Throughout its history, the capitalist system has proven itself to be one of war. Starting with England and continuing with France, Spain, and others, and now with the largest capitalist state ever seen, the United States, capitalism has been the root of many global conflicts. Capitalist states have fought with each other as well as with native peoples over land, oil, lumber, etc. just so they could increase profits. There are numerous reasons for this, but they can all be boiled down to one basic point: the basis of capitalism is competition, and the definition of conflict is competitive or opposing action of incompatibles . So it can be said, by those definitions, that capitalism is built on conflict.
Conflict doesn't always have to be between states, and in fact the groundwork for the larger scale conflict is laid out by the mindset of selfishness that capitalism brings to the individual. That is, people who have grown up in a capitalist society are generally more concerned with their own personal interests than those of the community as a whole. People who own small businesses compete with each other for customers and resources that will increase profit without regard for others. They will lower prices to attract more customers and make up for it by lowering their employee's salaries or eliminating employee's jobs, all in the name of profit and without concern that now the man working stocking shelves won't be able to get his family Christmas presents. This attitude then carries over to the way other situations are viewed. So when a leader wants to start a war with another nation, the citizens may be either for or against it, but their reasons will be mostly selfish ones. As this attitude grows, it extends to governments and nations as a whole, as seen by the way nations pick and choose what global human rights issues it will care about, based on what will benefit them.
