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The word "capitalism" is. The word only needed to be created when there was something to contrast it to. We don't have a word for "the system wherein individual
by memefrog 3y ago
The word "capitalism" is. The word only needed to be created when there was something to contrast it to. We don't have a word for "the system wherein individuals are considered to exist" because nobody has seriously suggested we don't exist.
Similarly there was no word for "the economic system where buyers and sellers of goods and services _aren't_ forbidden from buying and selling those goods and services except from and to the state" until communists turned up and proposed a system with that restriction. We didnt need a word for "an economy where commerce is permissible", in other words, until someone suggested it might be forbidden.
- Anthony-G 3y ago> The word only needed to be created when there was something to contrast it to. The term capitalism started to be used during the Enlightment in order to describe the new economic system that replaced the one that immediately preceded it, often loosely referred to as feudalism, a system where large land-owners held all the economic power and effectively ruled the lives of their serfs/tenants, and didn’t feel the need to invest their excess wealth into improving the means of production to increase productivity. The merchants, traders and crafts-people had little to no power under this system – at least not until they had their own revolutions.
- memefrog 3y agoThe term 'capitalism' does not predate the 19th century according to the Oxford English Dictionary.