ABSTRACT
Capitalism as a market economy in which goods and services are produced for sale by a plurality of individuals and groups owning their own means of production and employing the labor of others is at the very least a highly probable form of economy where there is a sizeable surplus of the means of subsistence, some concentration of the population in towns and cities, and the absence of centralized political power capable of penetrating and profoundly influencing economy and society. If capitalism, short of some enormous historical disaster such as a nuclear war, is eternal in the sense that nothing is likely to replace it, this in no way implies the “end of history” or the survival forever of the major social problems and the grosser inequities it generates. All it precludes is the transition to some unimaginably different society in which economic life will be controlled by the collective consensus of the entire population.
