ppiness. This is because capitalism was the economic
             system wherein individuals or "free agents" pursue their own interests.
             People who work and earn money in exchange for their labor benefit
             themselves and are able to fulfill their own needs. By trying to earn
             money for themselves, working people unwittingly contribute to the greater
             good of society, as if they were "as if guided by an invisible hand."
             (Smith, paragraph IV.2.4 - IV.2.6, IV.2.9).
             Smith viewed capitalism optimistically, as a system of natural laws
             that allow free agents to pursue their own interests. This gives rise to a
             system of cooperation, where free agents produce goods and contribute to
             the well-being of society as a whole and to individual happiness in
             Karl Marx's view of capitalism was not quite as rosy as Smith's. An
             analysis of capitalism and its effects was a central theme of all his
             writings, but it was in the three-volume opus Capital that he presented a
             systematic study of the inherent conflicts in capitalism and its great
             Laurence Harris, an economist with the University of London, writes
             that Marx viewed the development of capitalism as "a conflict between
             labor and capital." A capitalist economic system requires an economic gap
             between capitalists and the working class (Bottomore, p 66). For Marx,
             the private ownership of capital at the exclusion of others is a central
             feature of capitalism. The system is controlled by a few affluent
             citizens, at the expense of an underclass of workers, whose wages are kept
             ...