Capitalism is a highly dynamic system which brought immense material wealth to the human society. This essay traces the historical dynamism of capitalism from its minority status to its majority status in term of demand and supply of investment capital.
The emergence of capitalism as a mode of production out of pre-capitalist mode of production was fully formed by the mid-nineteenth century (Hobsbawn, Age of Capital: 1848-1875) this in no way implies that it was quantitatively dominant mode of production. Even in its place of origin, the Great Britain, capitalism was still very much a minority affair, and this was much more so in the less-developed capitalisms of the other European nations.
How does the capitalism interacted with its pre-capitalist environment in the course of developing from its minority status in the nineteenth century to its overwhelmingly majority status in the second half of the twentieth century? Here there are two conceptually distinguishable processes at work which in practice merge into one (Beaud, A History of Capitalism: 1500-2000). one, the capitalist system has strong tendency to expand internally as the individual capital compete with each other to lower costs and take over larger shares of markets already incorporated into the circuits of capital. This of course requires additional capital investment which is typically financed out of profits plus whatever pre-capitalist receivers of rent and interest choose to channel into these new ways of