• The word capitalist was first used by Arthur Young in his 1792 work Travels 1787–89; undertaken with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, etc. of the kingdom of France in the sense of one who owns capital, and was more precisely defined by Karl Marx in Das Kapital as one who owned working capital including machinery and made money by letting others work on those machines. Being a capitalist in this original sense does not necessarily mean that one supports capitalism.
• It is a person who owns or controls the means for producing wealth, deriving their livelihood from profits off the labor expended by employees.

• The term capitalist has more recently come to refer to someone who supports capitalism or a free market ideology.

• Throughout 20th century, the term capitalist country was used in the Soviet Union and aligned countries to denote advanced free-market western economies. These included the United States, Canada, Israel, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and all European countries outside the Warsaw Pact except Yugoslavia. The term could occasionally be interpreted more widely to include developing countries outside the USSR's sphere of influence.

• Very recently the term risk capitalist has come to be used as an equivalent to a venture capitalist.

See also

• Capitalism
• Index of sociology articles
• Sociology

References

Further reading

• Josephson, Matthew, "The Money Lords; the great finance capitalists, 1925-1950", New York, Weybright and Talley, 1972.