Origins and Duration of Capitalism
Discussion
Christopher Chase-Dunn:
"This brings us to the capitalist mode, here defined as based on the accumulation of profits returning to commodity production rather than taxation or tribute.
As we have already said,
- the early forms of capitalism emerged in the Bronze Age in the form of small semiperipheral states that specialized in trade and the production of commodities. Dilmun, in the Persian Gulf, was a sovereign state that specialized in the carrying trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus civilization during the middle Bronze Age (about 2500 BCE).
- It was not until the fifteenth century CE that capitalist accumulation became predominant in a regional world-system (Europe and its colonies). Capitalism was born in the semiperipheral capitalist city-states, but in Europe it moved to the core with the rise of the Dutch hegemony. The forereachers that further evolved capitalism (the modern hegemons) were former semiperipheral polities that rose to hegemony. Economic crises and world revolutions were important elements in the emergence and evolution of capitalism and global governance institutions.
Thus, in comparison with the earlier modes, capitalism is yet young. It has been around since the middle Bronze Age (2500 BCE), but it took about four millennia to become the predominate developmental logic in a world-system. On the other hand, many have observed that social change in general has speeded up. The rise of tribute-taking based on institutionalized coercion took more than 100,000 years. The rise of capitalism took four millennia from its emergence in the Bronze Age to its becoming the predominant mode of social reproduction in Europe. Capitalism itself speeds up social change because it revolutionizes technology so quickly that other institutions are brought along, and people have become adjusted to more rapid reconfigurations of culture and institutions. So it is plausible that the contradictions of capitalism may lead it to reach its limits much faster than the kin-based and tributary modes did."
(http://www.sociostudies.org/books/files/globalistics_and_globalization_studies_2/036-055.pdf)