ABSTRACT
When compared to what preceded it, capitalism has succeeded in producing rapid economic growth and has eliminated mass poverty, at least in the advanced industrialized capitalist countries like the United States. In this sense, radicals see capitalism as an economic system with many progressive qualities that has provided the material foundations for much of human progress over the last two centuries. Although capitalism can take much of the credit for this progress, in the radical perspective it must also share the blame for the very uneven spread of this progress and the mass poverty that persists in Third World countries like Brazil, India, and Nigeria.
