Modern capitalism is essentially mass production for the needs of the masses. The buyers of the products are by and large the same people who as wage earners cooperate in their manufacturing.

Capitalism, says Marx, repeating the fables of the eulogists of the Middle Ages, has an inevitable tendency to impoverish the workers more and more. The truth is that capitalism has poured a horn of plenty upon the masses of the wage earners who frequently did all they could to sabotage the adoption of those innovations which render life more agreeable. It is not labor legislation and labor-union pressure that have shortened hours of work and withdrawn married women and children from the factories; it is capitalism.

The history of capitalism as it has operated in the last two hundred years in the realm of Western civilization is the record of a steady rise in the wage earners’ standard of living. The inherent mark of capitalism is that it is mass production for mass consumption directed by the most energetic and far-sighted individuals, unflaggingly aiming at improvement. Its driving force is the profit motive, the instrumentality of which forces the businessman constantly to provide the consumers with more, better and cheaper amenities. An excess of profits over losses can appear only in a progressing economy and only to the extent to which the masses’ standard of living improves. Thus capitalism is the system under which the keenest and most agile minds are driven to promote the welfare of the laggard many.