> It’s seems a rather peculiar definition of capitalism, if it emerged so late.
It's really not; historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers generally point to a few key features of capitalism, and can date it quite well. Federici draws from that argument.
But point is, that question is far from settled. Especially if you consider the key features being the free market and private property, then capitalism goes far into BCE.
The key feature of capitalism is the economy is defined by capital, i.e. money that makes money, preferably at scale. That didn't exist in any sustained, important way until the early modern period in Europe.
I was thinking of Roman moneylenders like Seneca as I wrote that. But they didn't lend money for "means of production" like steam engines etc. Everything was all slave power. But even if we allow Rome as capitalism (which I don't agree with, but fine) it still disappeared (again, at scale) for a millennium or two afterwards.
Well, I'd argue that slaves were the means of production.
But also things like olive oil presses. There's this example of an ancient Greek philosopher Thales essentially inventing the option derivative contract by buying the rights to use oil presses before the harvest for cheap, and charging a high price to use those presses once the harvest proved to be bountiful.[1]
The dip in banking during the Dark Ages in Europe is mostly the effect of Christianity banning usury. But globally the practices didn't stop.
I'm not sure, why it's important to show that capitalism a) equates to banking, and b) is some relatively late invention of the Western civilization. Because it's not in both cases.
> Well, I'd argue that slaves were the means of production.
This is not what "means of production" means in political economy.
>I'm not sure, why it's important to show that capitalism a) equates to banking, and b) is some relatively late invention of the Western civilization. Because it's not in both cases.
Capitalism does not equate to "banking", but it is, historically speaking, late in Western civilization.
I’m not sure what you mean exactly by “political economy”? In any case, what is excluded usually from definition of means of production is human capital. Slavery is decidedly not that. It is the ownership and dehumanization of people. There is no choice, no labour market. I don’t see a reason why it’s not a means of production other than “the textbook said so”.
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What do you mean? It is a late phenomenon in the Western civilization or it is equatable to banking lately in the West?
>I’m not sure what you mean exactly by “political economy”?
Political economy is the predecessor to economics, and is (in some places) still alive today as modern/radical political economy.
> It is the ownership and dehumanization of people. There is no choice, no labour market.
"Human capital" is excluded precisely because it is "living labour" as opposed to "dead labour" (machinery etc.) and can therefore be exploited to extract more value than what was paid. This is the same principle with both slavery and wage labour - living labour.
Besides this, twe're talking beside the point. Capitalism is no more of an abstract transhistorical concept than "the Reformation" or "the medieval period" or "the Rennaisance" are; even if ancient Roman slavery had most of the features of capitalism, it would not constitute capitalism in the sense of the period of human history where these features reach their heights. For example, Marx points out that there was production and trade in commodities in non-capitalist societies, but only in capitalist society does trade in commodities become generalized and pervasive.
> Political economy is the predecessor to economics, and is (in some places) still alive today as modern/radical political economy.
I know that. What I still don't know, is whether you've meant Adam-Smith-proto-economics or LTV-inspired ideology. Because those things aren't interchangeable.
Not to mention why two schools of thought which are on their own obsolete at this point matter here.
> "Human capital" is excluded precisely because it is "living labour" as opposed to "dead labour" (machinery etc.) and can therefore be exploited to extract more value than what was paid. This is the same principle with both slavery and wage labour - living labour.
What about live stock? What about seed stock? What about IP? What about machinery that was bought under market price?
The only reason I can see why this separation might be important is if we remember that labour and employment affects aggregate demand through wages. Obviously that doesn't apply to slave labour.
> Besides this, twe're talking beside the point...
Glad you agree.
But if we redefine "capitalism" as "historic period" now, we might as well define it as a form of music and compare to Frank Zappa songs...
I mean, if we take the features of society which were dominant the most to define the historic period, we might as well call ourselves primitive humans, since out of our ca. 2 billion years of history, that was the most dominant features of our society.
All of this partitioning is arbitrary and has nothing to do with economics. It is more about setting a political narrative. But that isn't tethered to reality and we might as well be using astrology.
>Not to mention why two schools of thought which are on their own obsolete at this point matter here.
They're alive enough for heterodox economists and philosophers of economics, and I think that's quite important, in the same way nobody would like Google Chrome to be the only browser.
>What about live stock? What about seed stock? What about IP? What about machinery that was bought under market price?
These are complications (especially with regard to IP), but in the long run, things like buying machinery under the market price tend to even out, and there is no change in the economy as a whole, in which the capitalist's gain is the same as the machine vendor's loss. It doesn't explain the creation of new value.
>But if we redefine "capitalism" as "historic period" now, we might as well define it as a form of music and compare to Frank Zappa songs...
My point is that it's not a redefinition, that's literally the way it's defined by mainstream economists and everyone concerned in its study. It is specifically historical, not merely a set of abstract principles. Marx thought the same about communism, for that matter.
It has everything to do with economics - not only are trends and terms in economics defined and set by those looking to set a particular political narrative (accidentally or not), but political narratives are important. It's no less of a political narrative to say that ancient Roman society was "capitalist" to pull the favorite trick of the old political economists and indeed many of the neoclassicals - to convince us that capitalism really is a kind of human nature. You don't need a Marxist to claim otherwise, since there's lots of research on ancient society and their modes of production.
I think that an abstract ahistorical definition of capitalism is even less tied to reality than the anthropologist's one.
Agricultural Capitalism is listed as starting in 1350 by Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism But, it’s hard to pin down a date because individual ownership of the means of production is arguably the default state.
Tool use age by various animal species is generally used by the individuals that locate and or create the tools. Similarly the defense of hunting territory by individuals or families is another means of production. Complex social structures and collective ownership are very much the exception.
