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.
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.
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.