ABSTRACT
Capitalism is present wherever the industrial provision for the needs of a human group is carried out by the method of enterprise, irrespective of what need is involved. While capitalism of various forms is met with in all periods of history, the provision of the everyday wants by capitalistic methods is characteristic of the occident alone and has been the inevitable method only since the middle of the 19th century. The most general presupposition for the existence of the present-day capitalism is that of rational capital accounting as the norm for all large industrial undertakings which are concerned with provision for everyday wants. Such accounting involves the appropriation of all physical means of production—land, apparatus, machinery, tools, etc. as disposable property of autonomous private industrial enterprises. The capitalistic form of industrial organization, if it is to operate rationally, must be able to depend upon calculable adjudication and administration.
