Definitions of “capitalism” are variable but I think it’s totally inaccurate to say that it’s only existed for a few hundred years. You look at ancient Roman/Greek society, they have privately owned businesses with shareholder type structures. One of the key influences on Western legal systems today (something hinted at by half our legal terms being in Latin). Something similar about the economic structure can be said about many historical empires, older than a few hundred years. Where does the line get drawn on what’s “capitalism” or “capitalism-like” vs. what’s not. The basic idea of monopolizing control over production etc. in order to privately benefit, is not particularly hard for people to arrive at. Heck, it goes hand in hand with “empire”, because when you have a structure based on elevating a huge number of people against a huge number of other people, it’s not a stretch to have the same structure occurring within the society, because you already have one type of inequality normalized.
Could you explain where you got your information on the historical conditions of capitalism? Is this just you interpreting what you’ve seen passively, or have you gone through the effort to find historians who have spent careers answering this question?
Seems like your comment only seeks to discredit and not address the issue. Waste of time to go down this path. My claim’s simply “something like this did in fact exist a lot longer ago than only a few hundred years back”, which is just a fact.
Yes, and it would be exhausting to entirely explain how flawed and ahistorical this is. For starters, you ignore social and property relations entirely when you imagine capitalism as “wealthy hoard money, empire make money.” Wealth disparity and imperialism are certainly elements in capitalism, but do you think all these scholars are just big dumdums who didn’t think of Rome?
I instead chose to encourage you to consider how you know what you know and that maybe you don’t actually know enough. You should consider now if that level of self-accountability is a waste of time.
My description wasn’t “wealthy hoard money, empire make money.” And I didn’t say anything about anyone else’s work. Honestly, I don’t know what ax you have to grind here, but I really don’t care. I assume you think you’re arguing against someone who’s trying to say it’s the “natural and best way” and all that, but you’re not, I’m literally just saying that these kinds of structures have occurred for millennia and seem to recur alongside broader imperial structures.
that’s very true. capitalism has changed throughout the centuries and the version that we have now is significantly different than how it existed in the past.
when i use the words like capitalism or liberalism i’m referring to their present day incarnations because that’s how the world uses them; but there’s definitely a disconnect between westerners and the rest of the world. the western world (americans in particular) use the centuries old definitions of both words that conflates capitalism and liberalism together; but the present day situation is very different and those old definitions are incapable of lending themselves to political analysis of the modern day world because of these old definitions.
in other words: liberalism was the leftist movement that could “liberate” the world from its monarchical hegemony and capitalism was its most dominant political theory. liberalism slowly became the world’s hegemony, but now it’s become neoliberalism and leftism now stands in opposition to neoliberal hegemony.
“thriving on mutual cooperation” speaks to time long before the ancient greeks or romans. recognizable modern humanity (ie toolmaking, painting, sculptures, religion, trade, etc.) has existed for roughly 70 thousand years and the existence of the greeks, romans, or even capitalism is roughly less than 6,000 years old. in other words capitalism has existed for roughly less than 8% of humanity’s history and even then, the version of capitalism practiced back then was very different than the version we practice now.
Definitions of “capitalism” are variable but I think it’s totally inaccurate to say that it’s only existed for a few hundred years. You look at ancient Roman/Greek society, they have privately owned businesses with shareholder type structures. One of the key influences on Western legal systems today (something hinted at by half our legal terms being in Latin). Something similar about the economic structure can be said about many historical empires, older than a few hundred years. Where does the line get drawn on what’s “capitalism” or “capitalism-like” vs. what’s not. The basic idea of monopolizing control over production etc. in order to privately benefit, is not particularly hard for people to arrive at. Heck, it goes hand in hand with “empire”, because when you have a structure based on elevating a huge number of people against a huge number of other people, it’s not a stretch to have the same structure occurring within the society, because you already have one type of inequality normalized.
Could you explain where you got your information on the historical conditions of capitalism? Is this just you interpreting what you’ve seen passively, or have you gone through the effort to find historians who have spent careers answering this question?
Seems like your comment only seeks to discredit and not address the issue. Waste of time to go down this path. My claim’s simply “something like this did in fact exist a lot longer ago than only a few hundred years back”, which is just a fact.
Yes, and it would be exhausting to entirely explain how flawed and ahistorical this is. For starters, you ignore social and property relations entirely when you imagine capitalism as “wealthy hoard money, empire make money.” Wealth disparity and imperialism are certainly elements in capitalism, but do you think all these scholars are just big dumdums who didn’t think of Rome?
I instead chose to encourage you to consider how you know what you know and that maybe you don’t actually know enough. You should consider now if that level of self-accountability is a waste of time.
My description wasn’t “wealthy hoard money, empire make money.” And I didn’t say anything about anyone else’s work. Honestly, I don’t know what ax you have to grind here, but I really don’t care. I assume you think you’re arguing against someone who’s trying to say it’s the “natural and best way” and all that, but you’re not, I’m literally just saying that these kinds of structures have occurred for millennia and seem to recur alongside broader imperial structures.
I think you’ve missed that the assuming is kinda your whole problem here.
that’s very true. capitalism has changed throughout the centuries and the version that we have now is significantly different than how it existed in the past.
when i use the words like capitalism or liberalism i’m referring to their present day incarnations because that’s how the world uses them; but there’s definitely a disconnect between westerners and the rest of the world. the western world (americans in particular) use the centuries old definitions of both words that conflates capitalism and liberalism together; but the present day situation is very different and those old definitions are incapable of lending themselves to political analysis of the modern day world because of these old definitions.
in other words: liberalism was the leftist movement that could “liberate” the world from its monarchical hegemony and capitalism was its most dominant political theory. liberalism slowly became the world’s hegemony, but now it’s become neoliberalism and leftism now stands in opposition to neoliberal hegemony.
“thriving on mutual cooperation” speaks to time long before the ancient greeks or romans. recognizable modern humanity (ie toolmaking, painting, sculptures, religion, trade, etc.) has existed for roughly 70 thousand years and the existence of the greeks, romans, or even capitalism is roughly less than 6,000 years old. in other words capitalism has existed for roughly less than 8% of humanity’s history and even then, the version of capitalism practiced back then was very different than the version we practice now.