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If capitalism is ‘natural,’ why was so much force used to build it?
(climateandcapitalism.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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Socialism
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What came before capitalism? And how was that built?
Before capitalism there was feudalism and more basic market economies organized around market towns. Before you get to that level of density (i.e. purely agrarian or hunter gatherer societies) we generally see gift economies, which has been the default economic system for the majority of human history.
My point is that much of recorded history is defined by violence, long before capitalism was invented. What happened before we have historical records is open to speculation. Assuming it was all roses, hugs and gift-giving is pretty naive, though.
No one is assuming that. Also capitalism =/= market mechanics There are ways where you can apply market mechanics to generate price signal but not let capitalism run rampant.
Unfortunately it's really hard to know for most of early history because people didn't write down or tell stories about that mundane stuff. We do have lots of documentation from colonizers in North America as they interacted, observed, and tried to convert the native peoples though.
I'd recommend looking to the great lakes region in the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest reaching down to northern California since the Europeans wrote a lot about them. Some people had slaves and owned property and some did not, and some built their society around a system of social capital, where collectively being good to each other was a way to pay each other back for wrongdoing.
It's honestly absurd how many different ways people lived before us, and presumably, will after us.