I don’t see capitalism as that distinct from classism. Points 2 and 3 are the weakest. Private property and econmic marketplaces absolutely existed before capital-c Capitalism. I’d say the biggest point 1, isn’t so much directly related to capitalism as to the state, which is tasked with keeping workers alive so corporations can benefit from their labor (walmart food stamp employees).
I don’t see capitalism as that distinct from classism
It’s a form of classism, so it’s not distinct, but it is distinct from feudalism and slave society.
Private property and econmic marketplaces absolutely existed before capital-c Capitalism
Sort of. This is where the technical distinctions start to matter. There’s a reason why John Locke wrote about private property as the foundation of liberalism. Prior to Liberal philosophy, private property wasn’t even conceived of in the same way. Land was allocated to aristocrats/nobles by the royal sovereign. It could not be bought and sold. Sure you could bribe the sovereign, or you could offer a huge sum to get a title that came with land, but that’s not the same as private property and a real estate market. Peasants were able to buy leaseholds from their lords, usually lands that were considered “wastes”, but the royal sovereign owned that land and the Lord still controlled it. A peasant who purchased a stretch of wastes could not sell that land to another lord.
There’s also a reason that mercantilism developed as a distinct historical phase between feudalism and capitalism. Yes, marketplaces have always existed at all levels. But they were not integrated structurally, they were in fact structurally disparate.
Serfs had local marketplaces where they could exchange their work products with each other. Some of that was importa that low-level traveling merchants bought from larger merchants, but larger merchants were looking at serf markets as markets. Large merchants trade large volumes of commodities at national and international markets. But the serfs didn’t sell their individual work products to the merchants. Serfs worked the land and produced goods that were owned directly by the lord. The Lord then allocated those things as they saw fit, and then they took surplus goods and sold them to the large merchants to take to the international markets. This was a deep structural rift. Peasants could not sell directly to merchants.
Liberalism emerged in the merchant class for just this reason. No matter how rich a merchant got, their money couldn’t buy their way through the system of nobility, all of the laws of the land prohibited it. The eventually founds ways around it - saving a noble family by marrying their daughter in exchange for a huge sum, buying a charter from a king to build their own city (like chartering a boat), becoming the royal bank, etc - but it took a very long time for these exceptions to produce the conditions for mercantilism and liberalism to emerge as transitions to capitalism.
I’d say the biggest point 1, isn’t so much directly related to capitalism as to the state, which is tasked with keeping workers alive so corporations can benefit from their labor (walmart food stamp employees).
The welfare state is not how capitalism originated. Feudalism was a welfare state. The nobility was obliged to ensure for the care of their peasants and they came together when problems affected the lands of multiple nobles simultaneously. Under liberalism, this obligation was dismantled and replaced with limited government with the sole purpose of protecting rights. Peasants stopped being serfs with a patron and became laborers who lived or died by their ability to make a wage. There was no state obligation to keep workers alive. That’s why communism emerged as a response to liberalism and why welfare capitalism emerged as a response to communism. Liberals believed that total freedom from government tyranny was all that was needed to secure everything necessary for a good life, despite all the evidence that confronted them when they implemented their plans. After nearly every liberal revolution that overturned a monarchy, there was a long period of extreme hardship for the vast majority of the people including starvation, chaotic violence and crime, slums, mass deaths, and horrible wars.
Liberalism destroyed the social safety net that nobility had come to understand was necessary to prevent revolt. And then had to put down revolts violently, often using the military to put down mass revolts. This is why the labor movement is called what it is, not because of unions but because liberalism maintained the same class society of feudalism, with owners replacing entitled nobility and free peasants replacing bonded peasants. Labor refers to everyone who did the work in society and it was in contrast with the liberal merchants and landed professionals.
So you’re correct that class division is a constant, but the way the system functioned was different, and the three things I listed are the generally accepted group of characteristics that make capitalism different from feudalism and slave society despite all of them being class-based.
And it’s important to understand these distinctions in detail and how they work mechanically, not just as ideas, because when people think about “what if we had capitalism but it was different because X?” we have to not only evaluate it as how would it change capitalism but also how does it interact with other systems to produce effects based on our knowledge of historical systems like feudalism and slave society and how does it compare to proposed systems lik communism.
I don’t see capitalism as that distinct from classism. Points 2 and 3 are the weakest. Private property and econmic marketplaces absolutely existed before capital-c Capitalism. I’d say the biggest point 1, isn’t so much directly related to capitalism as to the state, which is tasked with keeping workers alive so corporations can benefit from their labor (walmart food stamp employees).
It’s a form of classism, so it’s not distinct, but it is distinct from feudalism and slave society.
Sort of. This is where the technical distinctions start to matter. There’s a reason why John Locke wrote about private property as the foundation of liberalism. Prior to Liberal philosophy, private property wasn’t even conceived of in the same way. Land was allocated to aristocrats/nobles by the royal sovereign. It could not be bought and sold. Sure you could bribe the sovereign, or you could offer a huge sum to get a title that came with land, but that’s not the same as private property and a real estate market. Peasants were able to buy leaseholds from their lords, usually lands that were considered “wastes”, but the royal sovereign owned that land and the Lord still controlled it. A peasant who purchased a stretch of wastes could not sell that land to another lord.
There’s also a reason that mercantilism developed as a distinct historical phase between feudalism and capitalism. Yes, marketplaces have always existed at all levels. But they were not integrated structurally, they were in fact structurally disparate.
Serfs had local marketplaces where they could exchange their work products with each other. Some of that was importa that low-level traveling merchants bought from larger merchants, but larger merchants were looking at serf markets as markets. Large merchants trade large volumes of commodities at national and international markets. But the serfs didn’t sell their individual work products to the merchants. Serfs worked the land and produced goods that were owned directly by the lord. The Lord then allocated those things as they saw fit, and then they took surplus goods and sold them to the large merchants to take to the international markets. This was a deep structural rift. Peasants could not sell directly to merchants.
Liberalism emerged in the merchant class for just this reason. No matter how rich a merchant got, their money couldn’t buy their way through the system of nobility, all of the laws of the land prohibited it. The eventually founds ways around it - saving a noble family by marrying their daughter in exchange for a huge sum, buying a charter from a king to build their own city (like chartering a boat), becoming the royal bank, etc - but it took a very long time for these exceptions to produce the conditions for mercantilism and liberalism to emerge as transitions to capitalism.
The welfare state is not how capitalism originated. Feudalism was a welfare state. The nobility was obliged to ensure for the care of their peasants and they came together when problems affected the lands of multiple nobles simultaneously. Under liberalism, this obligation was dismantled and replaced with limited government with the sole purpose of protecting rights. Peasants stopped being serfs with a patron and became laborers who lived or died by their ability to make a wage. There was no state obligation to keep workers alive. That’s why communism emerged as a response to liberalism and why welfare capitalism emerged as a response to communism. Liberals believed that total freedom from government tyranny was all that was needed to secure everything necessary for a good life, despite all the evidence that confronted them when they implemented their plans. After nearly every liberal revolution that overturned a monarchy, there was a long period of extreme hardship for the vast majority of the people including starvation, chaotic violence and crime, slums, mass deaths, and horrible wars.
Liberalism destroyed the social safety net that nobility had come to understand was necessary to prevent revolt. And then had to put down revolts violently, often using the military to put down mass revolts. This is why the labor movement is called what it is, not because of unions but because liberalism maintained the same class society of feudalism, with owners replacing entitled nobility and free peasants replacing bonded peasants. Labor refers to everyone who did the work in society and it was in contrast with the liberal merchants and landed professionals.
So you’re correct that class division is a constant, but the way the system functioned was different, and the three things I listed are the generally accepted group of characteristics that make capitalism different from feudalism and slave society despite all of them being class-based.
And it’s important to understand these distinctions in detail and how they work mechanically, not just as ideas, because when people think about “what if we had capitalism but it was different because X?” we have to not only evaluate it as how would it change capitalism but also how does it interact with other systems to produce effects based on our knowledge of historical systems like feudalism and slave society and how does it compare to proposed systems lik communism.