Capitalism arises from the feudal mode of production under very specific circumstances, at least according to Helen Meiksins Wood; it doesn’t really seem to appear until the bubonic plague kills half the people in England. The other societies you’ve mentioned here tended to have centralized governments with monopolies on commodity production and severe limits on profit. The goal was the social reproduction of the state rather than capital accumulation.
Places like China, Korea, and even the Netherlands basically set things up so that you could only get rich by working for the government. You exploited the peasantry via taxation, as opposed to the economic exploitation of capitalism, which is undertaken via rents and wage labor and depends upon the market taking over all aspects of society and rewarding those who can increase the productive forces (with better farming tools for instance) while proletarianizing those who fail to do so.
The Netherlands used the slave mode of production I think (which itself relies on lots of commerce and big cities just like in ancient Rome and can even lead to banking and joint stock companies like in Florence), while China and Korea used pretty much the same thing, but with a slight modification involving the Confucian exams as well as lots of eunuchs who in theory couldn’t have children. It wasn’t officially a hereditary ruling class but usually only the richest families could pass the exams.
Late medieval England is in this very weird situation where they have a unified central government and fairly developed infrastructure but landlords are basically free to exploit peasants as much as they want. The central government doesn’t reign in landlords as much as in other places. I’m not really sure what gets things going exactly or how England even ended up in this situation with all the right ingredients, but I think the bubonic plague is the key. Once you have the right ingredients, capitalism happens. Without those ingredients, it can’t happen.
I think Wood maintains that market society is a better term for capitalism. You have some wage labor even in ancient Rome, but there are so many limits that it just never goes anywhere. Slavery was much more popular there. It’s a society with markets, but not a market society. In a market society, in contrast, you need to sell or exploit labor or you die.
Capitalism arises from the feudal mode of production under very specific circumstances, at least according to Helen Meiksins Wood; it doesn’t really seem to appear until the bubonic plague kills half the people in England. The other societies you’ve mentioned here tended to have centralized governments with monopolies on commodity production and severe limits on profit. The goal was the social reproduction of the state rather than capital accumulation.
Places like China, Korea, and even the Netherlands basically set things up so that you could only get rich by working for the government. You exploited the peasantry via taxation, as opposed to the economic exploitation of capitalism, which is undertaken via rents and wage labor and depends upon the market taking over all aspects of society and rewarding those who can increase the productive forces (with better farming tools for instance) while proletarianizing those who fail to do so.
The Netherlands used the slave mode of production I think (which itself relies on lots of commerce and big cities just like in ancient Rome and can even lead to banking and joint stock companies like in Florence), while China and Korea used pretty much the same thing, but with a slight modification involving the Confucian exams as well as lots of eunuchs who in theory couldn’t have children. It wasn’t officially a hereditary ruling class but usually only the richest families could pass the exams.
Late medieval England is in this very weird situation where they have a unified central government and fairly developed infrastructure but landlords are basically free to exploit peasants as much as they want. The central government doesn’t reign in landlords as much as in other places. I’m not really sure what gets things going exactly or how England even ended up in this situation with all the right ingredients, but I think the bubonic plague is the key. Once you have the right ingredients, capitalism happens. Without those ingredients, it can’t happen.
I think Wood maintains that market society is a better term for capitalism. You have some wage labor even in ancient Rome, but there are so many limits that it just never goes anywhere. Slavery was much more popular there. It’s a society with markets, but not a market society. In a market society, in contrast, you need to sell or exploit labor or you die.