capitalismnoun [ U ]
uk/ˈkæp.ɪ.təl.ɪ.zəm/us/ˈkæp.ə.t̬əl.ɪ.zəm/C2 an economic, political, and social system in which property, business, and industry are privately owned, directed towards making the greatest possible profits for successful organizations and people
Compare
communism
socialism
Examples
- Tony Blair claims that New Labour is the Third Way between capitalism and socialism.
- The paper showed a picture of homeless people sleeping on the streets with the caption underneath 'the unacceptable face of capitalism'.
- She spoke with passion against the evils of capitalism.
- With capitalism, people are motivated by the idea of personal profit and success.
- He is fiercely left-wing and always protesting about the dire effects of capitalism and globalization.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Systems of government
- a reign of terror idiom
- absolutism
- ancien régime
- anti-federalist
- apartheid
- democracy
- democrat
- democratic
- democratize
- despot
- interregnum
- Jim Crow
- junta
- kleptocracy
- majority rule
- plutocracy
- plutocrat
- police state
- regime
- reign
See more results »
Examples from literature
- At any rate, the actor-manager who resolutely cherishes respect for art can do much to temper the corrupting influences of commercial capitalism in the theatrical world.
- Socialism will purify politics, for private capitalism is the great source of political corruption.
- The Soviet government is to continue firmly on this road until the final victory from the yoke of capitalism is won through international workers' revolt.
- The rise of capitalism, the sudden development of the world-market, the substitution of a money medium of exchange for direct barter—all these new factors were doing their work.
- The whole economic system of modern capitalism will have received a shock from which the beginnings of vast changes may date.
- We saw the same thing done within the last generation in Mexico, and from the same motive—because developing capitalism needs cheap labor, whereas people who have access to the land will not slave in mills and mines.