Capitalism, like Christianity, is a pattern of human behavior endemic in Europe and the Americas and showing sufficient uniformities to justify its designation by a single word. In Christianity acceptance of the predominant importance of Jesus Christ – whether as historical figure or as savior and Son of God – forms in the broadest sense the defining characteristic. Capitalism is defined by the lodging of major economic decisions in private individuals or groups rather than in the State, and by the guidance to those decisions provided – whether to so-called owners or to a bureaucracy of managers – through a system of money and prices, by the goal of financial profit.

Capitalism in this sense, like almost all Western ideas, good and bad, came into the civilization of the Mediterranean and thence into that of northern Europe and North America from that peculiar Gestalt, that coincidence of geography and human skills, insight, and ambition that appeared in the Greek city-states after the Persian wars. Here a group of governments operating on a moderate scale – midway between family or tribe and empire, with property holders – landowners, slaveowners, and merchants – proved that, at least momentarily, it could hold its own against oriental despotism despite fierce rivalries among its member states.