What are the defining features of Capitalism?
In this article, sociologist Erik Olin Wright provides a definition of 
capitalism (from a socialist tradition):


  Many people equate capitalism with the idea of a market economy. Capitalism is not simply an economy in which markets play a central role in 
  coordinating economic activity; it is a specific kind of  market  economy,  one  in  which  workers  do  not own and control the firms in which they work, capital  is  privately  owned  and  allocated  to  alternative purposes  on  the  basis  of  private  economic  returns  (or, equivalently, on the basis of private profit-making),  and  labor  is  allocated  to  economic  activities through labor markets.