It is called mercantilism to a set of political ideas or economic ideas of great pragmatism that were developed during the sixteenth, seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century in Europe. It was characterized by a strong state intervention in the economy, coinciding with the development of monarchical absolutism, according to this ideology the intervention of the government should also occur in the market. On the contrary Capitalism is an economic and social system based on the fact that the means of production must be privately owned, the market serves as a mechanism to allocate scarce resources efficiently and capital serves as a source to generate wealth, this ideology speaks of government non-intervention in the markets.
