Which country can be viewed as the perfect example of "Capitalism"?
score:2
Speaking as a Marxist historian, the question we should ask is not "which country exemplifies capitalism" as capitalism is a constantly changing phenomena—rather we should ask which country best exemplifies capitalism in particular historical moments, and (moreover) who considers the country to exemplify capitalism and why?
For example:
Holland is probably the premier example of mercantile capitalism prior to the French revolution.
England was the typifying example of capitalism in the 19th century for Marx and Engels. It was also the typifying example for the Manchester School and The Economist.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century Germany's advanced production techniques meant that it was held as an example of the second phase of the industrial revolution.
Since the 1890s the United States has been pointed to as a pinnacle of capitalist achievement, particularly in its early and thorough-going implementation of Fordism-Taylorism.
The Soviet Union was upheld by Cliff and others as an example of the highest stage of capitalism, capitalism encountering its own negation.
Finally if we look at China's current capacity to accumulate surplus value, surely this indicates that China's state capitalist and private capitalist economies working in coordination exemplifies the contemporary ultimate in accumulation.
Given that my background is firmly Marxist, and I view capitalism as a system for accumulation of surplus value in an expanded form, I have concentrated this list on societies which were successful at accumulating surplus value in an expanded form, and societies which engaged in innovative ways of accumulating. These societies expanded the number of useful things in life that were considered commodities, expanded wage labour, and increased the total pool of useful things and human wealth that operated as "value," ie as capitalised value or wage labour.
Hopefully someone from a normative perspective can answer in terms of the moralism of "ideal" capitalism.
Upvote:10
No country in the world has ever been a perfect example of any system, inasmuch that humans are inevitably far less perfect than the ideologies they invent.
Any answer to this question also hinges on how one defines "capitalism." An Austrian-school economist, Weberian sociologist, and Marxist historian would provide very different definitions. Ideologues may reject state capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, and other models as not "true" capitalism. In some ways, no modern society is as "capitalist" as some bygone societies because of contemporary morality and views on government intervention; in other ways, modern society is more "capitalist" than has ever been possible before because computerization, modern communications, and sophisticated financial markets make things like price discovery far more efficient.
With that in mind, the Fraser Institute, a Canadian pro-free-market think tank, produces an annual "Economic Freedom of the World" report in conjunction with like-minded research institutes around the world. Note that this report is based on their definition not of "capitalism" per se but of relative "economic freedom"; the word "capitalism" does not appear anywhere in the text of the report except in an essay condemning "crony capitalism." They determine economic freedom, in turn, based on ratings of several dozen factors ranging from the impartiality of the court system to the existence of military conscription to the volatility of the inflation rate.
With those considerable caveats in mind, according to the 2011 report, the following countries have the freest economies, and may be judged to be the most "capitalist" on that measure in 2011:
- Hong Kong
- Singapore
- New Zealand
- Switzerland
- Australia
- Canada
- Chile
- United Kingdom
- Mauritius
- United States
There are many similar competing reports, but this one seems to have the widest number of participating organizations.
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