Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately owned and goods and services are produced for profit through competitive market exchange. Its defining features include wage labor, capital accumulation, private property, and the pursuit of continual economic growth. Karl Marx offered the most influential critique, arguing that capitalism rests on a class relationship between the bourgeoisie, who own productive property, and the proletariat, who must sell their labor power and whose surplus value is appropriated as profit. Max Weber linked the rise of modern capitalism to the Protestant ethic and to rationalization, stressing calculation, discipline, and bureaucratic organization. Emile Durkheim examined how the division of labor shapes solidarity and anomie in industrial societies, while Adam Smith defended market competition as a source of prosperity. Later thinkers such as Immanuel Wallerstein analyzed the capitalist world system, and Thomas Piketty has documented persistent wealth inequality. Sociologists study capitalism in relation to class, inequality, globalization, consumption, and work, and they debate its variations, including welfare, state, and neoliberal forms, as well as its social and environmental consequences.