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What's capitalism to you?




People buying and selling things with minimal interference from protection rackets

Afaik markets predate joint-stock companies. The concept of "raising capital" is much newer than the concept of a market economy. Did capitalism exist under feudalism? How do modern capital markets differ from historical markets under various other economic systems?

> Did capitalism exist under feudalism?

I would say it's more of a matter of the level of interference of the fief on trade. When 100% of the economy is controlled by the monopoly on violence I would say that is complete communism, and when 0% of the economy is controlled by the monopoly on violence that is complete capitalism. This is a kind of asymmetric definition of communism/capitalism because "complete capitalism" is a pretty unstable configuration.

Joint-stock companies are not a prerequisite in my opinion; You can have an capitalist economy of merchants that run everything as sole proprietorships. Socialists will try to define capitalism around ownership of the means of production but I am not sure this is a useful definition.

Modern industry is more capital-intensive than labor intensive historical industries. So the sort of pro-labor communist movements that design systems that ignore the value of capital have pretty much gone extinct in the current era.

The "communist" party of china has adopted a number of capitalistic practices since deng xiaoping. At the same time, the "capitalist" american economy looks awfully communist under my definition as a significant chunk of the economy flows through the government, the military-industrial complex and such.


You're describing planned and unplanned economies, which aligns somewhat with capitalism and state communism but is not the defining feature of them.

The main difference is ownership of the means of production/companies by the workers or by a separate group that might not work at the company at all.


an economic system which rewards winners and tears itself apart in a winner-takes-all tragic finale without an impartial regulator/judge.

A system based on ownership



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