The Violent Rise of Capital (Part One)

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…