There were still classes back in the day, serfdom, slavery, guilds that had similar exploitation to wage labor. There was plenty of coercion to get labor done.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Flippanarchy
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I mean, go back and read up on The Inclosure Acts and you're going to see the real bedrock of modern capitalism.
The relationship between aristocrats and serfs was materially different than capitalists and wage laborers. The former was more a method of formalized raiding and looting, while the later never lets labor have their hands on the goods to begin with.
In the same vein, Guilds were - at their heart - a system of professionalizing a craft and passing that knowledge on generation to generation. The modern academic institutions simply don't do that. Academic students have to demonstrate a broad competency in academic skills, but they have very little exposure to the commercial applications of their labor until the start their careers. A guild apprentice or journeyman is already building a client network as part of their training, while a college student only cultivates these relationships extra-curricularly (via internships or fellowships outside of the classroom).
These are radically different systems in practice, even if you can draw some vague parallels between instances of labor exploitation.
(Not that I’m necessarily a fan of the heirarchical organisation of Ancient Egypt, but sharing cuz shows ur point)
I mean, they built a... thing that benefited absolutely nobody, so it doesn't help the (still obviously true) point that you can do big and useful things without capitalism.
They used slaves, so not too far off from capitalism.
I think “technically” it wasn’t slavery, atleast as envisioned in modernity. But there was definitely coercion involved so it probably amounts to what anarchists would call slavery. So yeah not something to take inspiration from. But an easy “gotcha” for people saying without capitalism there is no progress.
it's such a pity that the first humans to invent the wheel or writing didn't patent it
Does anyone think capitalism is getting anything done? Construction is pretty much non existent in the US and we have a housing crisis with no signs of it getting better. People profit more off of not producing housing, keeping it scarce. It feels like we're at the stage of artificial scarcity for profit
Ok, capitalism bad, but are we actually pretending that feudalism isn't worse?
I don't think c/flippanarchy is advocating for feudalism in their critique of capitalism, but I could be wrong!
There's not much else to choose from if you are looking at cities, etc, built before modern capitalism.
You are missing the point.
Here it is again: Capitalism is not a requirement for human advancement.
If that's the point, then stop pointing to the past as an example of it. All that's proving is that there are worse options we have tried.
Is it?
Admittedly we don't know loads about but Mohen Darjo and early Uruk look pretty good, and some Mayan cities and American Indian nations seem like they had very good standards of life pre-Europeans too.
we also created farms and art before feudalism. feudalism is also a capitalist structured society. capitalism did not come into existence when adam smith described it, he was just discussing how feudalism gates access to the commons through access to power. capitalism has existed for 12000 years, at least, we only started calling it capitalism in the 1700s. the key features of capitalism are owners of wealth generating resources, and workers who are paid to generate wealth using these wealth generating resources. in the age of feudalism, the wealth generating resource was the land itself, and how the ownership class acquired it was through their access to violence.
The pyramids were paid for in part by a stipend of beer. I think that's a ~~good~~ better system.
Imagine 5000 years in the future and archeologists state that workers today were paid in part by a stipend of pizza and coffee, based entirely off reports documenting the expenses of companies throwing pizza parties and having free coffee in break rooms.