured a degree of indirect economic planning over a largely capitalist-based economy.

Most modern capitalist economies are defined as "mixed economies" to some degree.