I’m not entirely sure about millennia, but capitalism has been around for at least as long as currency has. That too has changed names but the idea of whoever is born with the most gets to steal the most is older than all existing civilizations.
Eh, you’re both wrong. Fascism is an invention of the 20th century and capitalism is mostly an invention of the 19th century (although The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776). Both ideologies have very deep roots that you’re conflating with their dominant modern expressions. Capitalism is specific ideology built around market economics, but markets alone are not capitalism. Likewise fascism is a specific authoritarian ideology, but authoritarianism is not in itself fascism.
What you’re saying is at best debatable, and it’s definitely not consensus in academia. Feudalism is substantially and fundamentally different from capitalism. Serfs worked the land not based on free contracts for a wage selling their labour as a commodity, but rather legally bound to their lord’s land. Access to consumer goods wasn’t through purchase as commodities in a free market, but through self-production and barter/debt within small communities. Peasants worked the land with their own means of production and made their own tools with their own means of production, and generally people weren’t hired working other people’s means of production.
Class struggle has existed for millennia, but capitalism is just the current predominant system of class struggle because through industrial development it overpowers preexisting systems that weren’t capitalist.
I’m not entirely sure about millennia, but capitalism has been around for at least as long as currency has. That too has changed names but the idea of whoever is born with the most gets to steal the most is older than all existing civilizations.
Eh, you’re both wrong. Fascism is an invention of the 20th century and capitalism is mostly an invention of the 19th century (although The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776). Both ideologies have very deep roots that you’re conflating with their dominant modern expressions. Capitalism is specific ideology built around market economics, but markets alone are not capitalism. Likewise fascism is a specific authoritarian ideology, but authoritarianism is not in itself fascism.
capitalism superceded mercantilism about 2 centuries ago. it’s nowhere near as old as currency
What you’re saying is at best debatable, and it’s definitely not consensus in academia. Feudalism is substantially and fundamentally different from capitalism. Serfs worked the land not based on free contracts for a wage selling their labour as a commodity, but rather legally bound to their lord’s land. Access to consumer goods wasn’t through purchase as commodities in a free market, but through self-production and barter/debt within small communities. Peasants worked the land with their own means of production and made their own tools with their own means of production, and generally people weren’t hired working other people’s means of production.
Class struggle has existed for millennia, but capitalism is just the current predominant system of class struggle because through industrial development it overpowers preexisting systems that weren’t capitalist.