In my view, for a historical system to be considered a capitalist system,
the dominant or deciding characteristic must be the persistent search for
the endless accumulation of capital—the accumulation of capital in order to
accumulate more capital. And for this characteristic to prevail, there must
be mechanisms that penalize any actors who seek to operate on the basis
of other values or other objectives, such that these nonconforming actors
are sooner or later eliminated from the scene, or at least severely hampered
in their ability to accumulate significant amounts of capital. All the many institutions of the modern world-system operate to promote, or at least are
constrained by the pressure to promote, the endless accumulation of capital.