The violent rise of capital (part 1)
A short history of how capitalists came to rule the world.
For 300 years she has been a slave, a force of cheap labor, colonized by the Spaniard, the Anglo, by her own people. For 300 years she was invisible, she was not heard. Many times she wished to speak, to act, to protest, to challenge. The odds were heavily against her. She hid her feelings; she hid her truths; she concealed her fire; but she kept stoking the inner flame. She remained faceless and voiceless, but a light shone through her veil of silence.
— Gloria Anzaldúa
Anthropocene or Capitalocene?
Homo sapiens spent the majority of its existence in relative harmony with its surroundings. That is not to say that we did not have a dramatic impact on our environments, we did, but, for the most part, we were but one species among many. Only in recent centuries, particularly the last few decades of accelerated industrialization, have humans begun to influence and annihilate ecosystems on a planetary scale. This marked the beginning of the Anthropocene.1
It is tempting, and often so done, to attribute the emergence of capitalism and the causes of the unfolding environmental disaster to certain allegedly inherent human characteristics: greed, egotism, individualism, aggression, and so on. Economists refer to those expressions of ‘rational self-interest’ as homo economicus. (The term will inevitably come up in any introductory economics course.)
Many historians and anthropologists, however, argue that humans are not inherently destructive creatures, but rather adapted their behavior to a socio-economic framework that favors and promotes these tendencies. In this sense, it is not humans themselves who are to blame, but rather the supreme dominance of one economic system and ideology. The historian and sociologist Jason Moore argues that we ought to call this age the Capitalocene instead.2
In The Dawn of Everything, their remarkable attempt at rewriting early human history, David Graeber and David Wengrow demonstrate with academic precision and evidence how human populations around the world have developed highly complex societies, frequently arranged in astonishingly large cities, without the need to resort to authoritarian violence, rigid hierarchies or a profit motive.3 These societies were often organized on what we would call communist or anarchist principles of mutual aid and cooperation. That is not to say that this was the rule — we should, once and for all, abandon the patronizing notion of ‘the noble savage’ — but these societies existed and flourished, sometimes for centuries and millennia. Complexity does not necessarily yield social stratification.
Humans are cognitive and self-reflective creatures. Is it so hard to imagine that early peoples and natives in, for example, North America have consciously chosen not to go the way of authority? Have consciously and communally decided not to extract resources for extraction’s sake, and actively arranged their society to prevent the emergence and possibility of individuals to amass power and exert it over others?
To the Western mind, such notions often appear as romanticization and naïveté. To the Western mind, anything but political apathy and submission to the status quo seems incomprehensible. Everything that happened before capitalism, or, alternatively, before the spread of agriculture, is not history at all. Those humans, those savages, were not even human, for they were not civilized. They did not work in offices, they did not consume enough, and they did not understand that history begins and ends with the Capitalocene.
Read more about the emergence of the apathetic populace here:
The birth of capitalism
When I was studying business economics at my local Austrian university, a professor in one of the introductory macroeconomics courses stated that capitalism has existed at least as long as humans have. People have always traded, he argued, so there has always existed a market of supply and demand.
But capitalism cannot be equated to markets or trade, as this professor described it. Capitalism, as it first appeared just around five hundred years ago, is a system specifically centered on continuous capital accumulation and growth intended to extract surplus. To sustain this process, ever-increasing parts of nature and human lives must be capitalized and drawn into the gears of production. To maximize profits, these ‘resources’ must be obtained at the lowest possible cost. Continue along this line of thought, keeping in mind that resources on this planet are finite, and the inherent destructiveness of the capitalist doctrine becomes evident.
All this has nothing to do with human nature. This machinery is not part of some sort of ‘natural progression,’ and, while living in our age of capitalist realism may make it appear as such, it most definitely does not represent the culmination of human development and ingenuity — what a depressing notion. But what, then, is capitalism? How and why did it begin? And why does it appear so… eternal?
David Graeber and Jason Hickel, among many other historians, anthropologists, and economists, examine the capitalist creation story in great detail.4 For the purposes of our discussion, we will briefly touch upon the main points stated in these works.
The golden age of the European proletariat
In the early 14th century, commoners and peasants across Europe began to rebel against the feudal order of serfdom and exploitation in the form of unpaid labor, harsh taxes, and other levies.
In the wake of the bubonic plague of 1347, which, in Europe, lasted until 1351 and killed roughly one-third of the continent's population, labor became scarce and land abundant.5 It was under these conditions that commoners successfully demanded higher wages and better living conditions. Eventually, noble lords and ladies lost their grip on the general populace, and feudalism collapsed in most parts of Europe.6
Serfs became free farmers, working and living off their lands and enjoying unrestricted access to public commons such as pastures, forests, and lakes. They could labor for wages to supplement their incomes, but most preferred to solely work the farms they had toiled for generations. There was no compelling reason to sell one’s time and energy to others.
The common people flourished. Due to the shortage in labor supply, nobles and business owners — the early alliance between aristocracy and bourgeoisie — were forced to raise wages to unprecedented levels.7 Working conditions improved drastically. Additionally, the cooperative and egalitarian societies in which the peasants organized themselves led to an abundance of food, improving nutrition and health. Life expectancy increased. Forests and soils, now worked in more sustainable ways, recovered. Commoners had little incentive to submit and work in cities when they could easily feed and sustain themselves.
Today, historians describe this era as ‘the golden age of the European proletariat.’8 Modern anarchist, social ecologist, and communist philosophers often draw inspiration from these times.
The rise of private property
What followed were some of the most violent centuries in human history. To maintain their status and power, to avoid becoming obsolete, governments, the Church, nobles, and wealthy merchants — in short: the ruling class — had to find ways to drive wages down and chip away at the peasants’ newfound independence. They came up with one of the foundational features of capitalism as we know it today: private property.
Peasants were forced off their farms in masses, their ancestral lands seized by nobles, who were backed by laws and military power. The farms on which they had built their lives were fenced off and privatized; access to the commons — to the basic resources necessary for survival — was restricted and monetized. Through a process called ‘enclosure,’ an uncountable number of European commoners and peasants were driven off their lands and forced to move to cities to find work as cheap laborers in order to feed their families.9 Those who remained were subjugated by heavy taxes and levies, and, in the interest of profit, forced to maximize working hours and soil depletion.
More on freedom in the capitalist world:
Over the course of three centuries, the process was completed. The peasants’ revolution was crushed and the lasting dominion of the bourgeoisie established. Feudalism, for a time supplanted by egalitarian, agrarian communities built on mutual aid and subsistence farming, had returned and entered into an uneasy alliance with the early stages of capitalism. This silent bourgeois counter-revolution ultimately produced the world we know.
Under these rediscovered conditions of forceful cheap labor, the aristocracy found it easy to accumulate unprecedented levels of wealth and resources. Nobles firmly reestablished their rule by enclosing increasing areas of the countryside, and, with the industrial revolution at hand, a novel ability to extract and process raw materials ever more efficiently.
Note: Private property is often confused with the concept of personal property. Seldom will socialists and other revolutionaries argue for the abolition of personal property — no one will ever come for your toothbrush or other items and possessions intended for personal use. Private property, on the other hand, refers to a situation in which the means of production (factories, mines, huge swaths of farmland, etc.) are owned by corporations and other private entities. Those, socialists will argue, must be put under public, i.e. collective, ownership.
From peasants to slaves
After the defeat of the majority, inequality increased dramatically and the duality between the rich and the poor — the bourgeoisie and the proletariat — as well as between humans and the rest of the living world, became an enshrined law of nature.
All factors impeding productivity and profit accumulation, such as fair wages and working conditions, sustainable practices, and environmental protection were systematically undermined, laying the groundwork for today’s levels of social stratification and the impending environmental collapse. In short: humanity had abandoned any pretense at peaceful and harmonious coexistence with each other and its surroundings — nature and humanity underwent a lasting separation, and, with ‘enlightenment’ and humanism, the wealthy white man became the center of the universe, establishing the ideological justification for slavery, colonialism, and genocide.
Why exist in the first place?
At this point, it is important to emphasize how capitalism did not emerge out of necessity or some sort of natural progression. The people did not welcome it; they fought it to the end. Capitalism was the upper classes’ response to the progressive and egalitarian revolutions of the time, and a way of reestablishing their economic and social lordship. Capitalists did not abolish serfdom and exploitation; they took it to new extremes.
According to economists Henry Phelps Brown and Sheila Hopkins, real wages in Europe decreased by up to 70% between the 1500s and the 1700s.10 During the same period, life expectancy in England, for example, declined from forty-three years to the low thirties.11 The Industrial Revolution, which began around the middle of the 18th century, further increased the misery by dramatically exacerbating poverty, inequality, health issues, hunger, and life expectancy in every part of Europe affected by it.12
Yet none of this compares to the centuries of horrors perpetrated by Western colonial powers in countries of the Global South — horrors continuing to this day. In school, most of us learn how the European exploration of the Americas was motivated by human curiosity and a sense of divine adventure. This romanticized, ‘official’ version of events neglects the true purpose these discoveries served: resources, cheap labor, and capital accumulation.
Colonialism was a direct response to the aforementioned peasant revolutions, which occurred around the same time that Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés began the trend of extinguishing entire peoples for gold.
We will talk more about this in the second part of this essay series:
I’m author, writer, and activist Antonio Melonio, the creator of Beneath the Pavement. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack or over on Patreon. It’s the best way to support Beneath the Pavement and help me put out more and higher-quality content.
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Malhi, Y. (2017). The Concept of the Anthropocene. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 42(1), 77–104. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-060854
Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso.
Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021b). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (First Edition). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
A good introduction is offered by Hickel, J. (2021). Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. Windmill Books. For a much deeper examination of human history as it relates to capitalism see: Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021b). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (First Edition). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Cartwright, Frederick F. (1994). Disease and History. Dorset Press. pp. 32–46.
Hatcher, J. (1994). England in the Aftermath of the Black Death. Past and Present, 144(1), 3–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/past/144.1.3
James E. Thorold Rogers. (1884). Six Centuries of Work And Wages: The History of English Labour. Notes and Queries, s6–IX(224), 299–300. https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s6-ix.224.299h
Braudel, F. (1973). Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800 (English and French Edition) (1st ed.). HarperCollins.
A Short History of Enclosure in Britain. (2009). The Land Magazine. https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain
Brown, P. H., & Hopkins, S., V. (2013). A Perspective of Wages and Prices (Routledge Revivals) (1st ed.). Routledge.
Wrigley, E. A., Davies, R. S., Oeppen, J. E., & Schofield, R. S. (1997). English Population History from Family Reconstitution 1580–1837 (Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time, Series Number 32) (First Edition). Cambridge University Press.
Szreter, S. (2003). The Population Health Approach in Historical Perspective. American Journal of Public Health, 93(3), 421–431. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.93.3.421
A sucinct and accurate summary. There is also the story of how independent European crafts workers became first dependent on capitalist merchants for marketing their goods and lose control over their means of production.
Your deep analysis, to the greatest possible extent, of socio-economic hierarchical oppression labeled as capitalism is greatly insightful.
However, I would encourage you to explore the Roman Empire, which exhibited early signs of the foundational principles of capitalism. You wrote, “Capitalism, as it first appeared just around five hundred years ago, is a system specifically centered on continuous capital accumulation and growth intended to extract surplus.” Yet on a historical scale, this may not be entirely accurate. The Roman Empire, for instance, had slaves and extracted resources from both humans and nature for its own aggrandizement.