On May 5th, 1818, Karl Marx, hero of the international proletatiat, was born. His revolution of Socialist theory reverberates throughout the world carries on to this day, in increasing magnitude. Every passing day, he is vindicated. His analysis of Capitalism, development of the theory of Scientific Socialism, and advancements on dialectics to become Dialectical Materialism, have all played a key role in the past century, and have remained ever-more relevant throughout.
He didn’t always rock his famous beard, when he was younger he was clean shaven!
Some significant works:
Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Manifesto of the Communist Party (along with Engels)
And, of course, Capital Vol I-III
Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don’t know where to start? Check out my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory reading list!
Sure. But that was largely due to the constraints on the rate of growth prior to the industrial revolution. Capitalism was still functionally exigent, it was just operating under a rate of growth capped by the surplus human and animal labor could produce.
The advent of transatlantic travel (wind power) and the waterwheel and eventually steam power and modern fertilizers was what caused human productivity to spike. Suddenly, you could see returns on investment at double or even triple digits within decades. Prior eras saw single digit growth in even the wealthiest countries on Earth. Wealth was accumulated at a glacial pace.
Piketty’s “Capitalism in the 21st Century” covers this in depth.
Rome was a power center for over a millennia in large part because of the enormous consolidation of investment capital within the city limits. The Republic-cum-Empire took in revenues, built capital, expanded its economy, and then consumed the expanded economic output as revenue. But that took centuries to accumulate. None of Rome’s neighbors ever had the surplus necessary to invest or the time to expand like the Romans did. London managed a similar scale of development in decades. And then it burned down. And then it was rebuilt a few decades later.
You can argue that the desire to rapidly accumulate wealth is a facet of human nature. You can also argue that the rate of accumulation only became notable in the last 400 years, such that “capitalism” as a productive force wasn’t relevant until recently. But you can’t argue that cumulative gains were somehow unknown to anyone prior to the Dutch East India company.
That wasn’t really my argument though. As you yourself said, a bunch of quantitative changes from proto-capitalist formations resulted in a qualitative shift.
The mechanism of capitalism - deriving revenue from capital to further develop and accumulate capital and thereby expand streams of revenue - were always here. The rates were lower, limiting the accessibility and the appeal to individuals who were already cash flush and very forward looking. But capitalism, as a productive force, has always been with us.
I disagree. Back in earlier forms of agricultural accumulation, technology hadn’t developed the same system of rapid expansionism as Capitalism and the creation of large industry has brought. The M-C-M’ circuit wasn’t always here. Class society has existed, but not the same mechanisms of Capitalism as an encompassing system.
Periodically, some community would find an opportunity for capital improvements that afforded a rapid growth cycle. Capital projects like the Roman Aquaducts and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, for instance, dramatically increased the surplus yielded by labor. The number of people who could live within a community rose and economic output rose with it. But it was still dwarfed by industrialization and geographic constraints limited the rate of expansion (you can’t build aquaducts and hanging gardens everywhere and expect to yield equivalent surplus). So you hit that classic Marxist diminishing return on profit and the rate of economic expansion fell back down into the low-single digits.
The circuit did exist though. The fundamental economic benefit of cyclical growth had a soft ceiling that primitive societies hit.
Now we’re in an industrial era that doesn’t feel like it has a ceiling. But it does. There really are ecological and resource limits, even to a post-industrial world. One day, we’re also going to hit that ceiling (assuming we haven’t already). I don’t think it would be fair to say - a few centuries after peak production / climate apocalypse sends us into a perpetual global depression - that Real Capitalism Has Never Been Tried.
Neither would I benchmark “When capitalism starts” the day after we construct a Dyson Sphere and master superluminal travel, because we’re kicking off a bigger wave of economic expansion than we enjoyed while earthbound.
What I might argue the ancient world lacked more than the M-C-M’ circuit was the degree of fictitious capital (which requires a big surplus-laden economically literate middle class). But that’s not capitalism et al, just a facet of modern speculative investment.
The technical constraints were also constraints on the Mode of Production. The Roman Aqueducts were largely slave driven like the rest of Roman society, not through commodity production and the M-C-M’ circuit affording it. Rome also extracted vast rents from the colonies.
Elements of the old exist in the new, and elements of the new existed in the old, yes. However, Capitalism as an encompassing system is only a few hundred years old.
The aqueducts were gravity driven. That was cumulative value add. They were an early form of automation.
Meanwhile, the cotton gin was slave driven. It still set off a rapid economic expansion in the southern US which mapped neatly to Marxist presumption of capital accumulation.
Industrialization as a global economic enterprise kicked off a few hundred years ago. The human propensity to accumulate wealth and the methods of compounding returns have always been with us.
The creation of the aqueducts. I am aware of how they functioned technically.
Again, though, I think you’re either conflating Capitalism with accumulation in general, or trying to make the argument that I don’t think accumulation existed prior to Capitalism. I’m not really sure where we disagree, to be honest, I’m not sure what point you’re making.