• jaybone@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Lol is this the tankie take on the above story? You think that sounds like some kind of paradise?

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          He brings up capitalism out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever, in response to a post about serfdom. With a sarcastic “what a surprise.” Is he implying serfdom is preferable to capitalism?

          • Historical_General@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Well, everybody knows capitalism rose out of feudalism in Europe. @ Cheesus briefly mentions it too.

            The sarcasm is a response to the universal assumption that money and wages were always had universally. But @ TheChurn says very few were paid and those were rare.

            Reminder: the soviets ran a state-capitalist system. That’s not very feudalist.

            I think you’ve misunderstood her quite a bit. Happens a lot on here lol.

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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      10 months ago

      Actually, the collapse of capitalism as introduced by the Romans did a real number on the economies they left behind after the empire collapsed. Things quickly became a lot worse for almost everyone involved, as 80 to 90 percent of the population were farmers, and very few of those had the luxury of owning the land they worked on.

      In Rome, being a soldier was a job you took up. In Medieval Europe, you were a soldier if you owned land, or you were a king. Most people didn’t own a square inch of anything, so there weren’t that many soldiers around, but that sure changed the way the economy worked. Lots of forced labour and essentially slavery going around through serfdom.

      For a while, money lost its relevance, and it took up until quite late in the medieval period before most normal people could trade with money. Money drove the economy and everyone got richer real quick.

      If anything, Medieval Europe is proof that capitalism is a lot better than the systems that preceded it. Feudalism sucked for everyone but the 1% much more than it sucks under capitalism, and neither socialism nor communism had been invented yet. So far communism has failed to prove itself anywhere on earth, so we’re back to capitalism as the best model we can come up with right now.