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32. Defining capitalism
Economic systems are often classified according
to whatever the factors of production are privately
owned, publicly owned or some mixture of the two. If
private ownership prevails, the system is considered
capitalistic. If public ownership prevails, socialistic
or communistic is deemed an appropriate description.
The term «mixed economy» is retained for those
systems that reveal ownership features of capitalism
and socialism, although where capitalism becomes a
mixed system and the latter turns into socialism is
never clear-cut. I
Classifying economic systems solely on the basis of one criterion fails to capture some very important economic (and political) differences between capitalist economies, especially as they have evolved in the post—World War II period. However important as these differences might be, it seems more important to define capitalism in such a way that it can be used to denote a wide variety of real
world economies that are distinguishable from a group of other economies that do not share the basic political and cultural as well as the economic institutions that are the essence of capitalism.
To sharpen the analysis, it is useful to begin with a favorite tool of those economists concerned with the manner in which economic activities are organized under capitalism—the model of the perfectly competitive market system.
In this model, the economy is viewed as a system of markets in each of which a homogeneous good is traded. Moreover, in each market buyers and sellers of the good are so numerous that no singly buyer or seller can influence the price at which the good is exchanged. Furthermore, this price, or the price mechanism, acts as a sign that provides all the information necessary to distribute output and factors throughout the economy in such a way that an optimal situation results. In other words, given the initial distribution of resource endowments among the population - human skills, ownership of physical and financial capital and land - the resulting production and distribution of that production will be such that no member of the society can be made better off in some material sense with making someone else worse off.
One of the outstanding developments under capitalism has been the increased role played by government in determining the composition of output. Government expenditures and tax revenues as a percentage of total output have been rising fairly steadily throughout most of the twentieth century, and consumption of nondurable goods and
services as a percentage of output has declined. The rise of the role of government within the context of a system of predominant private ownership of the factors of production is largely the reflection of the rise of the so-called welfare state. The spread of public education, public medical and dental systems, pension and welfare schemes, and retraining programs along with retirement and unemployment benefit programs has been one of the outstanding features of post—World War capitalist development. The rise of the welfare state and increase in public ownership indicate a shift in economic decision making in capitalist economies away from the private sector. This trend leads to a final consideration in the definition of capitalism.