This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Capitalism article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives (index): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33Auto-archiving period: 2 months

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, use the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

Discussions on this page have often led to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments and look in the archives before commenting.

	Capitalism was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result August 8, 2006 Good article reassessment Delisted August 28, 2006 Peer review Reviewed March 2, 2008 Good article nominee Not listed
Current status: Delisted good article

This  level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects.

Capitalism (inactive) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Capitalism, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.CapitalismWikipedia:WikiProject CapitalismTemplate:WikiProject CapitalismCapitalism Business Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Business, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of business articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BusinessWikipedia:WikiProject BusinessTemplate:WikiProject BusinessWikiProject Business Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Economics Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Economics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Economics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EconomicsWikipedia:WikiProject EconomicsTemplate:WikiProject EconomicsEconomics Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Politics: Libertarianism Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Libertarianism (assessed as Top-importance). Philosophy: Social and political / Modern High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Associated task forces: /  Social and political philosophy Modern philosophy Conservatism Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Conservatism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of conservatism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ConservatismWikipedia:WikiProject ConservatismTemplate:WikiProject ConservatismConservatism Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Socialism Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Socialism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of socialism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SocialismWikipedia:WikiProject SocialismTemplate:WikiProject Socialismsocialism Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Sociology High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article has been mentioned by a media organization: Maxim Lott (2021-02-18). "Inside Wikipedia's leftist bias: socialism pages whitewashed, communist atrocities buried". Fox news. Retrieved 2021-02-19. The two main Socialism and Capitalism pages also fail to note any of the atrocities committed by other socialist and communist regimes, from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Cambodia, or North Korea, among others.

There is a request, submitted by Lionsdude148 (talk), for an audio version of this article to be created. For further information, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia. The rationale behind the request is: I find this important, as it is a vital principle of the US economy..

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (center, color, defense, realize, traveled) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

@Ideophagous reverted my edit.

I do not believe this is correct, as, if, at this moment in time, you chose to go to the articles for socialism and communism, you would find that they clearly define said systems (under Marxist-Leninist definition) as ideologies, rather than systems. This displays a blatant bias in the article's representation (as it describes capitalism as a system, rather than an ideology), and I thus believe my edit to be necessary in order to properly comply to WP:POV.

Additionally, it would simply be naïve to refuse to accept the fact that not only communism and socialism are ideologies, but capitalism is as well. Regardless of whether there is a system on which the ideology is based, the concept itself describes the ideology that defends the system, not the system itself. What is the system in capitalism is not capitalism itself, but the market et cetera. Capitalism is, and will always remain, an ideology. 88.19.93.19 (talk) 13:53, 15 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The definition of capitalism is much narrower and mechanistic than communism and socialism. Those other components in the latter is why they are commonly called ideologies. North8000 (talk) 13:58, 15 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of personal opinions, Wikipedia's content is based on reliable sources, and editors must always be careful not to include any original research in the articles (even if an idea seems to "make sense" and it's tempting to include it). If most reliable sources agree to define capitalism as "a system", then that's what we should include. If reliable sources disagree, then various RS based POVs should be included, as long as they're given their due weight in the text. Ideophagous (talk) 14:15, 15 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Isms" by definition are ideologies. That's just language, not original research. 2600:1702:6711:4D40:2710:66F5:9A9E:4E43 (talk) 14:28, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other economic systems, such as barbarianism and feudalism are also isms. I appreciate that some people, including Nancy Pelosi, use the term capitalism to refer to their personal ideology. But that would be a different topic from this article. I have not seen any academic sources about this use of the term but if you could provide them we could determine if it warranted a separate article.

The ideology that promotes capitalism as an economic system is called liberalism. Perhaps some of them call themselves capitalists, because the term liberalism is often unclear. TFD (talk) 16:02, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Considering capitalism actually exists and those other isms do not, it seems that capitalism is not just an ideology, but an observable reality. The only bias in this article is that it contains a 'criticism' section (sourced mainly to people who are not mainstream economists) but does not offer any balance. As we've seen in other topic areas, anyone can be a critic, but unless the subject is uniquely controversial, such sections are typically not warranted. ~2025-31558-13 (talk) 21:20, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The opening definition says that capitalism inherently involves private ownership. But then the very next paragraph lists state capitalism, where a centralized government creates and sustains economic entities, as a form of capitalism. This is a contradiction. It seems simpler and in line with the literature to remove the part about private ownership, as that only applies to some forms of capitalism. (Most forms but still not all). The basic definition that unites all forms of capitalism is an economic system that involves investment in enterprise and competition between economic entities. 2600:1702:6711:4D40:2710:66F5:9A9E:4E43 (talk) 14:24, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The state itself can be private, particularly in undemocratic countries. TFD (talk) 16:05, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

State Capitalism has control and direction of the economic activities, but the actual property / capital is held by private interests - see modern People's Republic of China. 70.66.82.1 (talk) 04:18, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The referenced book actually mentions the years 1633 and 1654. This information is attributed to the 1964 thesis by Edwin Deschepper, titled L'histoire du mot capital et dérivés, submitted at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. I wasn't able to find a copy of that thesis though. Itdoesntmatteranymore (talk) 06:32, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the USA at least, economic regulations have increased nonstop since Calvin Coolidge left office. In 1980, we had barely 100,000 pages of regs; by 1990, it was over 125,000; and today, it's about 190,000. ~2025-35188-34 (talk) 18:44, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looking through this article, a lot of information is repeated/restated multiple times throughout the article. In addition, many of the same concepts are linked multiple times. For instance, there were nearly ten instances of the term capital being linked. In general there's a lot of overlinking, with a lot of links to things such as wage or even countries and demonyms like Britain, France, or French. It seems to me like a lot of these center around many different users chipping in with blocks of information, especially regarding criticisms of capitalism or various takes on the system by different economists, without ensuring that what they were adding wasn't already said in some form or another. Overall, I think the article just needs some of the fat trimmed off it, especially with citations. There are a lot of errors for references that don't point to anything, or vice versa.

Lastly, the article definitely suffers from being overcomplicated. While economics is hardly a simple topic, there's a big overuse of terminology that goes unexplained or is only explained at a different point, instead relying entirely on the fact that a term is linked to prove its efficacy.

I thought I'd leave this explaination here. I may not be super active in discussion after a short period because I'm generally taking a break, but I didn't want to do a drive-by tagging of the page without leaving my two cents as well. Dog Oxide (talk) 00:25, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]