John Taber wrote:
>Charles Brown" <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote
>
>> CB: Yea, I mean the whole Civil War was a "corporate plot" in the
>> sense that it was , in the main >, Northern industrial capitalism
>> overthrowing Southern slavery capitalism. The emancipation of
>> the slaves as a moral mission was not the purpose of the war, rather
>> it was an unavoidable side >effect of the Northern corporations
>> asserting their dominance.
>
>I must be confused on what "capitalism" means. I never thought that
>a slave-based economy should be called capitalism. Similarly, I
>wouldn't think that a feudal system is capitalist.
>
>But on this list "capitalism" seems to be broadly used. Would
>somebody care to educate me?
>
Slavery is Capitalism 101. Master vs. Slave gives way to Boss vs Employee. ("Boss" is Dutch for master). What's different is that slavery is static and "capitalism" dynamic. The "cap" of capitalism means head. It refers to head-count, as in the number of slaves in your stock, puchased on the free market. Banning slavery represents not a shift from one system to another but merely a tightening of the free market. It's just not quite as free as it was, because now you can't own people. The more flexible manner of exploitation is better suited to the industrial system, where the machine provides the slave-like obedience, and workers are turned into machine-adjutants. (This applies to McDonald's and insurance offices as much as assembly plants.) This is just the true nature of capitalism revealing itself in *modern* society as it did in ancient (and again in early modern).
As to the medieval period, there was exploitation, but it was balanced by a genuine sense of popular rights (based on the Church, i.e. "Christ," which had real meaning at that time). It was a communal lifestyle not geared toward accumulation (though technological advancement, which had been stagnant during the Roman period, took flight during this uncapitalistic time).
Ted