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영어

Capitalism is, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, an economic system that is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods or services for profit. Most dictionaries emphasize that capitalism is an economic system. But we use generally in everyday life the term capitalism to remark about a cultural phenomenon, as well about an economic system. The term capitalism is ambiguous and it has multiple meaning.
What is capitalism? This article examine the history of term capitalism. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term capitalism was first used by novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in 1854 in The Newcomes, where he meant “having ownership of capital”. Also according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Carl Adolph Douai, a German-American socialist and abolitionist, used the term private capitalism in 1863. The initial usage of the term capitalism in its modern sense has been attributed to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. After Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the term capitalism has a meaning of economic system. Max Weber use, by contrast to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the term capitalism for explain the non-economic aspect of capitalism. Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein analyse the totality of capitalism, a historical system including politics, economy and culture.

한국어

자본주의라는 용어는 우리가 흔하게 사용하고 그 뜻을 정확하게 알 고 있다고 생각하지만 사실은 모호하고 다중적인 의미를 가지고 있다. 전문 적인 분야에서건, 일상에서건 이러한 사정은 크게 다르지 않다. 이 글은 자본주의의 다양한 의미들의 역사를 추적해보려 한다.