arguing that capitalism is somehow a new concept, and colonialism isn’t.
I am not sure how you reached this conclusion. Yes, capitalism is new in comparison to Mesopotamian culture, and therefore the idea of property ownership. No, it’s not new in comparison to European colonialism.
I think you could argue that capitalism even entered the human world before even currency was a thing.
I have never heard or read any theories that try to make an argument like this. I would be very interested if you had some that you could point me to, but offhand this seems like it would require major stretching of the definition of capitalism in order to make recorded events fit into it. I think it would mostly be an exercise in confirmation bias.
Accumulation of wealth is not inherently capitalism, nor is simply profiting from another’s labor. This definition is so broad that it would make anyone in history who ever acquired anything that they did not previously own into a capitalist.
There’s a reason you’re unwilling to entertain other arguments, because you’re moving the goalposts and are afraid they will fall off the field.
Which other arguments am I unwilling to entertain, and which goalposts am I moving?
My argument is, as from the beginning, that the concept of private ownership of property and legal rights attached to such is not born of capitalism but is in fact as old as recorded history. Because the conclusions in the cartoon depend on this initial faulty idea, the whole thing is nonsense.
The ownership of the means of production and power aren’t inherently new either. As private property is as old as civilization, the appropriation of capital is too.
Be that in the country of the ruler (the state didn’t own marble quarries in Egypt, the pharao did) out abroad (gold mines in what we would call Ethiopia), which could be called colonialist.
To name something colonialist before the Greek policy of colonies in the Mediterranean, is as debatable as calling an ancient economy capitalist.
However, capitalism is very pervasive. Levi Strauss showed in Tristes Tropiques that if there are isolated civilizations without a system of ownership and wealth accumulation, any contact will destroy that state.
I jive with most of what you write… but you have weird things sprinkled throughout…
Like, differentiating between the pharaoh and the state… the pharaoh was the state. I mean, there was more of a state than just the pharaoh… but practically the pharaoh was the state.
It’s like saying that there is a difference between the Russian state and Putin… technically yes, but practically no. Putin is the Russian state. Obviously there is bureaucracy as well, but is just a weird separation.
The big thing imho is that for the prolitariat it is the same. As long as there is an oppressive regime plucking the fruits of the labour, there is exploitation.
Feudalism was the main capitalist system Marx argued against.
That feudalist system is very old and embedded in our history.
