[Potemkin]

I don't believe in capitalism in the same way that i don't believe in Jesus. Its not that I think that Jesus i a bad person / God, it just that I severely doubt he ever existed and certainly don't believe he's around now, sitting in the heavens, interfering in human affairs.

Reification is a bad mental habit, and you are right to reject it @Rich - but rejecting reification is not the same thing as actually merging all economic systems and stages of economic history into a single mess of pottage. There are distinctions between them, and those distinctions are clear enough to allow us to refer to concepts called “feudalism” or “capitalism” or “socialism”.

We fundamentally have the same economic system today that we've had for the least 5000 years and probably considerably longer going right back into the deep Neolithic. When you ask people what distinguishes capitalism from these supposed other earlier systems, all you get is some hand waving. The Romans didn't have joint stock companies in the way we do, but this was just a totally unsurprising lack of development of financial technology, its not because we've had some sort of revolution in the relations of the means of production.

We do have the same economic system that we had in Neolithic times, but only in terms of the most basic fundamentals, such as bartering or long-distance trade routes and the like. But even something as fundamental as a medium of exchange - currency - was only invented about three thousand years ago, well into historical times, and there have been huge changes since then - and yes, revolutionary changes. For example, most workers now no longer own their own means of production, which is just another way of saying that cottage industries are no longer a thing, but have to seek employment from a third party which does own the necessary means of production. Why is this, @Rich? Look at history. In particular, look at the history of what happened in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. The word “revolution” is not too strong to describe what happened.

[late]

We fundamentally have the same economic system today that we've had for the least 5000 years and probably considerably longer going right back into the deep Neolithic. When you ask people what distinguishes capitalism from these supposed other earlier systems, all you get is some hand waving. The Romans didn't have joint stock companies in the way we do, but this was just a totally unsurprising lack of development of financial technology, its not because we've had some sort of revolution in the relations of the means of production.

Study economic history. Start with Braudel's Civilisation and Capitalism 15th - 18th century.

Most of history had simple exchange. I give you something, you give me something. The Renaissance was made possible by the development of sophisticated banking. That changed the world, and was the beginning of global commerce.

During the Middle ages, the church would usually be the center of town, and the center of life. Early capitalism spread markets across Europe, and the market became the center of town. There was also a shift that started at that time, the culture began it's slow evolution towards the secular.

Next up is Keynes, and the evolution of macroeconomics, which is another dramatic transformation in economic life.

Nowadays most money doesn't exist, not in physical form. Used to be large exchanges could be awkward. Now all you do is push a button. That level of efficiency is transformative, for good and bad. Look at the speed of the 2007/2008 crash.

You can say the same, and at the most basic level, you'd be right. Kids walks up to an ice cream place, the way I did when I was 5 in 1966, hand over some money, and get a massive cone of icecream.

But, the plain truth is, it's changed dramatically, more than once. As the gal said in Shakespeare in Love: "It's a new world."