What made capitalism different from previous forms of manufacture and trade?
score:2
As I said above, Wikipedia provides a fairly thorough explanation. Briefly though capitalism focuses on the role of capital in production. Summarizing a complex concept into a simple sentence, traditional societies produce for use, while capitalist societies produce for sale.
Traditional societies engaged in industry and commerce, but they did so with an immediate end in mind. They made things to use them and bought and sold things to acquire things to use.
Capitalist societies engage in industry and commerce with the option to accumulate capital. Industry continues to produce for use, but also for sale, and the sale accumulates capital that can be subsequently invested.
Capitalism permits accumulation of liquid capital, pooling of capital and investment of capital. Return on investment allocates capital more efficiently than any other economic system.
Obviously wikpedia's answer is superior; I'm merely trying to boil it down to a few sentences.
Upvote:0
According to Marxism, both Feudalism and Slavery use non-economic means of coercion on workforce.
Upvote:0
Capitalism is both a result of the environment and a factor building it.
In other ages, to effectively produce goods there was needed a relatively small investment:
Were you a farmer? All you needed was a plot of land (owned or rented), seeds, a few tools were all you need. If you were affluent enough, you could improve that with some oxen to help you plow the land, but that meant you had to feed them too.
Were you an artisan? Similarly, you would own your own tools, which would have been expensive but not that much.
Some capitalism was seen in the Modern Era (after the Middle Ages), with the trade companies. In those, the cost of preparing a trade expedition was too much for most individuals, so they would share the costs between them.
But the main difference was the Industrial Revolution. Industrial machines were very useful and increased production, but also they were too much expensive for the average individual to buy and maintain. So the individual worker no longer could sustain himself as an independent producer of goods (because without machines he could not make goods cheap enough), and was forced to work in the factories for the owner of the machinery (the capitalist) to (barely) sustain himself and his family.
Industrialization also lead to less reliance in highly specialized work (they were no longer smiths that had spent years learning the trades of their job, they were operators who knew of a small part of the production chain), so workers were easier to replace by others, thus reducing their bargaining power in relation to the employer.
And the increased production rate meant that less manpower was needed, so a surplus workforce was created that helped keep wages low. Also, the need to get raw materials and sell the surplus did provide a new impulse to the colonization of new territories.
More post
- 📝 What major approaches to "class" as a theoretical category do historians commonly use?
- 📝 What is the origin of the idea of "people's republics"?
- 📝 Where can I find information on American born WWII soldier locked up until they could prove they had an American birth certificate?
- 📝 What is the origin of these WW1 "official history" maps?
- 📝 How much were lottery prizes taxed in Soviet Union?
- 📝 What is the story behind the tall Northern offshoot on the West Virginia map?
- 📝 Are species introduced to England and Wales by the Romans still found near Roman settlements?
- 📝 Cultures of the image and cultures of the word
- 📝 Martin Luther's 95 Theses
- 📝 Why was China not colonized by any country?
- 📝 After the split with Stalin, what was Yugoslavia's official attitude towards Soviet history before Stalin's takeover?
- 📝 How was titanium transported from Soviet Union to Area 51 for Oxcart?
- 📝 Tolstoy's view of history
- 📝 Can someone give me the history on this Japanese Crest symbol
- 📝 What expenses did a village have?
- 📝 Could Hitler have won WW2 after losing the beaches of Normandy
- 📝 Why there are more people of red hair among Arabs than Mongols when both populations are naturally born with dark hair?
- 📝 Why did Robert Walpole get painted with a crown on his right side?
- 📝 What was Singapore's population in 1290-1396, 1511-1699?
- 📝 Were any tactical missiles used during the 1971 Indo Pakistan war?
- 📝 Why was the Spanish kingdom in America called New Spain if Spain didn't exist as a country back then?
- 📝 Why did Shirer omit information from The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich?
- 📝 How was the Ancient Egyptian name 'God is Gracious' written?
- 📝 Was the Social War the only war fought to integrate into an empire?
- 📝 To what degree has the historical effectiveness of non-violent resistance movements been impacted by parallel violent resistance movements?
- 📝 When did bombs actually look like this?
- 📝 When and by whom was the Tirupati Tirumala temple in India built?
- 📝 What happened to dead WWI soldiers whose faith believed in cremation?
- 📝 What happened to people's houses during the Soviets' reign?
- 📝 Why does the amount of days in an year on average of the Gregorian calendar only have 4 decimal places (365.2425)?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What made capitalism different from previous forms of manufacture and trade?
- 📝 What were shoe soles made from in previous ages?
- 📝 What are some examples of famous people in history who made big mistakes that they learnt from and this then led them to succeed?
- 📝 In this cartoon from Puck, what indicates the identities of France and Britain?
- 📝 What is the evidence to claim that political order in ancient Rome was sufficiently different under "kingdom", "republic" and "empire"?
- 📝 What goods did Germany trade during World War II, and with whom?
- 📝 What were Greek and Roman sails made from?
- 📝 What other one word responses have been made to military ultimatums besides "Nuts!", "Mokusatsu" and "If"?
- 📝 What were the thoughts of the Celts, Romans and other ancient European people about the standing stones which survive from prehistoric times?
- 📝 What goods did Germany trade during the Weimar Republic, and with whom?
- 📝 What is the current location of the "Cauldron of Trun and Chambios" from August 1944?
- 📝 What stopped the British from granting independence to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands?
- 📝 What was the first documented mention of American English different from British English?
- 📝 What is this crime, "F and A", from the 1890's US?
- 📝 What made India pull out troops and return the captured territory at the end of 1971 Indo-Pak war?
- 📝 Were there bows employed by tribes living in the desert, and if so, what were they made of?
- 📝 What specific changes were made to political ideologies around during and before World War I?
- 📝 What were the major imports and exports of Germany and France from 1850-1915?
- 📝 What were the advantages and disadvantages to the creation of Vichy France, from the Nazi point of view?
- 📝 What were the rights and statuses of different types of Roman colonies?
- 📝 What was American anti-tank doctrine during WWII on paper, and how did it differ from in practice?
- 📝 What is the term for a person who surveys the land and relays messages from a noble to his governed village?
- 📝 What distinguishes the mesolithic period from neolithic and paleolithic?
- 📝 What were the trade routes between Mapungubwe and other civilizations?
- 📝 What attempts were made to limit Roman-era water pressure/flow 'theft' by code, pipe length, and expanders and by whom?
- 📝 What makes studying science different from studying the history of science?
- 📝 Journeys from Gujarat in India to Dare es Salaam in what was then, Tanganyika in 1925 and 1948
- 📝 What was the nature and extent of forced or coerced sterilization in Puerto Rico from the 1940s-1970s?
- 📝 Did women in ancient Rome wear corsets, and if so, what were they made of?
- 📝 Did China's life expectancy at birth rise 30.5 years from 1960 to 1980? If so, what were the particular changes made to their society's structure?