Capitalism Expansion Capitalism

Can the Current Unprecedented Global Expansion of Capitalism

be Sustained

The global expansion of capitalism is an ongoing and uneven process. Discuss the similarities and differences between capitalism's historical expansion and current forms of expansion, and whether or not capitalism's expansion can be sustained. What limits are there to its continued expansion and what implications does this have for its, and our, future?

Many societies in the recent past have tried to deny the power of capitalism to their detriment. Communist economic theory may work in a perfect world, but humans will never be perfect. It is not in human nature to work as hard as possible so that someone else can benefit from that work. Of course, people will work hard for their family's benefit, but they often quail at having to work hard and then provide to the community larder. Capitalism, and trade, have worked for centuries as a means of using one's own talents and experience for another's benefit so that they can provide either something equally valuable in trade or a substitute that can then be handed over for the needed article. Capitalism has its downfalls, such as the very real potential for greed, but it has also been the engine by which the structure of the present world is built.

From a historical perspective, capitalism is what allowed people to live together in greater quantities than could be sustained by hunter-gatherer circles. Trade for goods began in ancient times, but it was not until much more recently that this practice was set up into a system that could be called an economic theory. Perelman (2000) traces capitalism back to the early days "sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (17). He says that at this time people worked six days a week...

They spent much of their "working" day in leisure. But, this changed slowly over time because the peasants worked lands that belonged to the landed gentry and they began to realize that if the peasants worked more, they would make more money. Perelman (2000) notes that "in southern France, rents appear to have grown from about one-fourth of the yield in 1540 to one-half by 1665" (17). Although this did cause the peasants to labor longer, Perelman reports that they still seemed to enjoy a great deal of leisure time.
So capitalism began due to a push from the landed gentry, but it was the middle class and trade that really opened it up. People realized that there were goods overseas which could be used to create wealth at home. The Dutch East Indies Company and the British expanded their reach beyond Europe and began colonizing the rest of the world and stripping it of its goods. While other nations were colonizing and looking for gold, some were finding gold in trade and capitalistic endeavor. The original expansion of capitalism was dominated by Dutch and English ships which plied the waters of the world looking for goods that could be traded for a profit.

Capitalism has grown through that time to become the preeminent engine of economies in the modern world. It is interesting to people over thirty, that a world which once contained two distinct superpowers marked by completely different political and economic philosophies, now those same countries that disdained capitalism as an economic philosophy of the elite are now embracing it. Perelman (2000) even writes that Marx believed in some of the tenets of capitalism but believed that the worker would have to be freed from the imperialism of the elite and stage a revolution before capitalism…