Microblog Memes

definitions matter

Not really when it comes to the idea of capitalism. You aren't going to get a definition of capitalism because the idea of capitalism was developed by critics of it analyzing it from a dialectical basis, and dialectics, in the hegelian sense, reject static concrete definitions.

Capitalism is a system so complex and with so many aspects that you aren't able to pin it down to a simple couple sentence definition. It's like trying to define the Roman empire, the Roman empire is all at once:

• It's people
• It's territorial claims
• It's written laws
• It's beuracracy
• The emperor
• The senate
• The army
• The roads
• Etc.

And all the different relationships between those things and all the different rules both written and unwritten governing those relationships. Thus you can't just give a simple definition of the Roman empire and actually capture what it was. This is why people operating outside of a hegelian worldview struggle to define these complex systems like the Roman empire and capitalism. You can see this further down in the wikipedia article under definition:

There is no universally agreed upon definition of capitalism; it is unclear whether or not capitalism characterizes an entire society, a specific type of social order, or crucial components or elements of a society.[29] Societies officially founded in opposition to capitalism, such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R), and the People's Republic of China, have sometimes been argued to actually exhibit characteristics of capitalism, despite the denouncement from their claimed communist ideology.[30] Nancy Fraser describes usage of the term "capitalism" by many authors as "mainly rhetorical, functioning less as an actual concept than as a gesture toward the need for a concept".[31] Scholars who are uncritical of capitalism rarely actually use the term "capitalism".[32] Some doubt that the term "capitalism" possesses valid scientific dignity,[29] and it is generally not discussed in mainstream economics,[31] with economist Daron Acemoglu suggesting that the term "capitalism" should be abandoned entirely.[33] Consequently, understanding of the concept of capitalism tends to be heavily influenced by opponents of capitalism and by the followers and critics of Karl Marx.

If you still want your concrete definition at that then like it says you should look to the critics of capitalism for its "definition", and it's chief critic Marx took three whole volumes to explain what capitalism was and how it operated: das kapital. That's because he was explaining it in a hegelian dialectical approach, taking into account all the forces, tendencies, contradictions and structures of it, and not a definitive sense.