I'm thinking more capital in forms before the industrial revolution. Marx and co seem to think that historical capitalism only kicked off during the industrial revolution, and required wage-labour and total factor markets in land, labour, and money to do so. Braudel, Arrghi and a few other historians would argue that the systemic cycles of accumulation of capital predate the industrial revolution by a few centuries, and can actually be placed in Renaissance Italy as their origins, and that capital accumulation primarily happened (in the second phases of all these cycles) through financialization and M-M' rather than M-C-M'. Production is a specific form of capital accumulation that doesn't emerge (in a big way, anyway, it was visible in 14th century Florence for sure with cloth production) until the Industrial Revolution, but there were capitalists focused on capital accumulation rather than use value and political power for centuries before that time.
This also kind of has implications for Lenin's understanding of imperialism and financialization, as it would imply it's not the "highest stage" of capitalism but merely a cyclical phase at the end of a systemic accumulation cycle, a "sign of autumn" in the verbage of Braudel. Like, it happened with the Spanish/Genoese, happened with the Dutch, the British (during said financilization phase of British hegemony Lenin wrote that work) and is happening again with the US (which is very clearly in its financilization rather than production stage) as hegemony slips away to China.
I'm thinking more capital in forms before the industrial revolution. Marx and co seem to think that historical capitalism only kicked off during the industrial revolution, and required wage-labour and total factor markets in land, labour, and money to do so. Braudel, Arrghi and a few other historians would argue that the systemic cycles of accumulation of capital predate the industrial revolution by a few centuries, and can actually be placed in Renaissance Italy as their origins, and that capital accumulation primarily happened (in the second phases of all these cycles) through financialization and M-M' rather than M-C-M'. Production is a specific form of capital accumulation that doesn't emerge (in a big way, anyway, it was visible in 14th century Florence for sure with cloth production) until the Industrial Revolution, but there were capitalists focused on capital accumulation rather than use value and political power for centuries before that time.
This also kind of has implications for Lenin's understanding of imperialism and financialization, as it would imply it's not the "highest stage" of capitalism but merely a cyclical phase at the end of a systemic accumulation cycle, a "sign of autumn" in the verbage of Braudel. Like, it happened with the Spanish/Genoese, happened with the Dutch, the British (during said financilization phase of British hegemony Lenin wrote that work) and is happening again with the US (which is very clearly in its financilization rather than production stage) as hegemony slips away to China.