Economic+Theory

Capitalism
[|Capitalism] is a broad economic system where [|competition] in a [|free market] determines the [|price], [|production] and [|consumption] of goods through the [|invisible hand] of [|supply and demand] reaching efficient [|market equilibrium]. [|Capital], [|property] and [|enterprise] are [|privately owned] and managed for a [|profit]. New enterprises may freely gain [|market entry] without State restriction. [|Employment] and [|wages] are determined by a [|labour market] that will result in some [|unemployment]. [|Government] and [|Judicial] [|intervention] are employed at times to change the economic incentives for people for various reasons. The capitalist economy will likely follow a [|business cycle] of [|economic growth] along with a steady cycle of [|small booms and busts]. There are several implementations of capitalism that are loosely based around how much government involvement there is. The main ones that exist today are [|mixed economies], where the state intervenes in market activity and provides some services, [|Laissez faire], where the state only supplies a court, a military, and a police, and [|anarcho-capitalism] where the state does not exist and thus cannot interfere.

Socialism
[|Socialism] refers to the various theories of economic organization which advocate either public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources.

Communism
As [|Friedrich Engels] described it (in [|Anti-Dühring]), [|communism] is the evolution of socialism so that the central role of the State has 'withered away' and is no longer necessary for the functioning of a [|planned economy]. All property and capital are collectively owned and managed in a communal, [|classless] and [|egalitarian] society. [|Currency] is no longer needed, and all economic activity, enterprise, labour, production and consumption is freely exchanged "[|from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs]". It must be noted that communism is also a political system as much an economic one - with various models in how it is implemented - the well known being the [|Marxist Leninist] model, which argues for the use of a vanguard party to bring about a workers state to be used as a transitional tool to bring about stateless communism, the economic arrangement described above. Other models to bring about communism include [|democratic socialism], which argues for slow social transformation and evolution, or [|anarcho-communism], which argues similarly to Marxist schools for a revolutionary transformation to the above economic arrangement, but does not use a transitional period or vanguard party.