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.
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. [note 1] 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.
Notes
- ↑ Workers in commodity-producing industries provide their labor as a collective force, and that is the social character of production. The bourgeoisie privately expropriate the product of collective labor.