Gar Lipow wrote:
>
>
> Before capitalism, freedom existed either for no-one, or for a very
> tiny percent of the population even as a possibility. The scarcity of
> material goods did not just limit what people could consume. It
> limited the social roles available.
Mostly but not wholly true for the most part.
Read Ellen Meiksins Wood, _Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy_ and some of the books footnoted there.
Carrol