Consider the following comments on capitalism.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher that we expect our dinner, but from his regard to his own interest.
Adam Smith
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Karl Marx
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
John Maynard Keynes
A market is brilliant at setting prices and blind to what should never have one.
We trust the invisible hand right up until it reaches into our own pocket.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
Argue that capitalism is the most effective engine for creating wealth yet devised and a poor instrument for deciding how that wealth should be shared, so the real question is what we refuse to leave to the market. Open by granting its genuine achievement: self interest, harnessed through competition, has lifted more people out of poverty than any planned alternative. Then complicate it by noting that the same mechanism prices things it should not, from healthcare to clean air, and rewards extraction as readily as creation. A useful third move distinguishes markets, which are tools, from the ideology that markets are always just, which is a moral claim smuggled inside an economic one. Caution: avoid treating capitalism as a single villain or saviour, since the meaningful debates are about where its boundaries should fall, not whether it should exist.