The winner, at least for now, of the battle of economic “isms”. Capitalism is a free-market system built on private ownership, in particular, the idea that owners of capital have property rights that entitle them to earn a profit as a reward for putting their capital at risk in some form of economic activity. Opinion (and practice) differs considerably among capitalist countries about what role the state should play in the economy. But everyone agrees that, at the very least, for capitalism to work the state must be strong enough to guarantee property rights. According to Karl Marx, capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, but so far this has proved a more accurate description of Marx’s progeny, communism.