The origin of capitalism

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1. komali2May 2026
   Capitalist ownership is enshrined in law which is defined in rule (written clearly down), and is enforced via the State's monopoly on violence. All distribution of private property is outlined in contract. This includes the means of production.

   When land is owned in common, the "private" ownership of a cow is less clear - after all, the cow doesn't eat without the land. The resource is thus available to be used for dowry by the individual during times of plenty, but during times of hardship, hey your cow was eating the grass of our land, we all need it, let's eat! Capitalism doesn't have this kind of fluidity. Hardship or no, private property is enforced through law, not vibes.

   But regardless, focus less on the cows ("bro imagine you have two cows" is a bit of a meme outside the Chicago school of economics cult) and more on the land, which is the actual means of production here. That's the bit that's been owned in common basically universally for, as far as we can tell, the last two hundred thousand years. There's not been evidence otherwise and for eras we actually do have history for, it's absolutely the case that societies were organized along primitive communism. It's continued today in e.g. some indigenous Taiwanese tribes, possibly elsewhere as well.

   Redefining a village as a corporation to fit your theory that capitalism is forever is another example of capitalist hypernormalization. It's simply not the case. Capitalism genuinely is a very new human invention, not a natural socioeconomic force emergent from human relations.

   But, it sounds like you are really interested in this subject. If you want to read a much more cited and intelligent opposition to what you're proposing, I recommend Ellen Meiksins Wood "The Origin of Capitalism," historical analysis of capitalism emerging around specific property relations. Or Karl Polanyi "The Great Transformation" which discusses how though ancient markets existed, these are distinct from capitalist markets since they were more organized along kinship, religious, or redistributive lines.

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2. cassepipeSep 2020
   "Thus, craft guilds provided the goods and merchants fed the need: the beginning of real capitalism." Good piece but please allow me to nitpick : Not blaming the author because it is a very common and well established narrative that capitalism arose from the development of a merchant class but Ellen Meiksins Wood makes a pretty good case for an agrarian origin to capitalism in The Origin of Capitalism. She argues that the roots are instead a combination land rental and the reliance on waged labour IIRC. If the subject is of interest to you I recommend you check it out.
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3. fao_Jul 2018
   The Origin of Capitalism -- Ellen Meiksins Wood

   . Basically, a brief but compelling argument that claims that not only is capitalism not inevitable, but just like every system before it it was held in place initially only by force and power, rather than being a natural development of the human species.

   Why I've Stopped Talking (To White People) About Race

   . A ridiculously easy book to read given the topic, the author has a gift for writing that makes effortless reading. The first section contains a rough history of the civil rights movement in British politics, beginning at world war two and the forgotten legions of foreign soldiers that fought for us. It is shocking, and the catalogued stories of brutality by the state is utterly horrifying, but it is important to read about. It is something that is almost always instinctively and repeatedly brushed under the carpet due to the sheer uncomfortableness of it all. And we cannot afford this any longer.

   Carceral Capitalism

   . A number of essays on modern capitalism. One of them is how the incarceration system in America is used as an abhorrent form of profit for the muncipalities, another is about the effects of profiling and just how statistically incorrect it is. There are others I haven't got to yet. It's incredibly lucid, and extremely well sourced, but difficult to read because of just how horrible it all is (It quotes from a law journal the example of one man who, having stolen a single can of beer, as a condition of his bail gets fitted with an ankle monitor he has to pay for (Despite house arrest not being part of his bail), the ankle monitor has a monthly charge and a late fee, that ends up driving him into poverty and causing him to donate blood to assuage his debts. Except after a certain point he can't donate blood because he cannot afford to eat enough, to produce enough blood to sell. So (iirc) he ends up in prison for debt instead).

   The Silk Roads

   . Sick and tired of a european-centric view of history that brushes the rest of the world under the carpet? Well, no longer do you have to endure that. With wonderfully (and indeed, sometimes painfully) dense writing, Peter Frankopan takes you on a whislestop tour of the Persians, the Greeks, the Chinese, etc. All of it revolving around one of the most important single trade routes in all of human history.

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4. socialismisokNov 2022
   I'll check it out. Learning from failures, as long as they are written constructively, is always useful.

   Have you read about Kibbutzim in your studies? I'm obviously not a fan of ethnonationalism, but they seem to be a collectivist arrangement akin to your brief on farmers in America.

   As for books to recommend, I'm just finishing The Origin of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood, but that's more of a historical analysis of the differences between French and English agrarian land ownership and how that led to capitalism in England but not France (not immediately, anyway).

   Peter Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread is next in my queue. It's quite critical of ML politics and suggests instead socialism is only achieved via bottom up worker organizing. It's highly recommended by a bunch of folks.

   Also, I've found David Harveys lectures a very approachable intro to Marx's Capital https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n5vu4MpYgUo&feature=emb_title

   And yeah, holy shit so many socialists get way to caught up in feeling superior and it sucks. Also, so many people see the word socialist and start hitting insults. Always nice to have a conversation with someone who disagrees but does so in an interested way.

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