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Capitalism is a form of economic life in which owners of capital organize the production of commodities not because they need or want them but because they hope to produce more capital.
I guess when you reach that level of a historian, you gain the ability to read minds of all owners of capital throughout all history.
They have no wants, only hopes
Are you denying the existence of the invisible hand?
The profit motive is surely fundamental to capitalism.
I was just being facetious. But the more substantive criticism of the quote is that it doesn't acknowledge that the production of the commodities are because other people need and want them, and therefore are willing to trade their capital for it, and that the capitalist's goal isn't necessarily the accumulation of more capital for its own sake, but rather for the consumption that it brings to himself, his descendants, and other people (through the investment in productive capacity of more goods and services down the line.)
How do you explain non productive price speculation where no additional goods are produced?
The point is individual gain for the investor is ALWAYS the goal of capital allocations under a capitalist system.
It may enable greater consumption by the individual as a result but at that point the individual is not actively engaging in capitalism but rather consuming their profits and capital.
Indeedz. Magic vision from the ivory tower
you will be not-at-all-surprised that he's top of his field and at Harvard.
Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University.