capitalism
Capitalism, also called free market economy or free enterprise economy, economic system, dominant in the Western world since the breakup of feudalism, in which most means of production are privately owned and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets. Economists, political economists, sociologists and historians 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, welfare capitalism and state 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, the role of intervention and regulation, and the scope of state ownership vary across different models of capitalism. The extent to which different markets are free as well as the rules defining private property are matters of politics and policy. Most existing capitalist economies are mixed economies which combine elements of free markets with state intervention and in some cases economic planning
Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form of profit, rent, interest, royalties or capital gains. The aim of capital accumulation is to create new fixed and working capitals, broaden and modernize the existing ones, grow the material basis of social-cultural activities, as well as constituting the necessary resource for reserve and insurance. Primitive accumulation The process of capital accumulation forms the basis of capitalism, and is one of the defining characteristics of a capitalist economic system.concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be. In liberal economic theory, the market returns to each person the exact value she added into it, capitalists are just people who are very adept at saving and whose contributions are especially magnificent
Social stratification refers to society’s categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, gender, occupation, and social status, or derived power, social and political. As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit. In modern Western societies, social stratification is typically defined in terms of three social classes: the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class, in turn, each class can be subdivided into the upper-stratum, the middle-stratum, and the lower stratum
The term capitalist, meaning an owner of capital, appears earlier than the term capitalism and dates to the mid-17th century. Capitalism is derived from capital, which evolved from capitale, a late Latin word based on caput, meaning head—which is 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 to refer to funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest. By 1283, it was used in the sense of the capital assets of a trading firm and was often interchanged with wealth, money, funds, goods, assets & property
wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Pyramid of Capitalist System is a common name of a 1911 American cartoon caricature critical of capitalism, closely based on a Russian flyer of c. 1901.The graphic focus is on social stratification by social class and economic inequality.The work has been described as famous well-known and widely reproduced. A number of derivative works exist. It was published in the 1911 edition of Industrial Worker The International Publishing Co., Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. a newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World
