Origins
Marx argued that capital existed incipiently on a small scale for centuries, in the form of merchant, renting and lending activities, and occasionally also as small-scale industry with some wage labour (Marx was also well aware that wage labour existed for centuries on a modest scale before the advent of capitalist industry). Simple commodity exchange, and consequently simple commodity production, which form the initial basis for the growth of capital from trade, have a very long history. The "capitalistic era" according to Marx dates from the 16th century, i.e. it began with merchant capitalism and relatively small urban workshops.
For the capitalist mode of production to emerge as a distinctive mode of production dominating the whole production process of society, many different social, economic, cultural, technical and legal-political conditions had to come together.
For most of human history, these did not come together. Capital existed, commercial trade existed, but it did not lead to industrialisation and large-scale capitalist industry. That required a whole series of new conditions, namely specific technologies of mass production, the ability to independently and privately own and trade in means of production, a class of workers compelled to sell their labor power for a living, a legal framework promoting commerce, a physical infrastructure making the circulation of goods on a large scale possible, security for private accumulation, and so on. In many Third World countries, many of these conditions do not exist even today, even although there is plenty capital and labour available; the obstacles for the development of capitalist markets are less a technical matter and more a social, cultural and political problem.
A society, region or nation is “capitalist” if the predominant source of incomes and products being distributed is capitalist activity; even so, this does not yet mean necessarily that the capitalist mode of production is dominant in that society.
Read more about this topic: Capitalist Mode Of Production
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)