"In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders...

"In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves"

What did he mean by this?

Marx was clever enough to know the difference between class and rank/social status. Plebs, Slaves and Patricians were not classes in the way we use the proletariat/bourgeoisie division today.

Did rome had knights?

The Equites, broadly speaking, are knights.

There have been social castes since the beginning

History is one of class struggle, whether it is a multiplicity of classes or two.

Capitalism has existed since Sumerian times, there were concepts of private from the very beginning, free men in cities had to pay rent from the earliest days, free merchants were everywhere, the romans even traded grain futures, loans and usury and banking have been institutionalized and integrated into the very first proto civs, fight me.

It seems the idea of private property is natural to man.

>rent is capitalism
literally impeded capital formation

Nope

brilliant retort

>brainlets actually believe this

Retard. Capitalism developed from mercantalism which developed from coinage which developed from humanities desire to buy and sell. Capitalism is just the latest development of a long series of 'I want that and I'll give you this for it'.

Shit man, coin was always traded by face value and never by weight, worthless FIAT currency as a concept is extremely old as well.

>trade and barter is capitalism

That still doesn't make previous iterations as capitalism anymore than calling our biological ancestors as us

Capitalism has existed for a long while but its only emerged as the dominant mode of production in the last 400 years or so. Before that commodity production and wage labour were not the primary sphere of economic activity.

i dont think he said that.

>Capitalism is how we trade goods, not how we produce them
American education

What, you're telling me capitalism doesn't just mean trade?!

>Monopolization of definitions by Marxists
What else is new?

>History is one of class struggle

>thread about Marx's view of society
>WAAA WHY ARE YOU QUOTING MARX

This must be trolling, no one can be so dumb.

>assertion vs. quote