Capitalism
economic system in which individuals or firms can acquire and own the means of production, employ labor, and pursue profit through voluntary market exchange.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and its use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically in several stages and is defined by a number of constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth. Capitalist economies tend to experience business cycles of economic expansion followed by recessions.
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 capitalism, free-market capitalism, state capitalism, and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, barriers to free competition, and state-sanctioned social policies. The degree of competition in markets, the role of intervention and regulation, and the scope of state ownership vary across different models of capitalism. The extent to which markets are free and the rules defining private property are matters of politics and policy. Most of the existing economies in the world today 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 from mercantilist practices in European countries between the 16th and 18th centuries.
The public source identifies “Capitalism” as economic system in which individuals or firms can acquire and own the means of production, employ labor, and pursue profit through voluntary market exchange. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Capitalism, economic and system.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6206. The Library of Congress control number is sh85019958. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Capitalism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.