Did capitalism exist from the beginning of human civilization? I don't think so

Did capitalism exist from the beginning of human civilization? I don't think so.

Other urls found in this thread:

libcom.org/files/Sahlins - Stone Age Economics.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Religion_of_China:_Confucianism_and_Taoism#Social_structure_and_the_capitalist_economy
christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-14/luther-on-use-of-money.html
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

No. It developed naturally out of human need.
>I want X
>if you give me Y, I'll give you X

That's just trade, you dumbass.

>he wants to trade some thing which is out of ownership
I would suggest to put you in a gulag.

No.
Capital did exist , but not capitalism.

>it's a capitalist doesn't know anything about anthropology episode
>it's a capitalist thinks trade equals capitalism episode
>it's a capitalist generalizes the present episode

>This retarded picture
The clergy was the opposite of a capitalistic class. Same with the aristocracy to an extent. Seems like one of those "All Stateism is the same" nonsense.

if by "capitalism" we mean that trade is controlled by private entities seeking profit, then yes, absolutely.

We don't and it didn't.

so what do you mean then? Because what I said was pretty much definition of capitalism

>it's an user has absolutely no arguments episode

Capitalism implies wage labor, commodity production, extended markets, etc. And primitive societies absolutely did not produce for trade, nor traded for profit.

>And primitive societies absolutely did not produce for trade, nor traded for profit.
got any sources on that?

For most of European civilization, the economics were heavily regulated by guilds, protectionism, trade, mercantilism, specialized labor who handed down from father to son ect. That's not capitalism in the "adam smith" sense.

we weren't talking about adam smith capitalism

>And primitive societies absolutely did not produce for trade
the first time anyone produced anything that wasn't food in a decent quantity it was for trade. Hell, the first time anyone produced more food than he needed it was for trade

>nor traded for profit
since the concept of exchanging objects emerged, people would seek to get the best value for their trade possible

>we weren't talking about adam smith capitalism
So why talk of it as all? As far as i'm concerned unless it's" wealth of nations" type capitalism it really isn't meaningfully capitalistic. Just vague commonalities like "people owned things privately" or "people accumulated resources" which are inherent in a lot of systems. Not just capitalism.

>As far as i'm concerned
guess you're not concerned then

Capitalism is a modern therm to describe modern market based economy and the society resulting from this.

If you ask about human economical behavior in general, studies with adults, children and cross studies with other primate species showed a basic set of behavior that seems to be normal or basic for primates. This behavior didn't really change over time, but then, it is only the firmware, it is for managing the behavior of individuals in a small group. Therefore this does not explain our todays economy or society, which is more of a hive mind product.

libcom.org/files/Sahlins - Stone Age Economics.pdf

>stone age economics
>OP talks about civilization

jesus christ

But that is incorrect. See

I assumed that OP just meant human history. If you were saying that trade for profit existed in actual civilizations, I'm sorry for the confusion, although at least one person implied something else ().

there's nothing in this particular image that contradicts anything that I wrote

well, apart from vague

"statement"
-surname
stuff

On this, studies in behavioral economics showed that humans do neither behave according to classic economic theories, nor do they behave like marxist theory predicts.
On the one hand they are altruistic and show irrational risk profiles in profit making, on the other hand they are mostly only solidarity with known social contacts and personal property is a holly cow to them.

Capitalism exists from the beginning of existence which itself is based on free market exchanges of particles according to current science.

>I assumed that OP just meant human history.
why would you assume something that contradicts the text in the OP?

That's not an argument. How about address the important part of my reply?

no it isn't

in early civilizations, if you sit around all day and make clay pots someone else has to produce food for you. Unless every such man had OCD and just couldn't stop making pots, and was fed for free by every such society, we must assume that the pots were traded for food.

as to the second part, unless you think a man from early civilization was happy to trade his best chicken for someone's worst copper rings or whatever, then we have to assume everyone wanted to get the best bang for their buck, i.e. profit

Because "human civilization" is ambiguous and is sometimes used to refer to the start of human history. For example, if I google human civilization I get things like the wiki article of "History of the world", an article named "Start date for human civilization moved back 20,000 years or so" discussing when humans started making tools, an article about "How Farming Almost Destroyed Ancient Human Civilization", etc. I don't know what OP meant, maybe he could tell us.

your reply isn't relevant to the thread and therefore has no important parts

No for a long long time weath = labour

>we must assume that the pots were traded for food
We must not assume anything because there is research on the subject. And the research completely contradicts what you say.
In fact, the exact example you give is refuted:
>"Barter is originally completely unknown. Far from being possessed with a craving for barter primitive man has an aversion to it" (Buecher, Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, 190^, p. 109). "It is impossible, for example, to express the value of a bonito-hook in terms of a quantity of food, since no such exchange is ever made and would be regarded by the Tikopia as fantastic. . . . Each kind of object is appropriate to a particular kind of social situation" (Firth, op. cit., p. 340).

>as to the second part, unless you think a man from early civilization was happy to trade his best chicken for someone's worst copper rings or whatever, then we have to assume everyone wanted to get the best bang for their buck, i.e. profit
You are an idiot that thinks all of human history works like the tiny bit of history you are part of does.

so what you're saying is, people who produced non-food items didn't eat. That's pretty much the only conclusion here. You have so far failed to explain how people like that would obtain food

Capitalism as an historical phenomenom, the private ownership of the means of production, arose in England from the 16th century, after the dissolution of the monasteries, followed by the enclosures, led to the end of common land and the private ownership of land by the landed gentry, which instituted wage labour and capitalist modes of production in agriculture, greatly expanding productivity in agriculture and causing the industrial revolution.

that quote is completely worthless since it isn't accompanied by any evidence. It's just some guy saying shit

No, people produced for their community (including food), and the communities exchanged with other communities, but the exchanges took the form of gifts not profit seeking deals.

still haven't said how a craftsman would obtain food

>your reply isn't relevant to the thread and therefore has no important parts
How is it not relevant? I made a critique of "capitalism" in this case being a meaningless term assuming that because many of it's features are shared with other systems somehow it existed before Adam smith and I got no meaningful rebuttal.

I've heard arguments capitalism existed in Renaissance Italy and the Dutch republic in an early form but if you want to say capitalism existed before the 1300s you're going to have to prove it was really capitalism and not something that happens to have some similar features.

the private ownership of the means of production arose when someone roughly around 15,000 BCE picked up a hoe

Someone in his community produced food for the community. Are you retarded?

Capitalism existed in "bubbles" within feudal polities.

what would the craftsman do with all his wares?

>anthropologists are just saying shit after studying primitive societies! Projecting my own society to the entire human history is the real deal!
Ok user.

still no evidence

"you're wrong"
>Benjamin Disraeli
well I'm glad we settled that

>people made shit "for the community"
>they took shit in return "from the community"
>but it wasn't trading

I mean I've seen some morons on Veeky Forums but damn

And they disappeared when that guy had to share it with his kin and clan, and numerous unwritten laws and customs were developed to regulate the common ownership by the family, the tribe or the guild.

all of that exists today, so are you saying we have no private property now?

I linked a book. Why don't you take a peek? You can control f words if you are too dumb to read it.

I don't know what evidence you want. Anthropologists went and studied primitive societies and wrote what they studied. If you prefer to believe what you live is what every human lived through, go ahead.

It wasn't.

>It wasn't.
how so?

>I linked a book.
you're grossly unfamiliar with the concept of sharing scientific sources. You're supposed to at least point out the couple of pages where the relevant evidence is presented. So far you've provided a 300 page pdf file and an image filled with baseless statements

I don't know about 'capitalism' but markets and commerce sure.

>However, trade especially was for a long time not continuous like our own, but consisted essentially in a series of individual undertakings. Only gradually did the activities of even the large merchants acquire an inner cohesion (with branch organizations, etc.).
-The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

>The Confucianism goal was "a cultured status position", while Puritanism's goal was to create individuals who are "tools of God". The intensity of belief and enthusiasm for action were rare in Confucianism, but common in Protestantism. Actively working for wealth was unbecoming a proper Confucian.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Religion_of_China:_Confucianism_and_Taoism#Social_structure_and_the_capitalist_economy

I mean, we are arguing semantics, but literally no one considers that trade. You go out, hunt, come back and eat it with the tribe, there's no exchange involved. Yes, maybe women were doing some other work while men were out hunting but calling some extremely basic division of labor "trade" is kind of ridiculous.

The baseless image has the sources in parentheses, the pdf has 22 pages of bibliography.

To be honest, I think no, we don't. The appearance of regulations and other restricting policies at the start of the 20th century ended capitalism as an historical phenomenom, now we have something else.

Maybe blockchain and cryptocurrencies will bring capitalism back, though.

1. OP was talking about "early civilization", discounting your example
2. I was talking about craftsmen to illustrate the point
3. The example you were replying to also gives examples based on early craftsmen since they are one of the markers for civilized life

where in those first three statements do you see hunter gatherer society mentioned?

No. Neither did computers, I guess we should stop using those, huh? Also medicine, cooked food, clothing, domesticated plants and animals, housing....

so you have absolutely no evidence to present? Because listing the Library of Congress's collection isn't providing a source

See

well we must establish new ground then

My argument is that since civilized life emerged, there has been trade, even if we mean centralized redistribution since it still features the exchange of goods (hard to talk about profit before money but certainly it can only be logical that a blacksmith would gladly exchange one blade for 500 jars of olive oil therefore people would seek to gain more than they gave i.e. "profit")

I can't speak to hunter gatherer society and, without any form of written records whatsoever, it can only be spoken about vaguely

I have nothing against your post if it refers to civilizations.
Hunter gatherer societies are not extinct though.

Absolutely not.

You can't have a free market in a culture where it is still acceptable for tribes to violently raid each other. And any true market you might concoct would begin degenerating the moment you introduced slavery or other formed of coercive labor arrangements. Above all, capitalism requires a centralized legal apparatus which prevents people from using force in their dealings with others, instead giving them a platform to act as an impartial arbitrator to resolve their disputes peacefully. Take this away and you have rule by mafia dons, warlords, and blood politics, not capitalism. The whole premise of Capitalism is the free, voluntary exchange of labor, and that requires a sufficiently sophisticated state with law enforcement to prevent people from adopting older, crueler, more short-term oriented solutions to wealth accumulation, like simply murdering your neighbor and taking his stuff.

It also requires a certain level of technological sophistication before it becomes feasible, it requires that the average person has a certain level of mobility and communication (so they know where the work is and have the ability to go there), otherwise they remain subsistence farming communities who mostly trade via barter and have little need to go very far or train for specialized labor, and in these more primitive arrangements land ownership is more important than wealth accumulation.

Private property aka ownership and control of scarce resources emerged naturally very early so yes.

Depends on your definition of capitalism. No polity ever expressly supported the modern conception of capitalism though many passed laws protecting certain people and their rights to property and legitimized themselves as upholding these and other laws. No merchant will come to your city if you confiscate whatever you feel like taking, they had some leverage. There were no widespread reliable institutions like banks but if you ingratiated yourself with a guild or brotherhood you could find similar services.

>definition of capitalism
Marxist pseudoscientific analysis is not a valid analysis.

so what is a valid analysis then

At least one which doesn't assume pseudoscience as its basis.

Also, the private property is the basis of capitalism which can be trivialized (hardly) from there. The term of private property is rejected by marxist "philosophers". Start from there.

Oh boy its another, lets try communism again because the 2852340967329048th times the charm episode

You have to understand that all economic systems are shit because of human nature. (inb4 implying implications)
And market capitalism with anti-monopoly laws, single-payer healthcare, free education and around ~35-40% tax/GDP ratio is the least shit one to date.

When you fix the underlying problems of central planning and communist """""economics""""" such as...:
>lack of motivation to excel and progress
>disfunctional supply-demand equilibrium
>resource waste
>people not being equal in any way, at all
>deadweight wealth loss due to government monopoly
>managing hundreds of thousands of collectives and compelling them to form a coherent effort without using force
>land managment
>pollution and climate change (I'm sure cletus the miner will disband his coal and heavy metals commune because pansy cityslickers came to bitch about muh warminz)
...then come back and bitch at market capitalism, commie nigger.

Stone age people often had stone tools made of stuff obsidian and flint in places where those aren't found which is evidence of trade. Capitalism is therefore older than even civilization

I'd say capitalism is a lot in human nature And a need aswell. We just don't do anything without it being beneficial to us. (Apart from some rare exeptions)

No. Feudalism specifically outlawed usury which is the cornerstone of capitalism.

Its why Muslim countries are such big shitholes is they don't give business loans.

Euros didn't around to it until the 1600's after the protties got around to cherry picking the bible so they could give loans at interest like the Jews.

But to be fair, Luther did go on angry sermons bitching about money lenders and merchants saying they would all go to hell.

Sadly, true Christians no longer exist except for the Orthodox who are finally getting around to making Christian friendly banking.

Most so called western Christians no longer practice Christianity and make lots of money with bank interest, the stock market, and their 401Ks.

Luther would have you all beat in public.

christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-14/luther-on-use-of-money.html

>This is what capitalists advocate actually believes capitalism to be