Capitalism

Capitalism is a social system based on the private ownership of the means of production and private expropriation of socially produced wealth. The main feature of capitalism is the exploitation of the workers by the bourgeoisie through wage-slavery.

Definition

The definition of capitalism varies. The term "social system" is used here, because the capitalist mode of production also determines its political and cultural superstructure.

Idealist Definitions

Capitalism may be defined by its adherents as a combination of free markets, private property, competitive markets, voluntary exchange and wage labor. This and similar definitions carry limitations that prevents capitalist adherents from seeing capitalism as a whole to include the lengths taken by the bourgoisie to preserve and perpetuate its system and their profits, leading to denial of atrocities like the Bengal Famine or the Pinochet regime as 'not real capitalism'.

Contradictions

The fundamental contradiction of Capitalism is that between the social character of production and the private capitalist form of appropriating the product of labor. This contradiction expresses the profound antagonism between wage labor and capital, between the developing productive forces and the capitalist relations of production which shackle them. As the modern productive forces, based on large mechanized industry, develop, production becomes more and more concentrated, the social division of labor progresses, leading to a widening and intensification of the economic links between the various enterprises and branches of the economy.

During the production of each commodity, there is, directly or indirectly, participation of enterprises of different branches of production and hundreds of thousands to millions of workers, grouped in the capitalist enterprises. The process of production and work, through the development of productive forces is increasingly socialized. However, both production and its results do not belong to those who are really its creators — the workers — but to private persons, to the capitalists, who use the social wealth for profit, and not in the interest of society as a whole.

History

With the advent of the 1980s, there was "a surge in economic and legal reforms in developed and emerging markets alike that prioritized markets over government in allocating economic resources, a process that was further galvanized by the disappearance of the iron curtain and the collapse of socialism."

Governments Under Capitalism

Under capitalism, the law is placed firmly "in the service of capital." As Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School Katharina Pistor further elucidates: "Through its courts, bailiffs, and police forces, states enforce not only their own commands, but also private property rights and the binding commitments private parties make to one another. This does not mean that state power is omnipresent. As long as the threat of coercive law enforcement is sufficiently credible, voluntary compliance can be achieved without mobilizing it in every case."

References

Bibliography

Print sources

• Pistor, Katharina (2019). The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691189439.