Capitalism: A Second Look

After read a little more about capitalism, it seems like a fitting time to revisit and look at it again. After reading about capitalism and the impact that it had on European history, I think I have a little bit more of an understanding as to exactly what it is. To me, capitalism seems to be a way of manipulating the economy so that the most possible profits are extracted, while maintaining relatively cheap operations and cost of movement and productions. Furthermore, it seems that capitalism and this notion that the individual can manipulate the economy and those that rely on it to make a profit is what runs our modern politics, and a similar way to what happened in Europe. Here, as in (what I gathered from the reading) Europe, capitalism is favored by the government (or at least one half of it) and so legislations that makes that capitalism easier are passed more often than they maybe should. That being said, it is also very apparent that capitalism is a parasitic structure that feeds on the lower class. The serfs in eastern Europe being the lower class, along with the peasants in eastern Europe's "Putting-out system", were the backbone and the main reason that these operations yielded a profit. Without the lower class, which can be employed for little money and easily manipulated, capitalism would never have been nearly as successful. In our society today, we still depend on a lower class to make the world as we know it work. Whether these low paid workers are here or abroad, the general reaction of society is to treat them however they need to be treated to keep prices down. Without people who are willing to do the jobs that are too "easy" or "dirty" for others (even the lower class in the U.S lives and easier life than people in other countries around the globe, look at the Foxconn fiasco), society would stand still, trash would build up, we wouldn't have food, and our global economy would grind to a halt when we ran out of oil. So, from the reading I have learned that capitalism is the tool that runs our economy, and that are politics are a bad habit started by Europeans years ago.