ABSTRACT
Capitalism - the pre-eminent force which 'began to shape the society and impress its stamp on every page of social history only with the second half of the eighteenth century' - exercised a rationalising influence on every society it touched. Capitalism stimulated the development of new 'class types' which multiplied with astonishing speed. The industrial and financial bourgeoisie; the worker; the 'professional' and intellectual class; the 'rentier, the beneficiary of industrial loan capital'. America which had never known a ruling nobility, and Britain where the absolutist aims of the sovereign had been frustrated by Parliamentary supremacy, capitalism had mostly had its own way. The outcome of the campaign for imperialism in America had, according to Schumpeter, resulted in an even more resounding defeat. At the time of the Spanish-American War, the United States saw 'a particularly strong emergence of capitalist interests in an imperialist direction'.
