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16 points

I don’t think people actually agree on the definition of capitalism itself, I just looked it up and was a little surprised how definitive it is:

an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

If you asked whether capitalism is a political system, at least in my random polling, 2 out of 9 respondents said No.

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6 points
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13 points

Capitalism is an economic system with as little government intervention possible.

Doesn’t the bolded part make it a political system then?

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3 points
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2 points

I’d say no. It doesn’t really describe how a political system works other than commenting on the regulation part.

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3 points

that is the ideology of classic liberal and neoliberal governments in the history of capitalism, capitalism itself is simply investing ‘money’ (aka capital) to produce commodities that are then exchanged for more money that is then fed right back into the loop to produce even more commodities to make even more money. The term commodity can refer to things that are intangible, like financial instruments - stocks, bonds, derivatives of stocks and bonds, derivatives of derivatives of stocks and bonds etc. Capitalism is the core of the global economic system. It is not an ideology. There are many countries (but fewer than there used to be) that are either socialist or social democracies where capitalism is highly regulated.

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4 points
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2 points

But it does describe the control of resources and to an extent force, which is “political” in addition to economic.

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0 points

Government intervention goes the other way: capitalists like intervening into government.

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