![\"What](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.johnlaurits.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/what-is-capitalism-definition-capitalist-system.png?resize=723%2C382&ssl=1\" "\\"What")
<\/div>\nCapitalism vs. the Market:
\nMixing Up Two Very Different Ideas<\/i><\/h2>\n
Markets are as old as civilization itself. A \u201cmarket\u201d is just a place where stuff is bought and sold, whether that place is a bazaar in ancient Mesopotamia or a modern stock exchange. Despite the simple set-up, markets do some pretty neat things \u2014 they determine prices, gather and dispense goods and services, and turn complex interactions between many people into smooth, orderly systems. While markets have obviously been put to good use by capitalist systems, the idea that the market itself is somehow capitalistic does not hold up to reality. In fact, the market may have been even\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>crucial in pre-capitalist systems due to its usefulness in organizing large-scale social interactions that might otherwise have been impossible at earlier stages of development.<\/p>\n Capitalism showed up just a few centuries ago during the 1700s as the industrial revolution was building steam. The\u00a0first use of capitalism as a term for an economic system<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0was by libertarian-socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in the 1860s but it was rarely used before Werner Sombart published\u00a0Der Moderne Kapitalismus\u00a0<\/em>in 1902. The capitalist system itself, however, had already been described in detail by Marx\u2019s 1867\u00a0Das Kapital<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>which used the terms\u00a0capitalist<\/em>,\u00a0capitalist mode of production<\/em>, and\u00a0capitalist system<\/em>\u00a0but not\u00a0capitalism<\/em>.* All three \u2014 Proudhon, Marx, and Sombart \u2014 understood capitalism as\u00a0a system defined by its enforcement of private property rights<\/em>.<\/p>\n To understand what distinguishes a capitalist society from others, it is important to step back and get a good look at other historical ideas of ownership that existed in different times and places. Some indigenous American societies held different views of property than the European invaders \u2014\u00a0the Algonquian<\/strong><\/a>, for instance, owned land communally and honored an individuals\u2019 temporary right to own part of it, established by use or a fair exchange of use-rights with others. Once a person quit cultivating an area, it reverted back to the public so that others could use it.<\/p>\n As another example, undeveloped nature outside of major cities in pre-capitalist Europe was owned by nobody and governed by customary use-rights. These areas were called\u00a0the commons<\/em>, which is where the term \u201ccommoner\u201d comes from.\u00a0Many English communities subsisted on the commons before England \u2014 the first mature capitalist state \u2014 seized and partitioned them by enacting policies known as\u00a0enclosure<\/em>.<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0This is one of the more literal instances of the transition to private concepts of property \u2014 contrary to prior ideas of ownership, this was an\u00a0exclusive ownership<\/em>. Enclosure not only evicted commoners from public lands but it got rid of customary use-rights (such as the biblical tradition of\u00a0gleaning<\/em><\/strong><\/a>) and built a legal framework of rights to exclusive ownership that existed outside of any social context.<\/p>\nCapitalism Is a Concept of Ownership<\/strong><\/h3>\n