Capitalism does not equal trade
(midwest.social)
A404 to 
Flippanarchy
Barter within primitive communism was literally a very early stage of commodity production, advancement and generalization of which turned into capitalism.
The act of exchange already implies a degree of private ownership (as in, whatever is being bartered isn't part of the social stock that's free for the taking if needed), there might be traces of value present within the exchange (i.e. equivalence of trade subconsciously measured by something as to prevent trading a single berry for a stone chair) and yada yada.
It wasn't capitalism because goods were mainly being produced for different reasons, but the act of barter was definitely a development towards commodity production, and by extension capitalism - after all, it'd be absurd to think that it came out of nowhere.
Fun fact: the trade in Obsidian dates back at least 14,000 years. Some suggest there may have been obsidian trade networks dating back 700,000 years, but those may have been one off trades. Or human ancestors travelled to mine obsidian deposits in a concentrated manner. Source That would mean trade predates the human race.
Also, only last years researchers proved that significant amounts of the tin needed to make Bronze during the Bronze Agein what is now Greece, came from tin mines in Cornwall. Not enough tin locally. Source. This is why they'll find really old beads, amber and the like where you'd least expect it. Trade network spanning from Cornwall to Afghanistan, dating back up to 5000 years if not more.
In a Q&A, Yanis Varoufakis was asked something like “you say you can have markets without capitalism — if capitalism and markets are not equivalent, then what constitutes capitalism?” and his answer was “easy: anonymous transferable shares of ownership”.
I thought that was an impressively concise explanation, cuz every single word is significant.
I've read some of his most major works (technofeudalism, another now and his account of the Greek debt crisis) back when I was still a leftist and looking back the amount of bs he spouses is astonishing, selling more snake oil than Henry George and his "one simple trick".
Capitalism is literally a system of commodity production (production for exchange) and due to the nature of commodities markets get created. "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities", its unit being a single commodity." is the very first sentence in Capital by Karl Marx.
What Varoufakis is saying here is that if stock market or private ownership transfers get restricted, suddenly it's not capitalism anymore which is not true at all, it doesn't change why things are produced or what they lead to and also indirectly calls state capitalism (where the ownership is (largely) nationalized) as being anti-capitalist.
No coincidence that some of the first joint-stock companies were the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company. Capitalism helped fund colonialism.
It never occurred to me that people would collude trade with capitalism. I needed this comic, thanks.
conflate
thanks :) I kinda felt it was the wrong word but didn't bother to check on a dict. I will try to remember for next time, is funny that I am still learning the language after so many years of being terminally online xD
colluded isn’t a bad approximation of the meaning you were conveying
I mean, there might also be colluding 😛
it's a very common rhetorical move.
Capitalism has existed forever! Do you think ancient people didn't trade?
Give that guy a haircut and its one of my old coworkers
Did he have the same amazing eyebrows ?
For more details about this, check out the section of Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” called “The Myth of Barter”
What if only some of the means of production are privately owned, for producing some things, but the means of producing other things are publicly owned? What's that system called?
Distributism I think?
Fascism, if you look at Mussolini's Italy
One where the neolibs are screeching to privatise the rest of it.
"Mixed economy", idiomatically. Or depending on degree of where the ownership is, various labels crop up that mix economy with governance like 'social democracy'. Or communism with xyz characteristics.
Sometimes you get 'state-monopoly capitalism', which is controversial for being simplistic, but this is not an academic forum. If some econo-dweeb wants to spout something theoretical or add to the labelling ambiguity, I beg them to join in.
"can you gove me that shiny metal? thanks, i owe you one"
this has existed forever. people weren't just bartering before the invention of coins and debit cards
