Criticism of capitalism

Early critics of capitalism, such as Friedrich Engels, claim that rapid industrialization in Europe created working conditions viewed as unfair, including 14-hour work days, child labor and shanty towns.{{cite web | last = Engels | first = Frederick | title = The Condition of the Working Class in England | url = http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/index.htm | access-date = 16 April 2008}} Some modern economists argue that average living standards did not improve, or only very slowly improved, before 1840.{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/IndustrialRevolutionandtheStandardofLiving.html|title=Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living|author=Clark Nardinelli, economist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration|encyclopedia=The concise encyclopedia of economics|publisher=The Library of Economics and Liberty|access-date=20 April 2008}}

{{see also|Anarchism|Libertarian socialism}}French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. The Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Giménez Igualada sees "capitalism is an effect of government; the disappearance of government means capitalism falls from its pedestal vertiginously ... That which we call capitalism is not something else but a product of the State, within which the only thing that is being pushed forward is profit, good or badly acquired. And so to fight against capitalism is a pointless task, since be it State capitalism or Enterprise capitalism, as long as Government exists, exploiting capital will exist. The fight, but of consciousness, is against the State"."el capitalismo es sólo el efecto del gobierno; desaparecido el gobierno, el capitalismo cae de su pedestal vertiginosamente ... Lo que llamamos capitalismo no es otra cosa que el producto del Estado, dentro del cual lo único que se cultiva es la ganancia, bien o mal habida. Luchar, pues, contra el capitalismo es tarea inútil, porque sea Capitalismo de Estado o Capitalismo de Empresa, mientras el Gobierno exista, existirá el capital que explota. La lucha, pero de conciencias, es contra el Estado."[http://www.kclibertaria.comyr.com/lpdf/l125.pdf Anarquismo by Miguel Gimenez Igualada] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170131205417/http://www.kclibertaria.comyr.com/lpdf/l125.pdf |date=31 January 2017 }}

Within anarchism, there emerged a critique of wage slavery which refers to a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary slavery,{{citation needed|date=February 2021}} where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate.{{cite web |title= wage slave |url= http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wage%20slave |website= Merriam Webster |access-date= 4 March 2013 }}{{cite web |title= wage slave |url= http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wage%20slave |website=Dictionary.com |access-date= 4 March 2013 }} It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. The term "wage slavery" has been used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops){{cite book|first1=Michael J|last1=Sandel|date=1996|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_KdrTfTxqvgC&pg=PA184|page=184 |title=Democracy's Discontent |isbn=978-0674197459 |publisher=Harvard University Press}} and the latter as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy.{{cite web |url=http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Chomsky/chomsky-con2.html |title=Conversation with Noam Chomsky |page=2 |publisher=Globetrotter.berkeley.edu |access-date=28 June 2010 |archive-date=19 September 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190919041544/http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Chomsky/chomsky-con2.html |url-status=dead }}{{cite web |title= The Bolsheviks and Workers Control, 1917–1921: The State and Counter-revolution |url= http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html |publisher= Spunk Library |access-date= 4 March 2013 }}

Libertarian socialists believe if freedom is valued, then society must work towards a system in which individuals have the power to decide economic issues along with political issues. Libertarian socialists seek to replace unjustified authority with direct democracy, voluntary federation and popular autonomy in all aspects of life,Harrington, Austin, et al. Encyclopedia of Social Theory Routledge (2006) p. 50 including physical communities and economic enterprises. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Proudhon and Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context of a critique of societal property not intended for active personal use, Luddites emphasized the dehumanization brought about by machines while later Emma Goldman famously denounced wage slavery by saying: "The only difference is that you are hired slaves instead of block slaves".{{Cite book |last=Goldman |first=Emma |title=Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume I: Made for America, 1890–1901 |publisher=University of California Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0520086708 |editor-last=Falk |editor-first=Candace |editor-link=List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 1998 |location=Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA |author-link=Emma Goldman |page = 283}} American anarchist Emma Goldman believed that the economic system of capitalism was incompatible with human liberty. "The only demand that property recognizes", she wrote in Anarchism and Other Essays, "is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade".Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays. 3rd ed. 1917. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1969., p. 54. She also argued that capitalism dehumanized workers, "turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron".

Noam Chomsky contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and control their workplace. Many libertarian socialists argue that large-scale voluntary associations should manage industrial manufacture while workers retain rights to the individual products of their labor.Lindemann, Albert S. A History of European Socialism Yale University Press (1983) p. 160 As such, they see a distinction between the concepts of "private property" and "personal possession". Whereas "private property" grants an individual exclusive control over a thing whether it is in use or not and regardless of its productive capacity, "possession" grants no rights to things that are not in use.Ely, Richard et al. 'Property and Contract in Their Relations to the Distribution of Wealth' The Macmillan Company (1914)

In addition to anarchist Benjamin Tucker's "big four" monopolies (land, money, tariffs and patents) that have emerged under capitalism, neo-mutualist economist Kevin Carson argues that the state has also transferred wealth to the wealthy by subsidizing organizational centralization in the form of transportation and communication subsidies. He believes that Tucker overlooked this issue due to Tucker's focus on individual market transactions, whereas Carson also focuses on organizational issues. The theoretical sections of Studies in Mutualist Political Economy are presented as an attempt to integrate marginalist critiques into the labor theory of value.Kevin A. Carson, [http://www.mutualist.org/id112.html Studies in Mutualist Political Economy] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110415135834/http://www.mutualist.org/id112.html |date=15 April 2011 }} chs. 1–3 Carson has also been highly critical of intellectual property.{{cite web|url=http://c4ss.org/content/521|title=Intellectual Property – A Libertarian Critique|publisher=c4ss.org|access-date=23 May 2009|last=Carson|first=Kevin}} The primary focus of his most recent work has been decentralized manufacturing and the informal and household economies.{{cite web|url=http://c4ss.org/content/78|title=Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles|publisher=c4ss.org|access-date=26 May 2009|last=Carson|first=Kevin}} Carson holds that "[c]apitalism, arising as a new class society directly from the old class society of the Middle Ages, was founded on an act of robbery as massive as the earlier feudal conquest of the land. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege without which its survival is unimaginable".Richman, Sheldon, [http://www.amconmag.com/blog/libertarian-left/ Libertarian Left] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110814153531/http://www.amconmag.com/blog/libertarian-left/ |date=14 August 2011 }}, The American Conservative (March 2011)

Carson coined the pejorative term "vulgar libertarianism", a phrase that describes the use of a free market rhetoric in defense of corporate capitalism and economic inequality. According to Carson, the term is derived from the phrase "vulgar political economy", which Karl Marx described as an economic order that "deliberately becomes increasingly apologetic and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of existence the ideas which contain the contradictions [existing in economic life]".Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, III, p. 501.

{{see also|Conservatism|Traditionalist conservatism}}

In Conservatives Against Capitalism, Peter Kolozi relies on Norberto Bobbio's definition of right and left, dividing the two camps according to their preference for equality or hierarchy. Kolozi argued that capitalism has faced persistent criticism from the right since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Such critics, while heterogeneous, are united in the belief “that laissez-faire capitalism has undermined an established social hierarchy governed by the virtuous or excellent".{{cite web|url=https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/some-conservatives-have-been-against-capitalism-for-centuries/|title=Some Conservatives Have Been Against Capitalism for Centuries|last=Hawley|first=George|website=The American Conservative|date=2 October 2017 |language=en-US|access-date=30 December 2018}}

In September 2018, Murtaza Hussain wrote in The Intercept about "Conservatives Against Capitalism", stating:

For all their differences, there is one key aspect of the intellectual history charted in "Conservatives Against Capitalism" that deals with an issue of shared concern on both the left and the right: the need for community. One of the grim consequences of the Social Darwinian pressures unleashed by free-market capitalism has been the destruction of networks of community, family, and professional associations in developed societies. ... These so-called intermediate institutions have historically played a vital role giving ordinary people a sense of meaning and protecting them from the structural violence of the state and the market. Their loss has led to the creation of a huge class of atomized and lonely people, cut adrift from traditional sources of support and left alone to contend with the power of impersonal economic forces.{{Cite web|url=https://theintercept.com/2018/09/30/conservatives-capitalism-book-peter-kolozi/|title=How the Trump Era Lays Bare the Tension in the Marriage Between Conservatism and Capitalism|last=Hussain|first=Murtaza|date=2018-09-30|website=The Intercept|language=en-US|access-date=2018-12-30}}

{{Quote|text=The capitalist-critical conservative, however, sees possibilities for technological progress and personal freedoms that lie beyond market-driven economics, finding inspiration in European traditions that have been supplanted by industrialisation. Despite the gains in efficiency made within capitalism, many conservatives remain sceptical of the possibility of endless economic growth, particularly given that God is infinite and his creatures, including petroleum and other minerals, are not.}}

{{see also|Economics of fascism|Fascism|Fascism and ideology}}

Fascists opposed both international socialism and free-market capitalism, arguing that their views represented a Third PositionPayne, Stanley G., Fascism: Comparison and Definition. (Madison, Wisconsin; London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980) p. 162. and claiming to provide a realistic economic alternative that was neither laissez-faire capitalism nor communism.Philip Morgan, Fascism in Europe, 1919–1945, New York, Taylor & Francis, 2003, p. 168. They favored corporatism and class collaboration, believing that the existence of inequality and social hierarchy was beneficial (contrary to the views of socialists){{cite encyclopedia|year=1932|title=The Doctrine of Fascism| encyclopedia=Enciclopedia Italiana|publisher=Istituto Giovanni Treccani|location=Rome}} "[Fascism] affirms the irremediable, fruitful and beneficent inequality of men"John Weiss, "The Fascist Tradition", Harper & Row, New York, 1967. pp. 14 while also arguing that the state had a role in mediating relations between classes (contrary to the views of economic liberals).Calvin B. Hoover, The Paths of Economic Change: Contrasting Tendencies in the Modern World, The American Economic Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. (March 1935), pp. 13–20.

{{see also|History of liberalism|Liberalism}}

During the Age of Enlightenment, some proponents of liberalism were critics of wage slavery.Chomsky, Noam (1993). Year 501: The Conquest Continues. Verso. p. 19. {{ISBN|978-0860916802}}.Rodriguez, Junius P. (2007). Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia. 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 500. {{ISBN|978-1851095445}}. However, classical liberalism itself was very much an ideology of capitalism, supporting the free market and laissez-faire.

{{Main|Critique of political economy#Marx's critique of political economy|Marxian economics}}

{{Marxian economics}}File:Pyramid of Capitalist System.jpg" cartoon made by the Industrial Workers of the World (1911) is an example of a socialist critique of capitalism and of social stratification.]]Karl Marx considered capitalism to be a historically specific mode of production (the way in which the productive property is owned and controlled, combined with the corresponding social relations between individuals based on their connection with the process of production).{{citation needed|date=February 2021}}

The "capitalistic era" according to Marx dates from 16th-century merchants and small urban workshops.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Pf9Jd1sIMJ0C|title=An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory|date=2002|publisher=Resistance Books|via=Google Books|isbn=978-1876646301|access-date=27 August 2016|archive-date=11 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161211173733/https://books.google.com/books?id=Pf9Jd1sIMJ0C|url-status=live}} Marx knew that wage labour existed on a modest scale for centuries before capitalist industry. For Marx, the capitalist stage of development or "bourgeois society" represented the most advanced form of social organization to date, but he also thought that the working classes would come to power in a worldwide socialist or communist transformation of human society as the end of the series of first aristocratic, then capitalist and finally working class rule was reached.The Communist Manifesto"To Marx, the problem of reconstituting society did not arise from some prescription, motivated by his personal predilections; it followed, as an iron-clad historical necessity—on the one hand, from the productive forces grown to powerful maturity; on the other, from the impossibility further to organize these forces according to the will of the law of value." — Leon Trotsky, "Marxism in our Time", 1939 (Inevitability of Socialism), [http://wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/time-n01.shtml WSWS.org] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081113010726/http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/time-n01.shtml |date=13 November 2008 }}

Following Adam Smith, Marx distinguished the use value of commodities from their exchange value in the market. According to Marx, capital is created with the purchase of commodities for the purpose of creating new commodities with an exchange value higher than the sum of the original purchases. For Marx, the use of labor power had itself become a commodity under capitalism and the exchange value of labor power, as reflected in the wage, is less than the value it produces for the capitalist.

This difference in values, he argues, constitutes surplus value, which the capitalists extract and accumulate. In his book Capital, Marx argues that the capitalist mode of production is distinguished by how the owners of capital extract this surplus from workers—all prior class societies had extracted surplus labor, but capitalism was new in doing so via the sale-value of produced commodities.{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm|title=Capital. V. 3. Chapter 47: Genesis of capitalist ground rent|author=Karl Marx|access-date=26 February 2008|publisher=Marxists|archive-date=7 March 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080307233857/http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm|url-status=live}} He argues that a core requirement of a capitalist society is that a large portion of the population must not possess sources of self-sustenance that would allow them to be independent and are instead forced to sell their labor for a wage.Karl Marx. Chapter Twenty-Five: The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. Das Kapital.Dobb, Maurice, 1947. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. New York, International Publishers Co.David Harvey 1989 The Condition of Postmodernity

In conjunction with his criticism of capitalism was Marx's belief that the working class, due to its relationship to the means of production and numerical superiority under capitalism, would be the driving force behind the socialist revolution.Wheen, Francis. Books That Shook the World: Marx's Das Kapital • 1st {{abbr|ed.|edition}}, London, Atlantic Books, 2006.{{ISBN?}}

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Vladimir Lenin further developed Marxist theory and argued that capitalism necessarily led to monopoly capitalism and the export of capital—which he also called "imperialism"—to find new markets and resources, representing the last and highest stage of capitalism.{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm|title=Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism|author=Vladimir Lenin|publisher=Marxists|access-date=11 January 2014|year=1916|archive-date=11 October 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161011090949/http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm|url-status=live}} Some 20th-century Marxian economists consider capitalism to be a social formation where capitalist class processes dominate, but are not exclusive.See, for example, the works of Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff.

To these thinkers, capitalist class processes are simply those in which surplus labor takes the form of surplus value, usable as capital; other tendencies for utilization of labor nonetheless exist simultaneously in existing societies where capitalist processes predominate. However, other late Marxian thinkers argue that a social formation as a whole may be classed as capitalist if capitalism is the mode by which a surplus is extracted, even if this surplus is not produced by capitalist activity as when an absolute majority of the population is engaged in non-capitalist economic activity.{{cite book |author1=Ste. Croix |author2=G. E. M. de |title=The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World|year=1982|pages=52–53}}{{ISBN?}}

In Limits to Capital (1982), David Harvey outlines an overdetermined, "spatially restless" capitalism coupled with the spatiality of crisis formation and resolution.David Harvey. The Limits to Capital. Verso, 2007. {{ISBN|1844670953}} Harvey used Marx's theory of crisis to aid his argument that capitalism must have its "fixes", but that we cannot predetermine what fixes will be implemented, nor in what form they will be. His work on contractions of capital accumulation and international movements of capitalist modes of production and money flows has been influential.Lawson, Victoria. Making Development Geography (Human Geography in the Making). New York: A Hodder Arnold Publication, 2007. Print. According to Harvey, capitalism creates the conditions for volatile and geographically uneven development.Harvey, David. Notes towards a theory of uneven geographical development. Print. {{Page needed|date=October 2022}}{{ISBN?}}

Sociologists such as Ulrich Beck envisioned the society of risk as a new cultural value which saw risk as a commodity to be exchanged in globalized economies. This theory suggested that disasters and capitalist economy were inevitably entwined. Disasters allow the introduction of economic programs which otherwise would be rejected as well as decentralizing the class structure in production.Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity (Vol. 17). Sage.{{ISBN?}}

{{see also|Christian communism|Christian left|Christian socialism|Islamic socialism|Jewish left|Liberation theology|Religious communism|Social Gospel}}

Many organized religions have criticized or opposed specific elements of capitalism. Traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam forbid lending money at interest,Baba Metzia 61bMoehlman, 1934, pp. 6–7. although alternative methods of banking have been developed. Some Christians have criticized capitalism for its materialist aspects and its inability to account for the wellbeing of all people.{{cite web|url=https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P8C.HTM|title=Catechism of the Catholic Church: III. The Social Doctrine of the Church|publisher=Vatican Publishing House|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406163022/https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P8C.HTM|archive-date=6 April 2018|url-status=live|access-date=6 April 2018|quote=[2425] The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with 'communism' or 'socialism.' She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of 'capitalism,' individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.206 Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for 'there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.'²⁰⁷ Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.}} Many of Jesus' parables deal with economic concerns: farming, shepherding, being in debt, doing hard labor, being excluded from banquets and the houses of the rich and have implications for wealth and power distribution.{{cite web|url=https://www.smh.com.au/business/what-jesus-said-about-capitalism-20120408-1wjmm.html|title=What Jesus said about capitalism|last=Gittins|first=Ross|author-link=Ross Gittins|date=9 April 2012|department=Business|newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald|publisher=Fairfax Media|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406163539/https://www.smh.com.au/business/what-jesus-said-about-capitalism-20120408-1wjmm.html|archive-date=6 April 2018|url-status=live|access-date=6 April 2018|quote=It's certainly true that Jesus was always blessing the poor, challenging the rich, mixing with despised tax-gatherers and speaking of a time when the social order is overturned and 'the last shall be first'. It's also true, as Myers reminds us, that many of Jesus's parables deal with clearly economic concerns: farming, shepherding, being in debt, doing hard labour, being excluded from banquets and the houses of the rich.}}Thomas Gubleton, archbishop of Detroit speaking in Capitalism: A Love Story Catholic scholars and clergy have often criticized capitalism because of its disenfranchisement of the poor, often promoting distributism as an alternative. In his 84-page apostolic exhortation {{lang|la|Evangelii gaudium}}, Catholic Pope Francis described unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny" and called on world leaders to fight rising poverty and inequality, stating:{{cite news|last=O'Leary|first=Naomi|date=26 November 2013|title=Pope attacks 'tyranny' of markets in manifesto for papacy|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-document/pope-attacks-tyranny-of-markets-in-manifesto-for-papacy-idUSBRE9AP0EQ20131126|url-status=live|department=Business News|work=Reuters|archive-url=https://archive.today/20180406170738/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-document/pope-attacks-tyranny-of-markets-in-manifesto-for-papacy-idUSBRE9AP0EQ20131126|archive-date=6 April 2018|access-date=6 April 2018|quote=Pope Francis attacked unfettered capitalism as 'a new tyranny' and beseeched global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality, in a document on Tuesday setting out a platform for his papacy and calling for a renewal of the Catholic Church.}}

{{blockquote|Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.{{cite news|last1=Goldfarb|first1=Zachary A.|last2=Boorstein|first2=Michelle|date=26 November 2013|title=Pope Francis denounces 'trickle-down' economic theories in sharp criticism of inequality|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pope-francis-denounces-trickle-down-economic-theories-in-critique-of-inequality/2013/11/26/e17ffe4e-56b6-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.html|url-status=live|department=Business|newspaper=The Washington Post|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406171743/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pope-francis-denounces-trickle-down-economic-theories-in-critique-of-inequality/2013/11/26/e17ffe4e-56b6-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.html|archive-date=6 April 2018|access-date=6 April 2018}}}}

The Catholic Church forbids usury.{{cite journal|page=6|jstor=3161033|title=The Christianization of Interest|journal=Church History|volume=3|issue=1|year=1934|last1=Moehlman|first1=Conrad Henry|s2cid=162381369|author-link=Conrad Henry Moehlman}}{{cite web|title=First Council of Nicea (A.D. 325)|url=http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm| access-date = 4 September 2019 |publisher=New Advent}}{{cite web|title=Third Lateran Council – 1179 A.D. – Papal Encyclicals|url=http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum11.htm| access-date = 4 September 2019 |publisher=Papal Encyclicals Online|website=papalencyclicals.net|date=5 March 1179}} As established by papal encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno, Catholic social teaching does not support unrestricted capitalism, primarily because it is considered part of liberalism and secondly by its nature, which goes against social justice. In 2013, Pope Francis said that more restrictions on the free market were required because the "dictatorship" of the global financial system and the "cult of money" were making people miserable.Squires, Nick (18 May 2013). [http://www.theage.com.au/world/pope-blames-tyranny-of-capitalism-for-making-people-miserable-20130517-2jru9.html#ixzz2TZDGtjRA Pope blames tyranny of capitalism for making people miserable]. The Age. Retrieved 18 May 2013. In his encyclical Laudato si', Pope Francis denounced the role of capitalism in furthering climate change.{{cite web | url =https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html | title = Encyclical Letter Laudato Si' Of The Holy Father Francis On Care For Our Common Home (official English-language text of encyclical) |access-date=18 June 2015}}

Islam forbids lending money at interest (riba), the mode of operation of capitalist finance.{{cite web|url=http://learndeen.com/jm/deen-islam/shariah-law/42/102-riba-in-islam.html|title=Riba in Islam|publisher=Learndeen.com|date=29 May 2008|access-date=20 November 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130223040727/http://www.learndeen.com/jm/deen-islam/shariah-law/42/102-riba-in-islam.html|archive-date=23 February 2013|url-status=dead}}Last Sermon of Muhammad given on 10 Dul-hajj 10 hijra, mentioned in all book of Hadith. Sahih Bukhari mentions parts of it. Musnad Imam Ahmed recorded the longest and complete speech.

{{socialism sidebar}}

{{syndicalism sidebar}}

Socialists argue that the accumulation of capital generates waste through externalities that require costly corrective regulatory measures. They also point out that this process generates wasteful industries and practices that exist only to generate sufficient demand for products to be sold at a profit (such as high-pressure advertisement), thereby creating rather than satisfying economic demand.[http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/may10/page23.html] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100716140329/http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/may10/page23.html|date=16 July 2010}}{{cite web|author=Fred Magdoff and Michael D. Yates |url=http://www.monthlyreview.org/091109magdoff-yates.php |title=What Needs To Be Done: A Socialist View |magazine=Monthly Review |date= November 2009|access-date=23 February 2014}}

Socialists argue that capitalism consists of irrational activity, such as the purchasing of commodities only to sell at a later time when their price appreciates (known as speculation), rather than for consumption. Therefore, a crucial criticism often made by socialists is that making money, or accumulation of capital, does not correspond to the satisfaction of demand (the production of use-values).Let's produce for use, not profit. Retrieved 7 August 2010, from worldsocialism.org: {{cite web|url=http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/may10/page23.html |title=Let's produce for use, not profit Article page Socialist Standard May 2010 Vol. 106 Issue No. 1269. |access-date=18 August 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100716140329/http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/may10/page23.html |archive-date=16 July 2010 }} The fundamental criterion for economic activity in capitalism is the accumulation of capital for reinvestment in production. This spurs the development of new, non-productive industries that do not produce use-value and only exist to keep the accumulation process afloat. An example of a non-productive industry is the financial industry, which contributes to the formation of economic bubbles.{{cite web |url=http://www.rdwolff.com/content/economic-crisis-socialist-perspective |title=Economic Crisis from a Socialist Perspective |author= Professor Richard D. Wolff |publisher=Rdwolff.com |date=29 June 2009 |access-date=23 February 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140228090631/http://www.rdwolff.com/content/economic-crisis-socialist-perspective |archive-date=28 February 2014 }}

Socialists view private property relations as limiting the potential of productive forces in the economy. According to socialists, private property becomes obsolete when it concentrates into centralized, socialized institutions based on private appropriation of revenue (but based on cooperative work and internal planning in allocation of inputs) until the role of the capitalist becomes redundant.Engels, Fredrich. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Retrieved 30 October 2010, from Marxists.org: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm, "The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees." With no need for capital accumulation and a class of owners, private property of the means of production is perceived as being an outdated form of economic organization that should be replaced by a free association of individuals based on public or common ownership of these socialized assets.The Political Economy of Socialism, by Horvat, Branko. 1982. Chapter 1: Capitalism, The General Pattern of Capitalist Development (pp. 15–20)Marx and Engels Selected Works, Lawrence and Wishart, 1968, p. 40. Capitalist property relations put a "fetter" on the productive forces. Private ownership imposes constraints on planning, leading to uncoordinated economic decisions that result in business fluctuations, unemployment and a tremendous waste of material resources during crisis of overproduction.The Political Economy of Socialism, by Horvat, Branko. 1982. (p. 197)

Excessive disparities in income distribution lead to social instability and require costly corrective measures in the form of redistributive taxation. This incurs heavy administrative costs while weakening the incentive to work, inviting dishonesty and increasing the likelihood of tax evasion (the corrective measures) while reducing the overall efficiency of the market economy.The Political Economy of Socialism, by Horvat, Branko. 1982. (pp. 197–198) These corrective policies limit the market's incentive system by providing things such as minimum wages, unemployment insurance, taxing profits and reducing the reserve army of labor, resulting in reduced incentives for capitalists to invest in more production. In essence, social welfare policies cripple capitalism's incentive system and are thus unsustainable in the long-run.Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists, 1998. pp. 60–61"

Marxists argue that the establishment of a socialist mode of production is the only way to overcome these deficiencies. Socialists and specifically Marxian socialists, argue that the inherent conflict of interests between the working class and capital prevent optimal use of available human resources and leads to contradictory interest groups (labor and business) striving to influence the state to intervene in the economy at the expense of overall economic efficiency.

Early socialists (utopian socialists and Ricardian socialists) criticized capitalism for concentrating power and wealth within a small segment of societyin Encyclopædia Britannica (2009). Retrieved 14 October 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/551569/socialism, "Main" summary: "Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition—people who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society." who do not utilize available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public.

File:Albert Einstein Head.jpg with his 1949 article "Why Socialism?"]]

In the May 1949 issue of the Monthly Review titled "Why Socialism?", Albert Einstein wrote:Einstein, Albert (May 1949). [http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einstein.php "Why Socialism?"], Monthly Review.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate (the) grave evils (of capitalism), namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

{{further|Criticism of the free market}}

Economist Branko Horvat stated that "[I]t is now well known that capitalist development leads to the concentration of capital, employment and power. It is somewhat less known that it leads to the almost complete destruction of economic freedom".Horvat, Branko, The Political Economy of Socialism (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.) p. 11.

Critics argue that capitalism is in fact not a democracy, but a plutocracy, because in capitalism there is a lack of political, democratic and economic power for the vast majority of the population. They say that this is because in capitalism the means of production are owned privately by a minority of the population, with the vast majority of the population having no control of the economy. Critics argue that capitalism creates large concentrations of money and property in the hands of the elite, leading to vast wealth and income inequalities between the elite and the majority of the population.Bakan, Joel (writer) [http://www.thecorporation.com/ The Corporation (2003)] (Documentary) Evidence for the fact that capitalism is plutocratic can be seen in policies that benefit capitalists at the expense of workers, such as policies where taxes are raised on workers and reduced for capitalists, and the retirement age being increased despite it being against the will of the people. "Corporate capitalism" and "inverted totalitarianism" are terms used by the aforementioned activists and critics of capitalism to describe a capitalist marketplace—and society—characterized by the dominance of hierarchical, bureaucratic, large corporations, which are legally required to pursue profit without concern for social welfare. Corporate capitalism has been criticized for the amount of power and influence corporations and large business interest groups have over government policy, including the policies of regulatory agencies and influencing political campaigns. Many social scientists have criticized corporations for failing to act in the interests of the people; they claim the existence of large corporations seems to circumvent the principles of democracy, which assumes equal power relations between all individuals in a society.{{cite journal|last=Abeles|first=Marc|year=2006|title=Globalization, Power, and Survival: an Anthropological Perspective|url=https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00125880/file/M_Abeles_2006_AQ.pdf|journal=Anthropological Quarterly|volume=79|issue=3|pages=484–486|doi=10.1353/anq.2006.0030|s2cid=144220354}} As part of the political left, activists against corporate power and influence work towards a decreased income gap and improved economical equity.{{cn|date=February 2023}}

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| quote = "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone".

| source = — John Maynard KeynesThe Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics, by Eric D. Beinhocker, Harvard Business Press, 2006, {{ISBN|157851777X}}, p. 408.

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The rise of giant multinational corporations has been a topic of concern among the aforementioned scholars, intellectuals and activists, who see the large corporation as leading to deep, structural erosion of such basic human rights and civil rights as equitable wealth and income distribution, equitable democratic political and socio-economic power representation and many other human rights and needs. They have pointed out that in their view large corporations create false needs in consumers and—they contend—have had a long history of interference in and distortion of the policies of sovereign nation states through high-priced legal lobbying and other almost always legal, powerful forms of influence peddling. In their view, evidence supporting this belief includes invasive advertising (such as billboards, television ads, adware, spam, telemarketing, child-targeted advertising and guerrilla marketing), massive open or secret corporate political campaign contributions in so-called "democratic" elections, corporatocracy, the revolving door between government and corporations, regulatory capture, "too big to fail" (also known as "too big to jail"), massive taxpayer-provided corporate bailouts, socialism/communism for the very rich and brutal, vicious, Darwinian capitalism for everyone else, and—they claim—seemingly endless global news stories about corporate corruption (Martha Stewart and Enron, among other examples).{{citation needed|reason=which?|date=April 2018}} Anti-corporate-activists express the view that large corporations answer only to large shareholders, giving human rights issues, social justice issues, environmental issues and other issues of high significance to the bottom 99% of the global human population virtually no consideration.{{cite web|url=http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/|title=The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy|publisher=Inclusivedemocracy.org|access-date=23 February 2014}} American political philosopher Jodi Dean says that contemporary economic and financial calamities have dispelled the notion that capitalism is a viable economic system, adding that "the fantasy that democracy exerts a force for economic justice has dissolved as the US government funnels trillions of dollars to banks and European central banks rig national governments and cut social programs to keep themselves afloat."{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t7-dxAtB0usC&pg=PA21|title=The Communist Horizon|last=Dean|first=Jodi|date=2012|publisher=Verso|isbn=978-1844679546|page=21|author-link=Jodi Dean}}

According to Quinn Slobodian, one way capitalism undermines democracy is by "punching holes in the territory of the nation state" to create special economic zones, of which there are 5,400 around the globe, ranging from tax havens to "sites for low-wage production . . . often ringed by barbed wire," that he describes as "zones of exception with different laws and often no democratic oversight."{{sfn|Slobodian|2023|pages=1-3}}{{cite journal |last1=Gane |first1=Nicholas |title=Capitalism, Democracy, and Territorial Forms of Exception: Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism |journal=Theory, Culture & Society |date=2023 |volume=40 |issue=7-8 |pages=269–277 |doi=10.1177/02632764231201334 |doi-access=free}}

David Schweickart wrote: "Ordinary people [in capitalist societies] are deemed competent enough to select their political leaders-but not their bosses. Contemporary capitalism celebrates democracy, yet denies us our democratic rights at precisely the point where they might be utilized most immediately and concretely: at the place where we spend most of the active and alert hours of our adult lives".{{cite news|url=http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/6345|title=A Comparison of Economic Democracy and Participatory Economics|last=Weiss|first=Adam|date=4 May 2005|work=ZMag|access-date=26 June 2008|archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20090729004839/http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/6345|archive-date=29 July 2009|url-status=dead}}

Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States, said "I hope we shall crush ... in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country".{{cite web|url=http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff5.htm|title=Home – Thomas Jefferson|website=etext.virginia.edu|publisher=UVa Research Portal at UVa Library|access-date=11 January 2014}} In a 29 April 1938 message to the U. S. Congress, Franklin D. Roosevelt warned that the growth of private power could lead to fascism, arguing that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Recommendations to the Congress to Curb Monopolies and the Concentration of Economic Power", April 29, 1938, in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ed. Samuel I. Rosenman, vol. 7, (New York, MacMillan: 1941), pp. 305–315.{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,759590,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080505122815/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,759590,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=May 5, 2008|title=Anti-Monopoly|date=1938-05-09|access-date=2014-02-23|magazine=Time}}Franklin D. Roosevelt, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1805350 "Appendix A: Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Recommendations Relative to the Strengthening and Enforcement of Antitrust Laws"], The American Economic Review, Vol. 32, No. 2, Part 2, Supplement, Papers Relating to the Temporary National Economic Committee (Jun., 1942), pp. 119–128. Statistics of the Bureau of Internal Revenue reveal the following figures for 1935: "Ownership of corporate assets: Of all corporations reporting from every part of the Nation, one-tenth of 1 percent of them owned 52 percent of the assets of all of them".

U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower criticized the notion of the confluence of corporate power and de facto fascismIra Chernus, "Eisenhower's Ideology in World War II", Armed Forces & Society (1997) 23(4): 595–613 and in his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation brought attention to the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" in the United States{{cite web|url=http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html|title=Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961|publisher=coursesa.matrix.msu.edu|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130812210857/http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html|archive-date=12 August 2013|url-status=dead|access-date=11 January 2014}} and stressed "the need to maintain balance in and among national programs—balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage".

In a 1986 debate on Socialism vs Capitalism with John Judis vs Harry Binswanger and John Ridpath, intellectual Christopher Hitchens said:

{{blockquote|capitalism as a system has coexisted with and in on occasion sponsored feudalism, monarchy, fascism, slavery, apartheid, and under development. It has also been the great engine of progress, development and innovation in a certain few heartland countries. This means that it must be a system studied as a system and not as an idea. Its claims to be the sponsor of freedom are purely contingent. It's good propaganda but it's not very good political science{{cite web|url=https://www.c-span.org/video/?150777-1/socialism-versus-capitalism|title=Socialism Versus Capitalism|work=C-SPAN}}}}

{{see also|Wage slavery|Sweatshop}}

File:UsuryDurer.jpg's Stultifera Navis (the Ship of Fools; woodcut attributed to Albrecht Dürer)]]

Critics of capitalism view the system as inherently exploitative. In an economic sense, exploitation is often related to the expropriation of labor for profit and based on Karl Marx's version of the labor theory of value. The labor theory of value was supported by classical economists like David Ricardo and Adam Smith who believed that "the value of a commodity depends on the relative quantity of labor which is necessary for its production".{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch01.htm|title=Chapter 1: On Value – On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation|last=Ricardo|first=David|access-date=10 March 2008}}

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| quote = "In capitalism, workers are separated from the means of production, implying that they must compete in labour markets to sell their labour power to capitalists in order to earn a living."

| source = —Thomas Wiedmann, lead author of "Scientists’ warning on affluence"{{sfn|Wiedmann|Lenzen|Keyßer|Steinberger|2020}}

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In Das Kapital, Marx identified the commodity as the basic unit of capitalist organization. Marx described a "common denominator" between commodities, in particular that commodities are the product of labor and are related to each other by an exchange value (i.e. price).{{Cite book|url=http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1|title=Chapter 1: Commodities – Capital, Volume 1|last=Marx|first=Karl|publisher=Penguin Classics|year=1992|isbn=978-0140445688}} By using the labor theory of value, Marxists see a connection between labor and exchange value, in that commodities are exchanged depending on the socially necessary labor time needed to produce them.{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/|title=Value, Price, and Profit|last=Marx|first=Karl|access-date=10 March 2008}} However, due to the productive forces of industrial organization, laborers are seen as creating more exchange value during the course of the working day than the cost of their survival (food, shelter, clothing and so on).{{cite web|url=http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch06.htm|title=Wage Labour and Capital|last=Marx|first=Karl|access-date=10 March 2008}} Marxists argue that capitalists are thus able to pay for this cost of survival while expropriating the excess labor (i.e. surplus value).

Marxists further argue that due to economic inequality, the purchase of labor cannot occur under "free" conditions. Since capitalists control the means of production (e.g. factories, businesses, machinery and so on) and workers control only their labor, the worker is naturally coerced into allowing their labor to be exploited.{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch05.htm|title=Competition – The Condition of the Working Class in England|last=Engels|first=Frederick|access-date=10 March 2008}} Critics argue that exploitation occurs even if the exploited consents, since the definition of exploitation is independent of consent. In essence, workers must allow their labor to be exploited or face starvation. Since some degree of unemployment is typical in modern economies, Marxists argue that wages are naturally driven down in free market systems. Hence, even if a worker contests their wages, capitalists are able to find someone from the reserve army of labor who is more desperate.{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm|title=Historical Materialism – Socialism: Utopian and Scientific|last=Engels|first=Frederick|access-date=10 March 2008}}

The act (or threat) of striking has historically been an organized action to withhold labor from capitalists, without fear of individual retaliation.{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1901/04/unions.htm|title=Trade Unions and Socialism|last=Kautsky|first=Karl|access-date=10 March 2008}} Some critics of capitalism, while acknowledging the necessity of trade unionism, believe that trade unions simply reform an already exploitative system, leaving the system of exploitation intact.{{Cite book|title=Subterranean Fire: A History of Working Class Radicalism in the United States|last=Smith|first=Sharon|publisher=Haymarket Books|year=2006|isbn=978-1931859233|page=320}}{{cite web|url=http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch07.htm|title=Chapter VII: Co-operatives, Unions, Democracy – Reform or Revolution|last=Luxembourg|first=Rosa|access-date=10 March 2008}} Lysander Spooner argued that "almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realize them. Indeed, large fortunes could rarely be made at all by one individual, except by his sponging capital and labour from others".Martin, James J. Men Against the State, p. 173

Some labor historians and scholars have argued that unfree labor—by slaves, indentured servants, prisoners, or other coerced persons—is compatible with capitalist relations. Tom Brass argued that unfree labor is acceptable to capital.Cass, Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labor (1999){{cite journal|url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/52/linden.html |title=Labour History as the History of Multitudes |journal=Labour/Le Travail |volume=52 |date=Fall 2003 |pages=235–244 |author=Marcel van der Linden |access-date=26 February 2008 |doi=10.2307/25149390 |jstor=25149390 |s2cid=43371533 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071217185826/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/52/linden.html |archive-date=17 December 2007}} Historian Greg Grandin argues that capitalism has its origins in slavery, saying that "[w]hen historians talk about the Atlantic market revolution, they are talking about capitalism. And when they are talking about capitalism, they are talking about slavery."{{Cite interview|last=Grandin|first=Greg|subject-link=Greg Grandin|interviewer=Alex Gourevitch|title=Capitalism and Slavery: An Interview with Greg Grandin|url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/capitalism-and-slavery-an-interview-with-greg-grandin/|work=Jacobin|date=1 August 2014|access-date=6 April 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406181935/https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/capitalism-and-slavery-an-interview-with-greg-grandin/|archive-date=6 April 2018|url-status=live|quote=There's many ways this happens. Deceit, through contraband, is absolutely key to the expansion of slavery in South America. When historians talk about the Atlantic market revolution, they are talking about capitalism. And when they are talking about capitalism, they are talking about slavery. And when they are talking about slavery, they are talking about corruption and crime. Not in a moral sense, in that the slave system was a crime against humanity. That it was. But it was also a crime in a technical sense: probably as many enslaved Africans came into South America as contraband, to avoid taxes and other lingering restrictions, as legally.}} Some scholars, including Edward E. Baptist, Sven Beckert and Matthew Desmond, assert that slavery was an integral component in the violent development of American and global capitalism.Edward E. Baptist. [http://www.basicbooks.com/full-details?isbn=978-0465002962 The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery And The Making Of American Capitalism], {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150324174604/http://www.basicbooks.com/full-details?isbn=978-0465002962 |date=24 March 2015 }} Basic Books, 2014. {{ISBN|046500296X}}.{{cite book|title=Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development|editor1-first=Sven|editor1-last=Beckert|editor2-first=Seth|editor2-last=Rockman|editor1-link=Sven Beckert|url=http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15556.html|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|year=2016|isbn=978-0812224177|access-date=3 March 2019|archive-date=6 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190306044324/http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15556.html|url-status=live}}{{cite web |last= Desmond|first=Matthew|date=August 14, 2019|title=In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation|url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html|website=The New York Times Magazine|location= |publisher= |access-date=February 19, 2025|quote=During slavery, "Americans built a culture of speculation unique in its abandon," writes the historian Joshua Rothman in his 2012 book, "Flush Times and Fever Dreams." That culture would drive cotton production up to the Civil War, and it has been a defining characteristic of American capitalism ever since. It is the culture of acquiring wealth without work, growing at all costs and abusing the powerless. It is the culture that brought us the Panic of 1837, the stock-market crash of 1929 and the recession of 2008. It is the culture that has produced staggering inequality and undignified working conditions. If today America promotes a particular kind of low-road capitalism — a union-busting capitalism of poverty wages, gig jobs and normalized insecurity; a winner-take-all capitalism of stunning disparities not only permitting but awarding financial rule-bending; a racist capitalism that ignores the fact that slavery didn’t just deny black freedom but built white fortunes, originating the black-white wealth gap that annually grows wider — one reason is that American capitalism was founded on the lowest road there is.}} The Slovenian continental philosopher Slavoj Žižek posits that the new era of global capitalism has ushered in new forms of contemporary slavery, including migrant workers deprived of basic civil rights on the Arabian Peninsula, the total control of workers in Asian sweatshops and the use of forced labor in the exploitation of natural resources in Central Africa.{{cite book|last=Žižek|first=Slavoj|date=2018|title=The Courage of Hopelessness: A Year of Acting Dangerously|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=POZFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA29|publisher=Melville House|page=29|isbn=978-1612190037|access-date=11 July 2018|archive-date=27 July 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727165255/https://books.google.com/books?id=POZFDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA29|url-status=live}}

Academics such as the developmental psychologist Howard Gardner have proposed the adoption of upper limits in individual wealth as "a solution that would make the world a better place".{{cite web|url=http://www.alternet.org/economy/62507/|title=When the Rich Make Too Much: Is it Time for a Maximum Wage?|date=19 November 2009|publisher=alternet.org|access-date=11 January 2014}} Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff postulates that capitalist economies prioritize profits and capital accumulation over the social needs of communities, and that capitalist enterprises rarely include the workers in the basic decisions of the enterprise.Frances Goldin, Debby Smith, Michael Smith (2014). Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA, Harper Perennial. {{ISBN|0062305573}} pp. 49–50.

Political economist Clara E. Mattei of the New School for Social Research demonstrates that the imposition of fiscal, monetary and industrial austerity policies meant to discipline labor by reinforcing hierarchal wage relations and therefore protect the capitalist system through wage repression and the weakening of collective bargaining power by workers can increase their exploitation while boosting the profits of the ownership class, which she says is one of the primary drivers of the "global inequality trend". As an example, Mattei shows that over the last four decades in the United States the profit share of national output increased while labor's share plummeted, demonstrating a symmetrical relationship between owner profit and worker loss, where the former was taking from the latter. She adds that “an increase in exploitation was also evident, with real wages grossly lagging behind labor productivity.”{{sfn|Mattei|2022|pages=16–19}}

Near the start of the 20th century, Vladimir Lenin wrote that state use of military power to defend capitalist interests abroad was an inevitable corollary of monopoly capitalism. He argued that capitalism needs imperialism to survive.Lenin's Selected Works, Progress Publishers, 1963, Moscow, Volume 1, pp. 667–766 According to Lenin, the export of financial capital superseded the export of commodities; banking and industrial capital merged to form large financial cartels and trusts in which production and distribution are highly centralized; and monopoly capitalists influenced state policy to carve up the world into spheres of interest. These trends led states to defend their capitalist interests abroad through military power.

According to economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, capitalism requires the accumulation of excess wealth in the hands of economic elites for the purpose of large scale investment, continuous growth and expansion, and enormous amounts of cheap labor. As such, there was never and could never have been a gradual or peaceful transition to capitalism, and that "organized violence, mass impoverishment, and the destruction of self-sufficient subsistence economies" ushered in the capitalist era. Its emergence was fueled by immiseration and extreme violence that accompanied enclosure and colonization, with colonized peoples becoming enslaved workers producing products that were then processed by European peasants, dispossessed by enclosure, who filled the factories in desperation as exploited cheap labor. Hickel adds that there was fierce resistance to these developments, as that the period 1500 to the 1800s, "right into the Industrial Revolution, was among the bloodiest, most tumultuous times in world history."{{cite book|last=Hickel|first=Jason|title=Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World|chapter=Capitalism: A Creation Story |year=2021|publisher=Windmill Books|pages=39–80|isbn=978-1786091215}}{{cite book | last = Hickel| first =Jason| title =The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets|chapter=The Great Dispossession | publisher = W. W. Norton & Company| year =2018 |pages=76–82 | isbn =978-0393651362}}

Sociologist David Nibert argues that while capitalism "turned out to be every bit as violent and oppressive as the social systems dominated by the old aristocrats", it also included "an additional and pernicious peril—the necessity for continuous growth and expansion". As an example of this, Nibert points to the mass killing of millions of buffalo on the Great Plains and the subjugation and expulsion of the indigenous population by the U.S. military in the 19th century for the purpose of expanding ranching operations, and rearing livestock for the purpose of profit.{{cite book |last= Nibert |first=David |editor1=Steven Best|editor2=Richard Kahn|editor3=Anthony J. Nocella II|editor4=Peter McLaren|editor1-link= Steven Best|editor4-link=Peter McLaren |date=2011|title=The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination|chapter=Origins and Consequences of the Animal Industrial Complex |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |pages=198–199|url=https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739136973/The-Global-Industrial-Complex-Systems-of-Domination|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3ZM3gTCIWb0C&pg=PA197|isbn=978-0739136980}}

Capitalism and capitalist governments have also been criticized by socialists as oligarchic in nature,{{cite news|last=Gorman|first=Connor|date=14 January 2018|title=Guest Commentary: Capitalism is Economic Oligarchy, Socialism is Economic Democracy|url=http://www.davisvanguard.org/2018/01/guest-commentary-capitalism-economic-oligarchy-socialism-economic-democracy/|url-status=live|work=Davis Vanguard|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406144110/http://www.davisvanguard.org/2018/01/guest-commentary-capitalism-economic-oligarchy-socialism-economic-democracy/|archive-date=6 April 2018|access-date=6 April 2018}}{{cite book|last=O'Reilly|first=Jim|date=21 August 2016|title=Capitalism as Oligarchy: 5,000 Years of Diversion and Suppression|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GqkrvgAACAAJ|publisher=Jor|edition=1|isbn=978-0692514269|via=Google Books|access-date=6 April 2018|archive-date=27 July 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727180953/https://books.google.com/books?id=GqkrvgAACAAJ|url-status=live}} due to the inevitable inequality.{{cite magazine|last=Muller|first=Jerry Z.|title=Capitalism and Inequality: What the Right and the Left Get Wrong|url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2013-02-11/capitalism-and-inequality|url-access=registration|url-status=live|magazine=Foreign Affairs|type=Essay|publisher=Council of Foreign Relations|date=March–April 2013|volume=92|issue=2|issn=0015-7120|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406151044/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2013-02-11/capitalism-and-inequality|archive-date=6 April 2018|access-date=6 April 2018|quote=Inequality is indeed increasing almost everywhere in the postindustrial capitalist world. But despite what many on the left think, this is not the result of politics, nor is politics likely to reverse it, for the problem is more deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized. Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it—because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords.}}{{cite news|last=Satherly|first=Dan|date=19 January 2015|title=Inequality inevitable under capitalism – expert|url=https://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/inequality-inevitable-under-capitalism---expert-2015012010|url-status=dead|work=Newshub|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406153501/https://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/inequality-inevitable-under-capitalism---expert-2015012010|archive-date=6 April 2018|access-date=6 April 2018}}

The military–industrial complex, mentioned in Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidential farewell address, appears to play a significant role in the American capitalist system. It may be one of the driving forces of American militarism and intervention abroad.{{Cite news|url=http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/10/25/doctrine-armed-exceptionalism|title=The Doctrine of Armed Exceptionalism|newspaper=Common Dreams|access-date=2 February 2017|language=en}} The United States has used military force and has encouraged and facilitated state terrorism and mass violence to entrench neoliberal capitalism in the Global South, protect the interests of U.S. economic elites, and to crush any possible resistance to this entrenchment, especially during the Cold War,{{cite book|last=Blakeley|first=Ruth|date=2009|title=State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South|url=http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415462402/|publisher=Routledge|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=rft8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 4], [https://books.google.com/books?id=rft8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA20 20–23], [https://books.google.com/books?id=rft8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA88 88]|isbn=978-0415686174}}{{cite book |last1=Bevins |first1=Vincent|author-link=Vincent Bevins |title=The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World|date=2020 |publisher= PublicAffairs|pages=238–243|isbn= 978-1541742406}}{{cite book |last=Prashad |first=Vijay |author-link=Vijay Prashad |date=2020 |title=Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations |publisher=Monthly Review Press|pages=83–88 |isbn=978-1583679067}} with significant cases being Brazil, Chile and Indonesia.Klein, Naomi (2008). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Picador. {{ISBN|0312427999}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=PwHUAq5LPOQC&pg=PA105 p. 105]{{cite journal |last=Farid|first= Hilmar|date=2005|title=Indonesia's original sin: mass killings and capitalist expansion, 1965–66|journal=Inter-Asia Cultural Studies |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=3–16 |doi=10.1080/1462394042000326879|s2cid= 145130614}}{{cite book|last=Robinson|first=Geoffrey B.|date=2018|title=The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66|url=https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11135.html|publisher=Princeton University Press|page=177|isbn=978-1400888863}}

Some opponents criticize capitalism's inefficiency. They note a shift from pre-industrial reuse and thriftiness before capitalism to a consumer-based economy that pushes "ready-made" materials.{{cite web|url=http://www.isreview.org/issues/53/garbage.shtml|title=The Conquest of Garbage|last=Rogers|first=Heather|website=isreview.org|publisher=International Socialist Review (1997)|access-date=13 March 2008|archive-date=10 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210510142346/http://www.isreview.org/issues/53/garbage.shtml|url-status=dead}} It is argued that a sanitation industry arose under capitalism that deemed trash valueless—a significant break from the past when much "waste" was used and reused almost indefinitely. In the process, critics say, capitalism has created a profit driven system based on selling as many products as possible.{{cite web|url=https://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1997/03/hawken.html|title=Natural Capitalism|last=Hawken|first=Paul|access-date=13 March 2008}} Critics relate the "ready-made" trend to a growing garbage problem in which, as of 2008, 4.5 pounds of trash are generated per person each day (compared to 2.7 pounds in 1960).{{cite web|url=http://www.epa.gov/msw/facts-text.htm|title=Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Pie Chart|last=U.S. EPA|access-date=13 March 2008}} Anti-capitalist groups with an emphasis on conservation include eco-socialists and social ecologists.

Planned obsolescence has been criticized as a wasteful practice under capitalism. By designing products to wear out faster than need be, new consumption is generated. This would benefit corporations by increasing sales while at the same time generating excessive waste. A well-known example is the charge that Apple designed its iPod to fail after 18 months.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/sep/30/news.consumernews|title=When your iPod isn't all that it's cracked up to be|last=Inman|first=Phillip|date=30 September 2006|access-date=13 March 2008|work=The Guardian|location=London}} Critics view planned obsolescence as wasteful and an inefficient use of resources.{{cite web|url=http://www.davidmcminn.com/ngc/pages/obsol.htm|title=Planned Obsolescence: The Ultimate Economic Inefficiency|last=McMinn|first=David|access-date=13 March 2008}} Other authors such as Naomi Klein have criticized brand-based marketing for putting more emphasis on the company's name-brand than on manufacturing products.{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/interviews/klein.html|title=Interview with Naomi Klein|last=PBS Frontline|website=PBS|date=9 November 2004|access-date=13 March 2008}}

Some economists, most notably Marxian economists, argue that the system of perpetual capital accumulation leads to irrational outcomes and a mis-allocation of resources as industries and jobs are created for the sake of making money as opposed to satisfying actual demands and needs.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BlEpAQAAMAAJ|title=Beyond the Profits System: Possibilities for a post-capitalist era|last=Shutt|first=Harry|date=2010|publisher=Zed Books|isbn=978-1848134171}}

Market failure is a term used by economists to describe the condition where the allocation of goods and services by a market is not efficient. Keynesian economist Paul Krugman views this scenario in which individuals' pursuit of self-interest leads to bad results for society as a whole.Krugman, Paul, Wells, Robin, Economics, Worth Publishers, New York, (2006) John Maynard Keynes preferred economic interventionism by government to free markets.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yVhBPgAACAAJ|title=The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money|last=Keynes|first=John Maynard|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2007|isbn=978-0230004764}} Some believe that the lack of perfect information and perfect competition in a free market is grounds for government intervention. Others perceive certain unique problems with a free market including: monopolies, monopsonies, insider trading and price gouging.{{cite web|url=http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reak/eco100/100_6.htm|title=Monopoly, Imperfect Competition, and Oligopoly|last=Rea|first=K.J.|access-date=11 March 2008|archive-date=12 June 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100612201706/http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reak/eco100/100_6.htm|url-status=dead}}

{{see also|Economic inequality|Social inequality}}

File:Day 9 Occupy Wall Street September 25 2011 Shankbone 25.JPG]]

Critics argue that capitalism is associated with the unfair distribution of wealth and power; a tendency toward market monopoly or oligopoly (and government by oligarchy); imperialism, counter-revolutionary wars and various forms of economic and cultural exploitation; repression of workers and trade unionists and phenomena such as social alienation, economic inequality, unemployment and economic instability. Critics have argued that there is an inherent tendency toward oligopolistic structures when laissez-faire is combined with capitalist private property. Capitalism is regarded by many socialists to be irrational in that production and the direction of the economy are unplanned, creating many inconsistencies and internal contradictions and thus should be controlled through public policy.Brander, James A. Government policy toward business. 4th ed. Mississauga, Ontario: John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd., 2006. Print.

In the early 20th century, Vladimir Lenin argued that state use of military power to defend capitalist interests abroad was an inevitable corollary of monopoly capitalism.

In 2019, Marxian Economist Richard D. Wolff argued that Capitalism is unstable, Capitalism is unequal, and fundamentally Undemocratic.{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJQSuUZdcV4|title=Capitalism vs. Socialism - Richard Wolff vs. Gene Epstein|website=YouTube|date=14 November 2019 |access-date= 25 Mar 2023}}

In a 1965 letter to Carlos Quijano, editor of Marcha, a weekly newspaper published in Montevideo, Uruguay, Che Guevara wrote:

The laws of capitalism, which are blind and are invisible to ordinary people, act upon the individual without he or she being aware of it. One sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon ahead. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller—whether or not it is true—about the possibilities of individual success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly. ... It is a contest among wolves. One can win only at the cost of the failure of others.GUevara, Che (12 March 1965).[http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm "From Algiers, for Marcha: The Cuban Revolution Today"]. Retrieved 19 August 2020.

File:Total US family wealth timeline by wealth group.png increased from 1989 to 2013.{{cite news|title=Trends in Family Wealth, 1989 to 2013|url=https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51846|date=18 August 2016|work=Congressional Budget Office|access-date=31 July 2019|archive-date=11 November 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191111215339/https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51846|url-status=live}}]]

A modern critic of capitalism is Ravi Batra, who focuses on inequality as a source of immiserization but also of system failure. Batra popularised the concept "share of wealth held by richest 1%" as an indicator of inequality and an important determinant of depressions in his best-selling books in the 1980s.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/06/books/best-sellers-from-1987-s-book-crop.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm|title=Best Sellers From 1987's Book Crop|newspaper=The New York Times|date=6 January 1988 |access-date=13 October 2011|last1=McDowell |first1=Edwin }}{{cite book|url=http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/358815|title=Regular economic cycles : money, inflation, regulation and depressions, Venus Books, 1985|author=Ravi Batra|year=1990|publisher=Investment Library|isbn=978-1863500289|access-date=13 October 2011}} The scholars Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell A. Orenstein suggest that left to its own devices, capitalism will result in a small group of economic elites capturing the majority of wealth and power in society.{{cite book |last1=Ghodsee|first1=Kristen|last2=Orenstein|first2=Mitchell A.|date=2021|title=Taking Stock of Shock: Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=192|doi=10.1093/oso/9780197549230.001.0001 |isbn=978-0197549247|quote=Without an accompanying welfare state in which social programs funded by a progressive income tax redistribute from the rich to the poor, capitalism can be a deeply unfair system where a small, well-connected elite captures a majority of the wealth and power, and not necessarily through meritocratic processes.}} Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel argue that poverty continues to exist in the contemporary global capitalist system in spite of it being highly productive because it is undemocratic and has maintained conditions of extreme inequality where masses of working people, who have no ownership or control over the means of production, have their labor power "appropriated by a ruling class or an external imperial power," and are cut off from common land and resources.{{sfn|Sullivan|Hickel|2023}}

{{quote box

| quote = "Since value is produced only by workers, capitalists can extract, appropriate and accumulate the surplus part of this value only through exploitation. And exploitation, by definition, negates equality."

| source = — Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler.{{sfn|Nitzan|Bichler|2009|page=29}}

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In the United States, the shares of earnings and wealth of the households in the top 1 percent of the corresponding distributions are 21 percent (in 2006) and 37 percent (in 2009), respectively.{{cite web|url=http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf|title=Working Paper No. 589|publisher=Levyinstitute.org|access-date=23 February 2014}} Critics, such as Ravi Batra, argue that the capitalist system has inherent biases favoring those who already possess greater resources. The inequality may be propagated through inheritance and economic policy. Rich people are in a position to give their children a better education and inherited wealth and that this can create or increase large differences in wealth between people who do not differ in ability or effort. One study shows that in the United States 43.35% of the people in the Forbes magazine "400 richest individuals" list were already rich enough at birth to qualify.[http://www.faireconomy.org/press/archive/Pre_1999/forbes_400_study.html] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060828223407/http://www.faireconomy.org/press/archive/Pre_1999/forbes_400_study.html|date=28 August 2006}} Another study indicated that in the United States wealth, race and schooling are important to the inheritance of economic status, but that IQ is not a major contributor and the genetic transmission of IQ is even less important.{{cite web|url=http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/intergen.pdf|title=The Inheritance of Inequality|access-date=23 February 2014}} Batra has argued that the tax and benefit legislation in the United States since the Reagan presidency has contributed greatly to the inequalities and economic problems and should be repealed.{{cite web|url=http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-wall-street-movement-and-coming-demise-crony-capitalism/1318341474|title="The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Coming Demise of Crony Capitalism", Foreign Affairs, October 11, 2011|author=Ravi Batra|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111013183247/http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-wall-street-movement-and-coming-demise-crony-capitalism/1318341474|archive-date=13 October 2011|url-status=dead|access-date=13 October 2011}}

Critics of capitalism, particularly Marxists, identify market instability as a permanent feature of capitalist economy.{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/free-trade/index.htm|title=On the Question of Free Trade|last=Engels|first=Frederick|access-date=11 March 2008}}{{cite web|url=http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/crisis_theory.shtml|title=Marx's Theory of Economic Crisis|last=Easterling|first=Earl|publisher=International Socialist Review|access-date=13 March 2008|archive-date=27 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210227033442/https://isreview.org/issues/32/crisis_theory.shtml|url-status=dead}} Marx believed that the unplanned and explosive growth of capitalism does not occur in a smooth manner, but is interrupted by periods of overproduction in which stagnation or decline occur (i.e. recessions).{{cite web|url=http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm|title=The Communist Manifesto|last=Marx|first=Karl|access-date=11 March 2008}} In the view of Marxists, several contradictions in the capitalist mode of production are present, particularly the internal contradiction between anarchy in the sphere of capital (i.e. free market) and socialised production in the sphere of labor (i.e. industrialism).{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm|title=Part III: Socialism (Theoretical) – Anti-Duhring|last=Engels|first=Frederick|access-date=11 March 2008}} In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels highlighted what they saw as a uniquely capitalist juxtaposition of overabundance and poverty: "Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce".

Some scholars blame the 2008 financial crisis on the neoliberal capitalist model.{{refn|{{cite journal |last=Lavoie |first=Marc |title=Financialization, neo-liberalism, and securitization |journal=Journal of Post Keynesian Economics |volume=35 |issue=2 |pages=215–233 |jstor=23469991 |date=Winter 2012–2013 |doi=10.2753/pke0160-3477350203|s2cid=153927517 }}{{cite journal |last= Stein|first=Howard|s2cid=26437908|date=25 July 2012|title=The Neoliberal Policy Paradigm and the Great Recession|journal=Panoeconomicus|volume=59 |issue= 4|pages= 421–440|doi=10.2298/PAN1204421S|quote=The role of deregulation and related neoliberal policies as a both a source of massive financialization of the economy and cause of the Great Recession is widely recognized in the literature (David M. Kotz 2009; Bill Lucarelli 2009; Joseph Stiglitz 2010; William Tabb 2012). Some authors aptly call it the 'crisis of neoliberal capitalism' (Kotz 2010).|doi-access=free}}Susan Braedley and Meg Luxton, [http://www.mqup.ca/neoliberalism-and-everyday-life-products-9780773536739.php Neoliberalism and Everyday Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141113184415/http://www.mqup.ca/neoliberalism-and-everyday-life-products-9780773536739.php |date=13 November 2014 }} (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010), {{ISBN|0773536922}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=CvD-6GQWr04C&pg=PA3 p. 3] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150319082754/http://books.google.com/books?id=CvD-6GQWr04C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3 |date=19 March 2015 }}Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy. [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/neoliberalism-a-very-short-introduction-9780199560516?cc=us&# Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction]. (Oxford University Press, 2010.) {{ISBN|019956051X}}. p. 123.Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674072244 The Crisis of Neoliberalism], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009082937/http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674072244 |date=9 October 2016 }} (Harvard University Press, 2013), {{ISBN|0674072243}}David M Kotz, [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980013 The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200212170646/https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=978-0674980013 |date=12 February 2020 }} (Harvard University Press, 2015), {{ISBN|0674725654}}}} Following the banking crisis of 2007, economist and former Chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan told the United States Congress on 23 October 2008 that "[t]his modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year",{{cite news|last=Andrews|first=Edmund L.|author-link=Edmund L. Andrews|date=23 October 2008|title=Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html|url-status=live|department=Economy|work=The New York Times|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406173958/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html|archive-date=6 April 2018|access-date=6 April 2018|quote=He noted that the immense and largely unregulated business of spreading financial risk widely, through the use of exotic financial instruments called derivatives, had gotten out of control and had added to the havoc of today's crisis. As far back as 1994, Mr. Greenspan staunchly and successfully opposed tougher regulation on derivatives. But on Thursday, he agreed that the multitrillion-dollar market for credit default swaps, instruments originally created to insure bond investors against the risk of default, needed to be restrained. 'This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades,' he said. 'The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.'}} and that "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in firms ... I was shocked".{{cite news|last1=Knowlton|first1=Brian|last2=Grynbaum|first2=Michael M.|date=23 October 2008|title=Greenspan 'shocked' that free markets are flawed|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/business/worldbusiness/23iht-gspan.4.17206624.html|url-status=live|department=International Business|work=The New York Times|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406175418/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/business/worldbusiness/23iht-gspan.4.17206624.html|archive-date=6 April 2018|access-date=6 April 2018|quote=Pressed by Waxman, Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy. 'I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,' Greenspan said. ... 'In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,' Waxman said. 'Absolutely, precisely,' Greenspan replied. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.'}}

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Friedrich Engels argue that the free market is not necessarily free, but weighted towards those who already own private property.{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/property/index.htm|title=What Is Property? An Inquiry Into the Principle of Right and Government|last=Proudhon|first=Pierre-Joseph|access-date=10 March 2008}} They view capitalist regulations, including the enforcement of private property on land and exclusive rights to natural resources, as unjustly enclosing upon what should be owned by all, forcing those without private property to sell their labor to capitalists and landlords in a market favorable to the latter, thus forcing workers to accept low wages to survive.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/meaningofmarxism00dama|url-access=registration|title=The Meaning of Marxism|last=D'Amato|first=Paul|publisher=Haymarket Books|year=2006|isbn=978-1931859295|page=[https://archive.org/details/meaningofmarxism00dama/page/60 60]}} In his criticism of capitalism, Proudhon believed that the emphasis on private property is the problem. He argued that property is theft, arguing that private property leads to despotism: "Now, property necessarily engenders despotism—the government of caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure. That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse". Many left-wing anarchists, such as anarchist communists, believe in replacing capitalist private property with a system where people can lay claim to things based on personal use and claim that "[private] property is the domination of an individual, or a coalition of individuals, over things; it is not the claim of any person or persons to the use of things" and "this is, usufruct, a very different matter. Property means the monopoly of wealth, the right to prevent others using it, whether the owner needs it or not".Anarchist Essays, pp. 22–23, 40. Freedom Press, London, 2000.

Mutualists and some anarchists support markets and private property, but not in their present form.{{Cite book|title=Studies in Mutualist Political Economy|last=Carson|first=Kevin|publisher=BookSurge Publishing|year=2007|isbn=978-1419658693}} They argue that particular aspects of modern capitalism violate the ability of individuals to trade in the absence of coercion. Mutualists support markets and private property in the product of labor, but only when these markets guarantee that workers will realize for themselves the value of their labor.

In recent times, most economies have extended private property rights to include such things as patents and copyrights. Critics see these so-called intellectual property laws as coercive against those with few prior resources. They argue that such regulations discourage the sharing of ideas and encourage nonproductive rent seeking behavior, both of which enact a deadweight loss on the economy, erecting a prohibitive barrier to entry into the market.{{cite web|url=http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html|title=An Economic Analysis of Property Law|last1=Landes|first1=William M.|last2=Posner|first2=Richard A.|access-date=10 March 2008}} Not all pro-capitalists support the concept of copyrights, but those who do argue that compensation to the creator is necessary as an incentive.

{{see also|Degrowth|Steady-state economy}}

File:Gullfaks Alpha.jpg in the North Sea. As petroleum is a non-renewable natural resource the industry is faced with an inevitable eventual depletion of the world's oil supply.]]

Many aspects of capitalism have come under attack from the anti-globalization movement, which is primarily opposed to corporate capitalism. Environmentalists and scholars have argued that capitalism requires continual economic growth and that it will inevitably deplete the finite natural resources of Earth and cause mass extinctions of animal and plant life.{{cite book|last=Hickel|first=Jason|author-link=Jason Hickel|title=Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World |year=2021|publisher=Windmill Books|pages=19–23|isbn=978-1786091215}}{{cite book |last = McMurty |first = John |title = The Cancer Stage of Capitalism |publisher = Pluto Press |year = 1999 |isbn = 978-0745313474}}{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/oct/01/george-monbiot-war-on-the-living-world-wildlife|title=It's time to shout stop on this war on the living world|last=Monbiot|first=George|author-link=George Monbiot|date=1 October 2014|newspaper=The Guardian|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406160337/https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/oct/01/george-monbiot-war-on-the-living-world-wildlife|archive-date=6 April 2018|url-status=live|access-date=6 April 2018}}{{cite book|last=Dawson|first=Ashley|author-link=Ashley Dawson|title=Extinction: A Radical History|date=2016|publisher=OR Books|url=http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/extinction-by-ashley-dawson/|page=41|isbn=978-1944869014|access-date=20 August 2016|archive-date=17 September 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160917203814/http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/extinction-by-ashley-dawson/|url-status=live}} Such critics argue that while neoliberalism, the ideological backbone of contemporary globalized capitalism, has indeed increased global trade, it has also destroyed traditional ways of life, exacerbated inequality, increased global poverty, and that environmental indicators indicate massive environmental degradation since the late 1970s.{{cite interview|last=Gérard|first=Duménil|subject-link=Gérard Duménil|interviewer=Paul Jay|type=Transcript|title=The crisis of neoliberalism|url=https://therealnews.com/stories/gdumenilneolib0216pt1|publisher=The Real News|date=30 March 2010|access-date=6 April 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406160817/https://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?Itemid=74&id=31&jumival=4962&option=com_content&task=view|archive-date=6 April 2018|url-status=live|quote=When we speak of neoliberalism, we speak of contemporary capitalism. Neoliberalism, it's a new stage of capitalism which began around 1980. It began in big countries like United Kingdom and the United States. Then it was implemented in Europe, and later in Japan, and later around the world in general. So this is a new phase of capitalism.}}{{cite book |last1=Jones|first1=Campbell|last2=Parker|first2=Martin|last3=Ten Bos|first3= Rene|date= 2005|title=For Business Ethics |url= |location= |publisher=Routledge |page=101 |isbn=978-0415311359}}Stephen Haymes, Maria Vidal de Haymes and Reuben Miller (eds), [http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415673440/ The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150617164555/http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415673440/ |date=17 June 2015 }} (London: Routledge, 2015), {{ISBN|0415673445}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=qnHfBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA1 pp. 1–2] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727162556/https://books.google.com/books?id=qnHfBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA1 |date=27 July 2020 }}.{{Cite news|last=Udland|first=Myles|date=27 May 2016|title=IMF: The last generation of economic policies may have been a complete failure|url=https://www.businessinsider.com/imf-neoliberalism-warnings-2016-5|url-status=live|work=Business Insider|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406161633/https://www.businessinsider.com/imf-neoliberalism-warnings-2016-5|archive-date=6 April 2018|access-date=6 April 2018|quote=Neoliberalism—which IMF researchers Jonathan Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri loosely define as the opening of economies to foreign capital along with a reduction in government debt burdens—has been the dominant trend in economic policymaking over the past 30 years. ... But now it seems some at the IMF aren't so sure this tradition is all it's been cracked up to be. In their paper, Ostray, Loungani, and Furceri argue that these goals have both hampered the economic growth that neoliberalism champions and exacerbated the rise of inequality.}}

File:Climate Crisis National Day of Action Melbourne (49574102132).jpg]]

Some scholars argue that the capitalist approach to environmental economics does not take into consideration the preservation of natural resources{{cite journal|last=Castro|first=Carlos J.|date=June 2004|title=Sustainable Development|journal=Organization & Environment|volume=17|issue=2|pages=195–225|doi=10.1177/1086026604264910|s2cid=143645829|issn=1086-0266|url=http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/isbn/9781852781675}} and that capitalism creates three ecological problems: growth, technology, and consumption.{{Cite journal|last=Jones|first=Andrew W.|date=March 2011|title=Solving the Ecological Problems of Capitalism: Capitalist and Socialist Possibilities|journal=Organization & Environment|language=en|volume=24|issue=1|pages=54–73|doi=10.1177/1086026611402010|s2cid=154749910|issn=1086-0266}} The growth problem results from the nature of capitalism, as it focuses around the pursuit of limitless economic growth and the accumulation of capital.{{cite journal |last1=Bell |first1=Karen |title=Can the capitalist economic system deliver environmental justice? |journal=Environmental Research Letters |date=2015 |volume=10 |issue=12 |pages=125017 |doi=10.1088/1748-9326/10/12/125017 |bibcode=2015ERL....10l5017B |doi-access=free|hdl=1983/5c7c9d17-dec3-4182-9d35-5efd75830ac8 |hdl-access=free }} The innovation of new technologies has an impact on the environmental future as they serve as a capitalist tool in which environmental technologies can result in the expansion of the system.{{Cite journal|last=Harris|first=Jerry|date=1 January 2014|title=Can Green Capitalism Build a Sustainable Society?*|journal=Perspectives on Global Development and Technology|volume=13|issue=1–2|pages=43–60|doi=10.1163/15691497-12341288|issn=1569-1500}} Consumption is focused around the capital accumulation of commodities and neglects the use-value of production. Professor Radhika Desai, director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, contends that ecological crises such as climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss occur when "capitalist firms compete to appropriate and plunder the free resources of nature and when this very appropriation and plunder forces working people to overexploit their ever-shrinking share of these resources."{{cite book |last=Desai|first=Radhika |author-link=|date=2022 |title=Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy|location=|url=|publisher=Routledge|page=53|isbn=9781032059501|doi=10.4324/9781003200000-2|s2cid=|quote=Ecological crises occur when capitalist firms compete to appropriate and plunder the free resources of nature and when this very appropriation and plunder forces working people to overexploit their ever-shrinking share of these resources leading to climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.}}

One of the main modern criticism to the sustainability of capitalism is related to the so-called commodity chains, or production/consumption chains.{{cite web|url=http://www.it-environment.org/publications/QITS%20report.pdf|title=de beste bron van informatie over it-environment. Deze website is te koop!|publisher=it-environment.org|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121202211947/http://www.it-environment.org/publications/QITS%20report.pdf|archive-date=2 December 2012|url-status=dead|access-date=23 February 2014}}{{cite web|url=http://www.unpop.nl/inhoud/artikelen/Francken%20CRR%20sept%202006%20dublin.ppt|title=Geregistreerd via Argeweb|publisher=Unpop.nl|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928161519/http://www.unpop.nl/inhoud/artikelen/Francken%20CRR%20sept%202006%20dublin.ppt|archive-date=28 September 2007|url-status=dead|access-date=11 January 2014}} These terms refer to the network of transfers of materials and commodities that is currently part of the functioning of the global capitalist system. Examples include high tech commodities produced in countries with low average wages by multinational firms and then being sold in distant high income countries; materials and resources being extracted in some countries, turned into finished products in some others and sold as commodities in further ones; and countries exchanging with each other the same kind of commodities for the sake of consumers' choice (e.g. Europe both exporting and importing cars to and from the United States). According to critics, such processes, all of which produce pollution and waste of resources, are an integral part of the functioning of capitalism (i.e. its "metabolism").{{cite web|url=http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80841e/80841E00.htm#Contents|title=Industrial metabolism: Restructuring for sustainable development|publisher=unu.edu|access-date=11 January 2014}}

Critics note that the statistical methods used in calculating ecological footprint have been criticized and some find the whole concept of counting how much land is used to be flawed, arguing that there is nothing intrinsically negative about using more land to improve living standards (rejection of the intrinsic value of nature).{{cite web|url=http://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/redir.pl?u=http://www.tinbergen.nl/discussionpapers/98105.pdf;h=repec:dgr:uvatin:19980105|title=EconPapers: Spatial Sustainability, Trade and Indicators|author=Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh and Harmen Verbruggen|date=28 September 1998|publisher=Econpapers.repec.org|access-date=18 January 2014}}{{Dead link|date=July 2019|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}{{cite web|url=http://www-pam.usc.edu/volume1/v1i1a2print.html|title=Planning and Markets: Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson|publisher=-pam.usc.edu|access-date=11 January 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100627044350/http://www-pam.usc.edu/volume1/v1i1a2print.html|archive-date=27 June 2010|url-status=dead}}

Under what anti-capitalists such as Murray Bookchin call the "grow or die" imperative of capitalism, they say there is little reason to expect hazardous consumption and production practices to change in a timely manner. They also claim that markets and states invariably drag their feet on substantive environmental reform and are notoriously slow to adopt viable sustainable technologies.[http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031118113538865] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051225001752/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031118113538865|date=25 December 2005}}{{cite web|url=http://www.monthlyreview.org/1200jbf.htm|title=Capitalism's Environmental Crisis – Is Technology the Answer?|date=December 2000|publisher=monthlyreview.org|access-date=11 January 2014}} Immanuel Wallerstein, referring to the externalization of costs as the "dirty secret" of capitalism, claims that there are built-in limits to ecological reform and that the costs of doing business in the world capitalist economy are ratcheting upward because of deruralization and democratization.[http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwecol.htm] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060128132537/http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwecol.htm|date=28 January 2006}}

A team of Finnish scientists hired by the UN Secretary-General to aid the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report assert that capitalism as we know it is moribund, primarily because it focuses on short term profits and fails to look after the long term needs of people and the environment which is being subjected to unsustainable exploitation. Their report goes on to link many seemingly disparate contemporary crises to this system, including environmental factors such as global warming and accelerated species extinctions and also societal factors such as rising economic inequality, unemployment, sluggish economic growth, rising debt levels, and impuissant governments unable to deal with these problems. The scientists say a new economic model, one which focuses on sustainability and efficiency and not profit and growth, will be needed as decades of robust economic growth driven by abundant resources and cheap energy is rapidly coming to a close.{{cite news|url=https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43pek3/scientists-warn-the-un-of-capitalisms-imminent-demise|title=Scientists Warn the UN of Capitalism's Imminent Demise|last=Ahmed|first=Nafeez|date=27 August 2018|work=Vice|access-date=30 August 2018}}{{cite news|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-capitalism-economy_us_5b87bf0ce4b0cf7b00326edc|title=We Cannot Fight Climate Change With Capitalism, Says Report|last=Paddison|first=Laura|date=31 August 2018|work=The Huffington Post|access-date=2 September 2018}} Another group of scientists contributing to the 2020 "Scientists warning on affluence" argue that a shift away from paradigms fixating on economic growth and the "profit-driven mechanism of prevailing economic systems" will be necessary to mitigate human impacts on the environment, and suggest a range of ideas from the reformist to the radical, with the latter consisting of degrowth, eco-socialism and eco-anarchism.{{sfn|Wiedmann|Lenzen|Keyßer|Steinberger|2020}}

Some scientists contend that the rise of capitalism, which itself developed out of European imperialism and colonialism of the 15th and 16th centuries, marks the emergence of the Anthropocene epoch, in which human beings started to have significant and mostly negative impacts on the earth system.{{Cite web|last1=Maslin|first1=Mark|last2=Lewis|first2=Simon|date=25 June 2020|title=Why the Anthropocene began with European colonisation, mass slavery and the 'great dying' of the 16th century|url=http://theconversation.com/why-the-anthropocene-began-with-european-colonisation-mass-slavery-and-the-great-dying-of-the-16th-century-140661|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200910163239/https://theconversation.com/why-the-anthropocene-began-with-european-colonisation-mass-slavery-and-the-great-dying-of-the-16th-century-140661|archive-date=10 September 2020|access-date=25 August 2020|website=The Conversation|language=en}} Others have warned that contemporary global capitalism "requires fundamental changes" to mitigate the worst environmental impacts, including the "abolition of perpetual economic growth, properly pricing externalities, a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use, strict regulation of markets and property acquisition, reining in corporate lobbying, and the empowerment of women".{{cite news |last= Weston |first=Phoebe |date=13 January 2021 |title=Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruption |url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/13/top-scientists-warn-of-ghastly-future-of-mass-extinction-and-climate-disruption-aoe |work=The Guardian |location= |access-date=13 January 2021}}{{cite journal |last1=Bradshaw |first1=Corey J. A. |last2=Ehrlich |first2=Paul R. |last3=Beattie |first3=Andrew |last4=Ceballos |first4=Gerardo |last5=Crist |first5=Eileen |last6=Diamond |first6=Joan |last7=Dirzo |first7=Rodolfo |last8=Ehrlich |first8=Anne H. |last9=Harte |first9=John |last10=Harte |first10=Mary Ellen |last11=Pyke |first11=Graham |last12=Raven |first12=Peter H. |last13=Ripple |first13=William J. |last14=Saltré |first14=Frédérik |last15=Turnbull |first15=Christine |last16=Wackernagel |first16=Mathis |last17=Blumstein |first17=Daniel T. |date=2021 |title=Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future |journal=Frontiers in Conservation Science |volume=1 |issue= |pages= |doi=10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419 |doi-access=free }} Jason Hickel writes that capitalism creates pressures for population growth: "more people means more labour, cheaper labour, and more consumers." He argues that continued population growth makes the challenge of sustainability even more difficult, but adds that even if the population leveled off, capitalism will simply get already existing consumers to increase their consumption, as consumption rates have always outpaced population growth rates.{{cite book|last=Hickel|first=Jason|author-link=Jason Hickel|title=Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World |year=2021|publisher=Windmill Books|pages=110–111|isbn=978-1786091215}}

In 2024 a group of experts including Michael E. Mann and Naomi Oreskes published "An urgent call to end the age of destruction and forge a just and sustainable future". They made an extensive review of existing scientific literature about the issue. They put the blame for the ecological crisis on "imperialism, extractive capitalism, and a surging population" and proposed a paradigm shift that replaces it with a socio-economic model prioritizing sustainability, resilience, justice, kinship with nature, communal well-being. They described many ways in which the transition can be achieved.{{cite journal |title=Earth at risk: An urgent call to end the age of destruction and forge a just and sustainable future |journal=PNAS Nexus |date=4 April 2024 |volume=3 |issue=4 |doi=10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae106 |url=https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/4/pgae106/7638480?login=false |access-date=4 April 2024|pmc=10986754 |last1=Fletcher |first1=Charles |last2=Ripple |first2=William J. |last3=Newsome |first3=Thomas |last4=Barnard |first4=Phoebe |last5=Beamer |first5=Kamanamaikalani |last6=Behl |first6=Aishwarya |last7=Bowen |first7=Jay |last8=Cooney |first8=Michael |last9=Crist |first9=Eileen |last10=Field |first10=Christopher |last11=Hiser |first11=Krista |last12=Karl |first12=David M. |last13=King |first13=David A. |last14=Mann |first14=Michael E. |last15=McGregor |first15=Davianna P. |last16=Mora |first16=Camilo |last17=Oreskes |first17=Naomi |last18=Wilson |first18=Michael |pages=pgae106 |pmid=38566756 }}

The majority of criticisms against the profit motive centre on the idea that the profit motive encourages selfishness and greed, rather than serving the public good or necessarily creating an increase in net wealth. Critics of the profit motive argue that companies disregard morals or public safety in the pursuit of profits. Capitalists seek to reduce spending to increase profits, often coming at the expense of workers, such as the cutting of wages and downsizing, causing unemployment. The reason why the profit motive is harmful is because of the fundamental contradiction between the interests of capitalists and workers, as capitalists want to pay their workers as little as possible and work them as much as possible to increase profits, whereas workers want to be paid fairly and have their increased productivity result in fewer working hours. This fundamental contradiction, critics argue, shows how illogical capitalism is, as it is a system in which two classes have fundamentally opposite interests which create conflict.{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/budding-wall-street-movement-gives-voice-to-anger-over-greed-corporations|title='Occupy Wall Street' Protests Give Voice to Anger Over Greed, Corporate Culture|date=5 October 2011|department=PBS NewsHour|publisher=PBS|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406122942/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/budding-wall-street-movement-gives-voice-to-anger-over-greed-corporations|archive-date=6 April 2018|url-status=live|access-date=6 April 2018}}{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/greed-is-good-a-300-year-history-of-a-dangerous-idea/360265/|title=Greed is Good: A 300-Year History of a Dangerous Idea|last=Rollert|first=John Paul|date=7 April 2014|website=The Atlantic|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406121500/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/greed-is-good-a-300-year-history-of-a-dangerous-idea/360265/|archive-date=6 April 2018|url-status=live|access-date=6 April 2018}}{{cite news|last=Szalavitz|first=Maia|date=28 February 2012|title=Why the Rich Are Less Ethical: They See Greed as Good|url=https://healthland.time.com/2012/02/28/why-the-rich-are-less-ethical-they-see-greed-as-good/|department=Healthland|magazine=Time|access-date=6 April 2018|archive-date=6 April 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406121846/http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/28/why-the-rich-are-less-ethical-they-see-greed-as-good/|url-status=live}}{{cite journal|title=Why Greed Begets More Greed|last=Norton|first=Michael I.|author-link=Michael Norton (professor)|date=1 March 2014|journal=Scientific American|volume=25|issue=2|pages=24–25|doi=10.1038/scientificamericanmind0314-24}}

Recently, a compelling criticism of unmoderated capitalism has emerged: it prioritizes capital over human well-being, except where human well-being contributes to capital production. Critics argue that such a system tends to reward sociopathic behavior. Consequently, they contend that pure (unmoderated) capitalism is inherently unsuitable as a foundation for society. As pure capitalistic models develop, they foster an increase in sociopathic behavior, which ultimately degrades societal functioning, defined by the well-being of most of its members. The detrimental processes associated with excessive sociopathic behavior include the spread of disinformation, the implementation of policies that create severe economic inequalities, and the manipulation of legal and judicial systems to benefit capital flow without regard for the majority's welfare. In response to this criticism, some advocate for moderated capitalism, which promotes policies that value human well-being. This approach creates reward structures that are not solely tied to capital. However, one counterargument is that in a global society with diverse economic models, pure capitalism might prevail over moderated capitalism in the long run because it generates more economic power.{{Cite book |last=Piketty |first=Thomas |title=Capital in the Twenty-First Century |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0674430006 |location=Cambridge, MA |page= }}{{Cite book |last1=Wilkinson |first1=Richard |last2=Pickett |first2=Kate |title=The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better |publisher=Allen Lane |year=2009 |isbn=978-1846140396 |location=London |page= }}{{Cite book |last=Bakan |first=Joel |title=The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power |publisher=Free Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-0743247467 |location=New York, NY |page= }}{{Cite book |last=Chomsky |first=Noam |title=Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order |publisher=Seven Stories Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-1888363821 |location=New York, NY |page= }}{{Cite book |last=Stiglitz |first=Joseph E. |title=The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company |year=2012 |isbn=978-0393088694 |location=New York, NY |page= }}{{Cite book |last=Rodrik |first=Dani |title=The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company |year=2011 |isbn=978-0393071610 |location=New York, NY |page= }}

{{Main|Critique of work|Wage slavery|Refusal of work}}

File:Pinkerton escorts hocking valley leslies.jpg escort strikebreakers in Buchtel, Ohio, 1884]]

Wage labor has long been compared to slavery.The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995. {{ISBN|0802837840}}. p. 543. As a result, the phrase "wage slavery" is often utilized as a pejorative for wage labor.{{Harvnb|Roediger|2007a}}.
The term is not without its critics, as {{Harvnb|Roediger|2007b|p=247}}, notes: "[T]he challenge to loose connections of wage (or white) slavery to chattel slavery was led by Frederick Douglass and other Black, often fugitive, abolitionists. Their challenge was mercilessly concrete. Douglass, who tried out speeches in work places before giving them in halls, was far from unable to speak to or hear white workers, but he and William Wells Brown did challenge metaphors regarding white slavery sharply. They noted, for example, that their escapes from slavery had left job openings and wondered if any white workers wanted to take the jobs." Similarly, advocates of slavery looked upon the "comparative evils of Slave Society and of Free Society, of slavery to human Masters and slavery to Capital"{{Harvnb|Fitzhugh|1857|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ECdb7EjiBnEC&pg=PR16 xvi]}} and proceeded to argue that wage slavery was actually worse than chattel slavery.{{Harvnb|Carsel|1940}}. Slavery apologists like George Fitzhugh contended that workers only accepted wage labor with the passage of time as they became "familiarised and inattentive to the infected social atmosphere they continually inhale". Scholars have debated the exact relationship between wage labor, slavery, and capitalism at length, especially for the Antebellum South.{{cite web|url=https://networks.h-net.org/node/11465/pages/76870/capitalism-and-slavery-united-states-topical-guide|title=Capitalism and Slavery in the United States (Topical Guide)|last=Leccese|first=Stephen R.|date=28 July 2015|publisher=H-Net|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406205713/https://networks.h-net.org/node/11465/pages/76870/capitalism-and-slavery-united-states-topical-guide|archive-date=6 April 2018|url-status=live|access-date=6 April 2018}}

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context of a critique of societal property not intended for active personal use while Luddites emphasized the dehumanisation brought about by machines. Before the American Civil War, Southern defenders of African American slavery invoked the concept of wage slavery to favorably compare the condition of their slaves to workers in the North.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}} The United States abolished slavery during the Civil War, but labor union activists found the metaphor useful. According to Lawrence Glickman, in the Gilded Age "references abounded in the labor press, and it is hard to find a speech by a labour leader without the phrase".{{cite book|author=Lawrence B. Glickman|title=A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uaZeBhl2QLYC&pg=PA19|year=1999|publisher=Cornell UP|page=19|isbn=978-0801486142|access-date=27 June 2015|archive-date=18 October 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018024416/https://books.google.com/books?id=uaZeBhl2QLYC&pg=PA19|url-status=live}}

{{quote box|quote=The slave, together with his labour-power, was sold to his owner once for all. ... The [wage] labourer, on the other hand, sells his very self, and that by fractions. ... He [belongs] to the capitalist class; and it is for him ... to find a buyer in this capitalist class.{{Harvnb|Marx|1847|loc=[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch02.htm Chapter 2]}}|source=—Karl Marx|align=left|width=40%|fontsize=91%|bgcolor=AliceBlue|tstyle=text-align: left;|qalign=right|qstyle=text-align: left;|quoted=yes|salign=right|sstyle=text-align: right;}}

According to Noam Chomsky, analysis of the psychological implications of wage slavery goes back to the Enlightenment era. In his 1791 book On the Limits of State Action, liberal thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt explained how "whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness" and so when the laborer works under external control, "we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is".{{cite book|author=Chomsky|date=1993|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DIpW10rWZFAC&pg=PA19 |title=Year 501: The Conquest Continues|page=19|publisher=Verso |isbn=978-0860916802}} Both the Milgram and Stanford experiments have been found useful in the psychological study of wage-based workplace relations.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

Additionally, as per anthropologist David Graeber, the earliest wage labor contracts known about were in fact contracts for the rental of chattel slaves (usually the owner would receive a share of the money and the slave another, with which to maintain his or her living expenses). According to Graeber, such arrangements were quite common in New World slavery as well, whether in the United States or Brazil.{{Harvnb|Graeber|2004|p=[http://www.eleuthera.it/files/materiali/David_Graeber_Fragments_%20Anarchist_Anthropology.pdf 71]}} C. L. R. James argued in The Black Jacobins that most of the techniques of human organisation employed on factory workers during the Industrial Revolution were first developed on slave plantations.{{Harvnb|Graeber|2007|p=106}}.

File:coaltub.png

Some anti-capitalist thinkers claim that the elite maintain wage slavery and a divided working class through their influence over the media and entertainment industry,{{cite web |url=http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/19/144225 |title=Democracy Now |website=Democracy Now! |date=19 October 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071113204609/http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07%2F10%2F19%2F144225 |archive-date=13 November 2007}}{{cite web |url=http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1992----02.htm |title=Interview |year=1992 |author=Chomsky, Noam |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060721164116/http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1992----02.htm |archive-date=21 July 2006}} educational institutions, unjust laws, nationalist and corporate propaganda, pressures and incentives to internalize values serviceable to the power structure, state violence, fear of unemployment{{cite web |url=http://question-everything.mahost.org/Socio-Politics/thoughtcontrol.html |title=Thought Control |work=Socio-Politics |publisher=Question Everything |access-date=25 March 2015 |archive-date=16 February 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160216112703/http://question-everything.mahost.org/Socio-Politics/thoughtcontrol.html |url-status=live }} and a historical legacy of exploitation and profit accumulation/transfer under prior systems, which shaped the development of economic theory.

Adam Smith noted that employers often conspire together to keep wages low:{{Cite web|url=http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b5-c1-article-2-ss3.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091001132821/http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b5-c1-article-2-ss3.htm|url-status=dead|title=Adam Smith – An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations – The Adam Smith Institute|archive-date=1 October 2009}}

{{blockquote|The interest of the dealers ... in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... [They] have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public ... We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate ... It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms.}}

To Marxist and anarchist thinkers like Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, wage slavery was a class condition in place due to the existence of private property and the state. This class situation rested primarily on:

1. The existence of property not intended for active use.
2. The concentration of ownership in few hands.
3. The lack of direct access by workers to the means of production and consumption goods.
4. The perpetuation of a reserve army of unemployed workers.

For Marxists, labor as commodity, which is how they regard wage labor,{{Harvnb|Marx|1990|p=1006}}: "[L]abour-power, a commodity sold by the worker himself." provides a fundamental point of attack against capitalism.Another one, of course, being the capitalists' theft from workers via surplus-value. "It can be persuasively argued", noted one concerned philosopher, "that the conception of the worker's labour as a commodity confirms Marx's stigmatization of the wage system of private capitalism as 'wage-slavery;' that is, as an instrument of the capitalist's for reducing the worker's condition to that of a slave, if not below it".{{Harvnb|Nelson|1995|p=158}}. This Marxist objection is what motivated Nelson's essay, which argues that labor is not, in fact, a commodity. That this objection is fundamental follows immediately from Marx's conclusion that wage labor is the very foundation of capitalism: "Without a class dependent on wages, the moment individuals confront each other as free persons, there can be no production of surplus value; without the production of surplus-value there can be no capitalist production, and hence no capital and no capitalist!".{{Harvnb|Marx|1990|p=1005}}. Emphasis in the original.{{pb}}See also p. 716: "[T]he capitalist produces [and reproduces] the worker as a wage-labourer. This incessant reproduction, this perpetuation of the worker, is the absolutely necessary condition for capitalist production."

File:SMD Demand Curve.svg

At least two assumptions are necessary for the validity of the standard model: first, that supply and demand are independent; and second, that supply is "constrained by a fixed resource". If these conditions do not hold, then the Marshallian model cannot be sustained. Sraffa's critique focused on the inconsistency (except in implausible circumstances) of partial equilibrium analysis and the rationale for the upward slope of the supply curve in a market for a produced consumption good.{{cite journal |last1=Cohen |first1=Avi J. |title='The Laws of Returns under Competitive Conditions': Progress in Microeconomics since Sraffa (1926)? |journal=Eastern Economic Journal |date=1983 |volume=9 |issue=3 |pages=213–220 |jstor=40324868 }} The notability of Sraffa's critique is also demonstrated by Paul A. Samuelson's comments and engagements with it over many years, stating:

What a cleaned-up version of Sraffa (1926) establishes is how nearly empty are all of Marshall's partial equilibrium boxes. To a logical purist of Wittgenstein and Sraffa class, the Marshallian partial equilibrium box of constant cost is even more empty than the box of increasing cost.Paul A. Samuelson, "Reply" in Critical Essays on Piero Sraffa's Legacy in Economics (edited by H.D. Kurz), Cambridge University Press, 2000

Aggregate excess demand in a market is the difference between the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied as a function of price. In the model with an upward-sloping supply curve and downward-sloping demand curve, the aggregate excess demand function only intersects the axis at one point, namely at the point where the supply and demand curves intersect. The Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem shows that the standard model cannot be rigorously derived in general from general equilibrium theory.{{cite journal |last1=Kirman |first1=Alan |title=The Intrinsic Limits of Modern Economic Theory: The Emperor has No Clothes |journal=The Economic Journal |date=1989 |volume=99 |issue=395 |pages=126–139 |doi=10.2307/2234075 |jstor=2234075 |hdl=1814/23029 |hdl-access=free }}

The model of prices being determined by supply and demand assumes perfect competition. However, "economists have no adequate model of how individuals and firms adjust prices in a competitive model. If all participants are price-takers by definition, then the actor who adjusts prices to eliminate excess demand is not specified".{{cite journal |last1=Kirman |first1=Alan P |title=Whom or What Does the Representative Individual Represent? |journal=Journal of Economic Perspectives |date=1 May 1992 |volume=6 |issue=2 |pages=117–136 |doi=10.1257/jep.6.2.117 |jstor=2138411 |citeseerx=10.1.1.401.3947 }} Goodwin, Nelson, Ackerman and Weisskopf write:

If we mistakenly confuse precision with accuracy, then we might be misled into thinking that an explanation expressed in precise mathematical or graphical terms is somehow more rigorous or useful than one that takes into account particulars of history, institutions or business strategy. This is not the case. Therefore, it is important not to put too much confidence in the apparent precision of supply and demand graphs. Supply and demand analysis is a useful precisely formulated conceptual tool that clever people have devised to help us gain an abstract understanding of a complex world. It does not—nor should it be expected to—give us in addition an accurate and complete description of any particular real world market.Goodwin, N, Nelson, J; Ackerman, F; & Weisskopf, T: Microeconomics in Context 2d {{abbr|ed.|edition}} Sharpe 2009 {{ISBN|978-0765623010}}

According to Harvard academic Shoshana Zuboff, a new genus of capitalism, surveillance capitalism monetizes data acquired through surveillance.{{cite news|last1= Powles|first1= Julia|title= Google and Microsoft have made a pact to protect surveillance capitalism|url= https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/02/google-microsoft-pact-antitrust-surveillance-capitalism|newspaper=The Guardian|access-date=9 February 2017|date=2 May 2016|archive-date=11 February 2017|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170211082830/https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/02/google-microsoft-pact-antitrust-surveillance-capitalism|url-status= live}}{{cite news |last1=Zuboff|first1=Shoshana|title=Google as a Fortune Teller: The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism |url=https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-debate/shoshana-zuboff-secrets-of-surveillance-capitalism-14103616.html?printPagedArticle=true|publisher=Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung|access-date=9 February 2017|date=5 March 2016|newspaper=Faz.net|archive-date=11 February 2017|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170211075033/http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-debate/shoshana-zuboff-secrets-of-surveillance-capitalism-14103616.html?printPagedArticle=true|url-status=live}}{{cite magazine|last1= Sterling|first1=Bruce|title=Shoshanna Zuboff condemning Google 'surveillance capitalism'|magazine= Wired|url=https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2016/03/shoshanna-zuboff-condemning-google-surveillance-capitalism/|access-date=9 February 2017|date=8 March 2016|archive-date=11 February 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170211075911/https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2016/03/shoshanna-zuboff-condemning-google-surveillance-capitalism/|url-status=live}} She states that it was first discovered and consolidated at Google, emerged due to the "coupling of the vast powers of the digital with the radical indifference and intrinsic narcissism of the financial capitalism and its neoliberal vision that have dominated commerce for at least three decades, especially in the Anglo economies" and depends on the global architecture of computer mediation which produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power she calls "Big Other".{{cite journal |last1= Zuboff|first1=Shoshana|title=Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization|journal=Journal of Information Technology|date=9 April 2015|volume= 30 |issue= 1|pages=75–89|doi=10.1057/jit.2015.5|ssrn=2594754|s2cid=15329793|url=http://elartu.tntu.edu.ua/handle/lib/38643 |doi-access=free}}

New information technologies continuously create conflict between privacy, the control over personal information disclosure, and surveillance.{{Cite journal |last=Humphreys |first=Lee |date=August 2011 |title=Who's Watching Whom? A Study of Interactive Technology and Surveillance |url=https://academic.oup.com/joc/article/61/4/575-595/4098465 |journal=Journal of Communication |language=en |volume=61 |issue=4 |pages=575–595 |doi=10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01570.x}} In a current capitalistic society, power is harnessed through a combination of both control and freedom. This fusion of control and freedom, seen through changes in sexuality and race, is a response to the growing privatization of data, networks, public services, and physical spaces, and also to the simultaneous entry of publicity and paranoia into people's lives.{{Cite book |last=Chun |first=Wendy Hui Kyong |url=https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/3946/Control-and-FreedomPower-and-Paranoia-in-the-Age |title=Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics |date=2005-12-23 |publisher=The MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-28858-3 |language=en}}

{{Main|Racial capitalism|Economic discrimination}}

According to Immanuel Wallerstein, institutional racism has been "one of the most significant pillars" of the capitalist system and serves as "the ideological justification for the hierarchization of the work-force and its highly unequal distributions of reward".{{cite book | last = Wallerstein| first = Immanuel | author-link = Immanuel Wallerstein | title = Historical Capitalism | publisher= Verso Books | year = 1983 | isbn = 978-0860917618 | page = 78}} Critics of capitalism argue that racism benefits capitalists in several ways. Racism divides the working class and prevents them from uniting to demand better wages and working conditions. Capitalists benefit from competition and hostility between workers because it reduces their bargaining power and ability to organise. Racism was used to justify the exploitation and oppression of certain groups of people for economic gain, such as in the era of slavery in the United States. Capitalists benefitted from the scapegoating of Jewish people as a way to divert attention from the real cause of the problems. An example of this is Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, who spread Anti-Semitic propaganda in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent. Vladimir Lenin argued that Antisemitism was being used in Tsarist Russia to distract the workers from the true problems which are inherent to capitalism by blaming the Jews.{{Cite web |title=Lenin's speech on antisemitism | website=YouTube | date=November 2018 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_n_qtgUKnY}} Others argue that while capitalism generally used or transformed pre-existing racism depending on local circumstances, racism is not necessary for capitalism.{{cite journal | url=https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221140780 | doi=10.1177/02632764221140780 | title=Race, Capitalism, and the Necessity/Contingency Debate | date=2024 | last1=Conroy | first1=William | journal=Theory, Culture & Society | volume=41 | pages=39–58 }}

Many theorists supportive of capitalism believed that a free market is a remedy for racism in a functioning society, because if some business owners engaged in discriminatory wage practices targeting minority ethnic groups, other entrepreneurs would take advantage of the opportunity to hire an equally-capable worker for a lower cost, increasing the profitability of the latter. According to Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto, despite the fluidity of this theory, reconciling the free market theory with the observed data presents challenges, as those who are in support of free market capitalism also often exhibit a higher likelihood of discriminating against ethnic minorities.{{Cite journal |last1=Sidanius |first1=Jim |last2=Pratto |first2=Felicia |date=1993 |title=Racism and Support of Free-Market Capitalism: A Cross-Cultural Analysis |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3791704 |journal=Political Psychology |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=381–401 |doi=10.2307/3791704 |jstor=3791704 |issn=0162-895X}} Left-wing commentators have argued that capitalism promotes racism alongside culture wars over issues such as immigration and representation of ethnic minorities whilst refusing to address economic inequalities.{{cite book |last1=Rathgeb |first1=Philip |title=How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA |date=29 February 2024 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-269138-5 |page=10 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ob30EAAAQBAJ&dq=culture+wars+capitalism+racism&pg=PA10 |language=en}}{{cite web |last1=Pabst |first1=Adrian |title=Capitalism is driving the culture wars |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/09/capitalism-culture-wars |website=New Statesman |date=5 September 2023}}

{{Main|Uneven and combined development|Underdevelopment|Unequal exchange|Dependency theory}}

Marxist and Neo-Marxist theorists including Wallerstein, Andre Frank and Samir Amin have linked underdevelopment with capitalism, emphasising the relationship between the metropolist centre and the periphery colony, theory of 'unequal exchange' and constituents of a single world capitalist system.{{cite journal |last1=Patnaik |first1=Utsa |title='Neo-Marxian' Theories of Capitalism and Underdevelopment: Towards a Critique |journal=Social Scientist |date=1982 |volume=10 |issue=11 |pages=3–32 |doi=10.2307/3516858 |jstor=3516858 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3516858 |issn=0970-0293}}{{cite journal |last1=Warke |first1=Thomas W. |title=The Marxian Theory of Underdevelopment: A Review Article |journal=The Journal of Developing Areas |date=1973 |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=699–710 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4190085#:~:text=it%20is%20Lenin%20who%20laid,modern%20Marxian%20theory%20of%20underdevelopment.&text=and%20tends%20to%20perpetuate%20the,masses%20in%20the%20backward%20country.&text=world%20production%20and%20trade%20and,dualisms%20within%20under%2D%20developed%20economies. |issn=0022-037X}} Dependency theory posits that peripheral economies are subordinated to the interests of the capitalist world economy which was initially established by European colonialism.{{cite journal |last1=Martins |first1=Carlos Eduardo |title=The Longue Durée of the Marxist Theory of Dependency and the Twenty-First Century |journal=Latin American Perspectives |date=January 2022 |volume=49 |issue=1 |pages=18–35 |doi=10.1177/0094582X211052029 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0094582X211052029 |language=en |issn=0094-582X}}

Using the Latin American dependency model, the Guyanese Marxist historian Walter Rodney, in his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, described in 1972 an Africa that had been consciously exploited by European imperialists, leading directly to the modern underdevelopment of most of the continent.Rodney, W. (1972). "How Europe underdeveloped Africa". Beyond borders: Thinking critically about global issues, 107-125.

The concept of uneven development derived from the political theories of Leon Trotsky.{{cite journal |last1=Peck |first1=Jamie |last2=Varadarajan |first2=Latha |title=Uneven Regional Development |journal=International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology |date=6 March 2017 |pages=1–13 |doi=10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0721 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0721 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd |isbn=9780470659632 |language=en}} This concept was developed in combination with the related theory of permanent revolution to explain the historical context of Russia. He would later elaborate on this theory to explain the specific, capitalist laws of uneven development in 1930.{{cite book |title=Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development: From International Relations to World Literature |date=8 July 2019 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-38473-6 |pages=1–20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tMqiDwAAQBAJ&q=Trotsky+uneven+and+combined+development |language=en}} According to biographer Ian Thatcher, this theory would be later generalised to "the entire history of mankind"."Talk of uneven development becomes dominant in Trotskii's writings from 1927 onwards. From this date, whenever the law is mentioned, the claim consistently made for it is that 'the entire history of mankind is governed by the law of uneven development'." – Ian D. Thatcher, "Uneven and combined development", Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 4 No. 2, 1991, p. 237.

{{expand section|date=April 2024}}

Austrian School economists have argued that capitalism can organize itself into a complex system without an external guidance or central planning mechanism. Friedrich Hayek considered the phenomenon of self-organisation as underpinning capitalism. Prices serve as a signal as to the urgent and unfulfilled wants of people and the opportunity to earn profits if successful, or absorb losses if resources are used poorly or left idle, gives entrepreneurs incentive to use their knowledge and resources to satisfy those wants. Thus, the activities of millions of people, each seeking their own interest, are coordinated.{{cite book |author=Walberg, Herbert |title=Education and Capitalism |chapter-url=http://www.hoover.org/publications/books/8328 |publisher=Hoover Institution Press |year=2003 |chapter=4, What is Capitalism? |pages=87–89 |isbn=978-0817939724 |access-date=4 March 2013 |archive-date=19 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130719131959/http://www.hoover.org/publications/books/8328 |url-status=live }}

The novelist Ayn Rand made positive moral defenses of laissez-faire capitalism, most notably in her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged and in her 1966 collection of essays Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. She argued that capitalism should be supported on moral grounds, not just on the basis of practical benefits.{{cite book |first=Jennifer |last=Burns |chapter=Godless Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservative Movement |title=American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century |editor-first=Nelson |editor-last=Lichtenstein |location=Philadelphia |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0812239232 |pages=282–283}}{{cite book |first1=Douglas |last1=Den Uyl |last2=Rasmussen |first2=Douglas |chapter=Capitalism |title=The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand |editor1-last=Den Uyl |editor1-first=Douglas |editor2-last=Rasmussen |editor2-first=Douglas |author-link2=Douglas B. Rasmussen |location=Chicago |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=1984 |isbn=978-0252010330 |oclc=9392804 |name-list-style=amp |pages=[https://archive.org/details/philosophicthoug0000unse/page/173 173–174] |title-link=The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand }} Her ideas have had significant influence over conservative and libertarian supporters of capitalism, especially within the American Tea Party movement.{{cite book |title=Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul |last=Weiss |first=Gary |author-link=Gary Weiss |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-0312590734 |oclc=740628885 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/aynrandnationhid0000weis/page/14 14–16] |url=https://archive.org/details/aynrandnationhid0000weis/page/14 }}

Rand defined capitalism as "a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned".Ayn Rand, "What Is Capitalism?” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 19 According to Rand, the role of government in a capitalist state has three broad categories of proper functions: first, the police "to protect men from criminals"; second, the armed services "to protect men from foreign invaders"; and third, the law courts "to settle disputes among men according to objective laws".Ayn Rand, "Nature of Government", Virtue of selfishness.

{{cols|colwidth=16em}}

• Almighty dollar
• Anarchism and capitalism
• Anti-globalisation
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century
• Capitalism: A Love Story
• Capitalocene
• The Corporation
• Crisis theory
• Criticism of libertarianism
• Criticisms of corporations
• Critique of work
• Culture of capitalism
• Economic calculation problem
• Economic democracy
• Late capitalism
• Market fundamentalism
• Market socialism
• Mixed economy
• Post-capitalism
• Social criticism
• Social democracy
• Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor
• {{sectionlink|Technological fix#Concerns|}}
• The Big One
• The Theory of the Leisure Class
• This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
• Why Socialism?

{{colend}}

{{reflist}}

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• {{cite journal |last1=Sullivan |first1=Dylan |last2=Hickel|first2=Jason|author-link2=Jason Hickel|date=2023 |title=Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century|url= |journal=World Development|volume=161 |issue= |page=106026 |doi=10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106026|access-date=|doi-access=free}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Wiedmann|first1=Thomas |last2=Lenzen|first2=Manfred |last3=Keyßer|first3=Lorenz T. |last4=Steinberger|first4=Julia K. |title=Scientists' warning on affluence |journal=Nature Communications |date=2020 |volume=11 |issue=3107 |page=3107 |doi=10.1038/s41467-020-16941-y |pmid=32561753 |pmc=7305220 |bibcode=2020NatCo..11.3107W }}

{{refend}}

• {{cite book |last=Chang|first=Ha-Joon|author-link=Ha-Joon Chang|date=2012 |title=23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism|location= |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1608193387}}
• {{cite book |last1=Chiapello |first1=Eve |chapter=Capitalism and Its Criticisms |title=New Spirits of Capitalism? Crises, Justifications, and Dynamics |date=2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780191750755 |pages=60-81 |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/12730/chapter-abstract/162823154 |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last1=Chomsky |first1=Noam |last2=Waterstone |first2=Marv |author-link1=Noam Chomsky |year=2021 |title=Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance |location= |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=978-1642592634}}
• {{cite book |last=Desai|first=Radhika |author-link=|date=2022 |title=Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy|location= |publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781032059501|doi=10.4324/9781003200000|s2cid=254306409 }}
• {{cite book |last=Fisher|first=Mark |author-link=Mark Fisher|date=2009 |title=Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?|location= |publisher= John Hunt Publishing|isbn=978-1846943171}}
• {{cite book |last=Fraser|first=Nancy |author-link=Nancy Fraser|date=2022 |title=Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It|url= |location= |publisher=Verso |page= |isbn=978-1839761232}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Greene|first1=Julie|last2= |first2=|authorlink1= Julie Greene|date=April 2020|title=Bookends to a Gentler Capitalism: Complicating the Notion of First and Second Gilded Ages|url=|journal=The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era |volume=19 |issue=2 |publisher=Cambridge University Press|pages=197 - 205|doi=10.1017/S1537781419000628|pmc= |pmid= |access-date=}}
• {{cite book | editor-last = Nibert | editor-first = David | editor-link = David Nibert | date = 2017 | title = Animal Oppression and Capitalism | page =| url = | publisher = Praeger Publishing | isbn = 978-1440850738}}
• {{cite journal |author1-last=Raposo |author1-first=Bruna Ferraz |author2-last=Filho |author2-first=Niemeyer Almeida |author3-last=Amaral |author3-first=Marisa Silva |date=November 2021 |title=The Pattern of Capital Reproduction in Dependent and Financialized Capitalism |editor-last=Chilcote |editor-first=Ronald |journal=Latin American Perspectives |publisher=SAGE Publications |volume=48 |issue=6 |pages=166–181 |doi=10.1177/0094582X211061878 |issn=1552-678X |s2cid=244769729}}
• {{cite book |last=Sanders|first=Bernie |author-link=Bernie Sanders|date=2023 |title=It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism|url= |location= |publisher=Crown Publishing Group|page= |isbn=978-0593238714|title-link=It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism}}

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{{Wikiversity|Is capitalism sustainable?}}

{{refbegin|2}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20060218034812/http://www.econ.boun.edu.tr/staff/adaman/research/adaman-devine.PDF A Reconsideration of the Theory of Entrepreneurship: a participatory approach] – critique of capitalism (archived 18 February 2006)
• [http://economicdemocracy.org/miners.html How The Miners Were Robbed] – 1907 anti-capitalist pamphlet by John Wheatley
• [http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/hayek.htm Information and Economics: A Critique of Hayek] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140409234243/http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/hayek.htm |date=9 April 2014 }} by Allin F. Cottrell and W. Paul Cockshott
• [http://libcom.org/library/value-price-and-profit-karl-marx Value, Price and Profit] – Karl Marx on the basic features of capitalism
• [https://www.thersa.org/video/animates/2010/06/rsa-animate---crisis-of-capitalism Crisis of Capitalism] by David Harvey. Royal Society of Arts. 28 June 2010.
• [http://billmoyers.com/segment/richard-wolff-on-capitalisms-destructive-power/ Richard Wolff on Curing Capitalism]. Moyers & Company. 22 March 2013.
• [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/13/occupy-right-capitalism-failed-world-french-economist-thomas-piketty Occupy was right: capitalism has failed the world]. Andrew Hussey. The Guardian. 12 April 2014 (interview with Thomas Piketty).
• [https://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2016/02/09/unless-it-changes-capitalism-will-starve-humanity-by-2050/ Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050]. Forbes. 9 February 2016.
• [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/new-zealand-new-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-capitalism-blatant-failure-a8012656.html New Zealand's new prime minister calls capitalism a 'blatant failure']. The Independent. 22 October 2017.
• [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/capitalism-in-crisis-us-billionaires-worry-about-the-survival-of-the-system-that-made-them-rich/2019/04/20/3e06ef90-5ed8-11e9-bfad-36a7eb36cb60_story.html Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich]. The Washington Post. 20 April 2019
• [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/series/broken-capitalism Broken Capitalism] series in The Guardian.
• [https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/population/environmental_reproductive_health The Influence of Environmental Toxicity, Inequity and Capitalism on Reproductive Health]. Center for Biological Diversity. 2022.

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