Word: capitalisme
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Capitalism, says Social Philosopher Irving Kristol, "is based on private property, where normal economic activity consists of commercial transactions between consenting adults." The idea seems elementary enough: people have the right to acquire and trade property in a free market, to start and build enterprises without fear of government intervention...
These developments, however, also involved wrenching social changes, as people whose families had lived on the land for centuries moved to often crowded, filthy urban industrial centers. Yet this early capitalism represented for millions an escape from a still more oppressive rural poverty. Even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote...
Capitalism has exhibited a phenomenal ability to provide what consumers demand. It has consistently outperformed socialism. Writes Catholic Theologian Michael Novak: "No other system has so quickly and universally raised the levels of health, longevity and income of the entire world."
The Great Depression beginning in 1929 was capitalism's harshest test. One-fourth of the U.S. labor force was unemployed, national output fell by half, and some 11,000 banks closed their doors. Capitalism was in large part saved by the innovative theories of British Economist John Maynard Keynes...
During the quarter-century after World War II capitalism enjoyed its halcyon days. From 1951 to 1973 growth in the advanced industrial nations expanded by an average 4.8% annually, while inflation generally was low. U.S. presidential advisers by the late 1960s confidently claimed that they had captured the golden fleece...