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I can assure you I'm not. I'm not really very interested in mercantilism, since it's not the system we live under today. > You are quite right to criticise col

I can assure you I'm not. I'm not really very interested in mercantilism, since it's not the system we live under today. > You are quite right to criticise colonialism as abusive and extractive, but that wasn't Capitalism. Colonialism never ended (in spite of the existence of an academic field called "post-colonialism"). The extractive relationships still exist, and are reflected in capitalist relationships. You can't just go "London's a great place to do finance!" and pretend there's nothing behind that. It's a great place to do finance because for hundreds of years, both before and after the emergence of the system we call capitalism, a significant portion of the entire world's wealth was syphoned by force into London. There's no way to abstract that away without becoming trite.

simonh 5y ago
Right and that forceful siphoning of wealth was a result of mercantilist policies. Capitalism is simply taking the world as it existed and building on that. It didn’t create it though. If the British Empire had actually been a true economically liberal capitalist system from the start it wouldn’t look anything like it does now. The USA would be part of the commonwealth because the mercantilist monopolistic constraint on the tea trade wouldn’t have happened, so no Boston Tea Party. India would have been hugely more developed and industrialised. The fact that it was prevented from doing so was a clearly mercantilist policy, restraining the free development of the domestic Indian economy along capitalist lines, sometimes by force. Adam Smith would have been appalled. It was precisely the transition of the British Empire from a mercantilist to a liberal free trade capitalist economy that made the imperial system untenable and unnecessary. I’m not in any way denying the head start imperialism gave us, but imperialism and capitalism are not the same thing, and were frequently at odds with each other. In fact the Whig and Tory political struggle of the time was in some ways one between pro capitalist (liberal) and pro imperial forces.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  This is all still extremely irrelevant to the question of if capitalism is in some way disconnected from, or apart from, racist systems. "Who started it" is just completely academic and not at all interesting. Also, colonialism and imperialism are not the same thing. I get the feeling you read "imperialism" in place of "colonialism" in my post, but I did not even mention imperialism.
  - simonh 5y ago
    You're quite right on your point about the distinction between imperialism and colonialism. I meant colonialism. Something can exist alongside or in tandem with a system without being identical to or necessarily dependent on it. A great example is capitalism in China. Politically it is communist, yet it also has a huge capitalist economic sector. The capitalist economic system in China has raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, a feat no other economic system has even approached. Japan is capitalist, is it also colonialist or based on racist exploitation? What about Sweden, or Germany, or South Korea? There are many capitalist countries that never had any significant empires or colonies, and certainly reaped extremely few economic benefits from them if any, that have done extremely well. What made them wealthy was industrialisation and capitalist economics. Even the USA had barely any colonial presence, and any that it has had made almost no impact on it's economy which throughout it's history has been almost entirely driven by internal demand, and most of it's trade was with developed countries, not colonies. Yes it had mass slavery, but in fact ending slavery was hugely economically beneficial by allowing former slaves to emigrate north and take up jobs in the industrial belt. Look, I'm not in any way denying that colonialist abuses were appalling, that we benefited from them, that there are lingering historical injustices that need to be faced up to. All of that is true. It's just got nothing to do with capitalist economics, which if anything actively contributed to the downfall of that system.
    - stormbrew 5y ago
      > Japan is capitalist, is it also colonialist or based on racist exploitation? What about Sweden, or Germany, or South Korea? Yes to all of these, which have at some point in history had colonial holdings, except perhaps South Korea which has largely been a victim of colonial (and imperial) systems, even if they currently thrive under American protection. As for the US, it is itself a colony, and the exploitation of people and resources on the continent built its wealth. That it managed to wrest away control of itself after much of the genocide undertaken to build it up was already done doesn't change that it was built on extraction of resources from the 'new' world to the 'old'. Some of them moved there and didn't want to send their money home anymore, but like... there were people on the island of Manhattan before it became the center of the finance world, and they're all but erased from history now. And all of these countries continue to benefit from wealth taken from the global south today. The tools of coercion that keep this system going have changed, but they're still in effect. Capitalism was built on wealth extracted through colonialism. There's no getting around that.

simonh 5y ago

Right and that forceful siphoning of wealth was a result of mercantilist policies. Capitalism is simply taking the world as it existed and building on that. It didn’t create it though. If the British Empire had actually been a true economically liberal capitalist system from the start it wouldn’t look anything like it does now. The USA would be part of the commonwealth because the mercantilist monopolistic constraint on the tea trade wouldn’t have happened, so no Boston Tea Party. India would have been hugely more developed and industrialised. The fact that it was prevented from doing so was a clearly mercantilist policy, restraining the free development of the domestic Indian economy along capitalist lines, sometimes by force. Adam Smith would have been appalled. It was precisely the transition of the British Empire from a mercantilist to a liberal free trade capitalist economy that made the imperial system untenable and unnecessary. I’m not in any way denying the head start imperialism gave us, but imperialism and capitalism are not the same thing, and were frequently at odds with each other. In fact the Whig and Tory political struggle of the time was in some ways one between pro capitalist (liberal) and pro imperial forces.

stormbrew 5y ago
This is all still extremely irrelevant to the question of if capitalism is in some way disconnected from, or apart from, racist systems. "Who started it" is just completely academic and not at all interesting. Also, colonialism and imperialism are not the same thing. I get the feeling you read "imperialism" in place of "colonialism" in my post, but I did not even mention imperialism.
- simonh 5y ago
  You're quite right on your point about the distinction between imperialism and colonialism. I meant colonialism. Something can exist alongside or in tandem with a system without being identical to or necessarily dependent on it. A great example is capitalism in China. Politically it is communist, yet it also has a huge capitalist economic sector. The capitalist economic system in China has raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, a feat no other economic system has even approached. Japan is capitalist, is it also colonialist or based on racist exploitation? What about Sweden, or Germany, or South Korea? There are many capitalist countries that never had any significant empires or colonies, and certainly reaped extremely few economic benefits from them if any, that have done extremely well. What made them wealthy was industrialisation and capitalist economics. Even the USA had barely any colonial presence, and any that it has had made almost no impact on it's economy which throughout it's history has been almost entirely driven by internal demand, and most of it's trade was with developed countries, not colonies. Yes it had mass slavery, but in fact ending slavery was hugely economically beneficial by allowing former slaves to emigrate north and take up jobs in the industrial belt. Look, I'm not in any way denying that colonialist abuses were appalling, that we benefited from them, that there are lingering historical injustices that need to be faced up to. All of that is true. It's just got nothing to do with capitalist economics, which if anything actively contributed to the downfall of that system.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    > Japan is capitalist, is it also colonialist or based on racist exploitation? What about Sweden, or Germany, or South Korea? Yes to all of these, which have at some point in history had colonial holdings, except perhaps South Korea which has largely been a victim of colonial (and imperial) systems, even if they currently thrive under American protection. As for the US, it is itself a colony, and the exploitation of people and resources on the continent built its wealth. That it managed to wrest away control of itself after much of the genocide undertaken to build it up was already done doesn't change that it was built on extraction of resources from the 'new' world to the 'old'. Some of them moved there and didn't want to send their money home anymore, but like... there were people on the island of Manhattan before it became the center of the finance world, and they're all but erased from history now. And all of these countries continue to benefit from wealth taken from the global south today. The tools of coercion that keep this system going have changed, but they're still in effect. Capitalism was built on wealth extracted through colonialism. There's no getting around that.