Where did China and Baghdad fit in to the puzzle of capital accumulation and financialization? I've studied some Muslim history and I don't recall any complex banking schemes and I know very little about how the Chinese economy functioned at any point.
Capitalism arises from the feudal mode of production under very specific circumstances, at least according to Helen Meiksins Wood; it doesn’t really seem to appear until the bubonic plague kills half the people in England. The other societies you’ve mentioned here tended to have centralized governments with monopolies on commodity production and severe limits on profit. The goal was the social reproduction of the state rather than capital accumulation.
Places like China, Korea, and even the Netherlands basically set things up so that you could only get rich by working for the government. You exploited the peasantry via taxation, as opposed to the economic exploitation of capitalism, which is undertaken via rents and wage labor and depends upon the market taking over all aspects of society and rewarding those who can increase the productive forces (with better farming tools for instance) while proletarianizing those who fail to do so.
The Netherlands used the slave mode of production I think (which itself relies on lots of commerce and big cities just like in ancient Rome and can even lead to banking and joint stock companies like in Florence), while China and Korea used pretty much the same thing, but with a slight modification involving the Confucian exams as well as lots of eunuchs who in theory couldn’t have children. It wasn’t officially a hereditary ruling class but usually only the richest families could pass the exams.
Late medieval England is in this very weird situation where they have a unified central government and fairly developed infrastructure but landlords are basically free to exploit peasants as much as they want. The central government doesn’t reign in landlords as much as in other places. I’m not really sure what gets things going exactly or how England even ended up in this situation with all the right ingredients, but I think the bubonic plague is the key. Once you have the right ingredients, capitalism happens. Without those ingredients, it can’t happen.
I think Wood maintains that market society is a better term for capitalism. You have some wage labor even in ancient Rome, but there are so many limits that it just never goes anywhere. Slavery was much more popular there. It’s a society with markets, but not a market society. In a market society, in contrast, you need to sell or exploit labor or you die.
Ancient Islamic banking was very complex in order to facilitate silk road trade, and many principles of Islamic banking are still used today (as western banking practices usury which is banned under Sharia Law). Sukuk bonds and murabaha contracts are based in real assets and were originally designed around 700AD to move money long distances with low risk during transport. Banks on opposite sides of the silk road would carry a supply of money/assets and use the notes to designate how much of that would be converted into liquid payments.
This way you could avoid caravans getting raided and losing high volumes of gold and coinage while still transferring value to people creating or transporting goods across the continent. Italian bankers saw the success of this system and took away all the religiously enforced norms to make banking a for-profit enterprise. This would be the point at which trade was used for upward accumulation by the bourgeoise.
I have heard that the Islamic banking system, especially the no-usury part, has been partially adapted to the US housing market. From what I've heard people will form a kind of house-buying union and contribute funds, and when they have enough money they'll buy a house for one of the members of the union. And that member will pay back in the value of the house without interest, with maybe a limited fee on top of the closing price, to enable the union to buy the next house. And they go round and round buying houses for people as they amass enough cash to do so. I understand they've run in to some trouble with US regulation but I can't remember what exactly.
I think Middle East was heavily merchant capital: buy silks there, resell spices here, but they didn’t use means of production as a vehicle of getting rich. China, idk, I think they’ve had over complicated serfdom, but my knowledge is sorely lacking
Where did China and Baghdad fit in to the puzzle of capital accumulation and financialization? I've studied some Muslim history and I don't recall any complex banking schemes and I know very little about how the Chinese economy functioned at any point.
Capitalism arises from the feudal mode of production under very specific circumstances, at least according to Helen Meiksins Wood; it doesn’t really seem to appear until the bubonic plague kills half the people in England. The other societies you’ve mentioned here tended to have centralized governments with monopolies on commodity production and severe limits on profit. The goal was the social reproduction of the state rather than capital accumulation.
Places like China, Korea, and even the Netherlands basically set things up so that you could only get rich by working for the government. You exploited the peasantry via taxation, as opposed to the economic exploitation of capitalism, which is undertaken via rents and wage labor and depends upon the market taking over all aspects of society and rewarding those who can increase the productive forces (with better farming tools for instance) while proletarianizing those who fail to do so.
The Netherlands used the slave mode of production I think (which itself relies on lots of commerce and big cities just like in ancient Rome and can even lead to banking and joint stock companies like in Florence), while China and Korea used pretty much the same thing, but with a slight modification involving the Confucian exams as well as lots of eunuchs who in theory couldn’t have children. It wasn’t officially a hereditary ruling class but usually only the richest families could pass the exams.
Late medieval England is in this very weird situation where they have a unified central government and fairly developed infrastructure but landlords are basically free to exploit peasants as much as they want. The central government doesn’t reign in landlords as much as in other places. I’m not really sure what gets things going exactly or how England even ended up in this situation with all the right ingredients, but I think the bubonic plague is the key. Once you have the right ingredients, capitalism happens. Without those ingredients, it can’t happen.
I think Wood maintains that market society is a better term for capitalism. You have some wage labor even in ancient Rome, but there are so many limits that it just never goes anywhere. Slavery was much more popular there. It’s a society with markets, but not a market society. In a market society, in contrast, you need to sell or exploit labor or you die.
Ancient Islamic banking was very complex in order to facilitate silk road trade, and many principles of Islamic banking are still used today (as western banking practices usury which is banned under Sharia Law). Sukuk bonds and murabaha contracts are based in real assets and were originally designed around 700AD to move money long distances with low risk during transport. Banks on opposite sides of the silk road would carry a supply of money/assets and use the notes to designate how much of that would be converted into liquid payments.
This way you could avoid caravans getting raided and losing high volumes of gold and coinage while still transferring value to people creating or transporting goods across the continent. Italian bankers saw the success of this system and took away all the religiously enforced norms to make banking a for-profit enterprise. This would be the point at which trade was used for upward accumulation by the bourgeoise.
I have heard that the Islamic banking system, especially the no-usury part, has been partially adapted to the US housing market. From what I've heard people will form a kind of house-buying union and contribute funds, and when they have enough money they'll buy a house for one of the members of the union. And that member will pay back in the value of the house without interest, with maybe a limited fee on top of the closing price, to enable the union to buy the next house. And they go round and round buying houses for people as they amass enough cash to do so. I understand they've run in to some trouble with US regulation but I can't remember what exactly.
I think Middle East was heavily merchant capital: buy silks there, resell spices here, but they didn’t use means of production as a vehicle of getting rich. China, idk, I think they’ve had over complicated serfdom, but my knowledge is sorely lacking