While catching up on podcast listening during the Christmas holidays, I listened to the Radio Open Source episode “A Thousand Years of Capitalism“, hosted by Christopher Lydon with guest Sven Beckert, history professor at Harvard University. The episode was a discussion of Beckert’s latest work, “Capitalism: A Global History”. I thought the discussion was excellent, and I found it interesting that he pegs the “start” of capitalism as an economic system to merchant businesses in Aden around 1000 AD (a city in now-named Yemen). These businesses financed trade expeditions to bring goods back, sell them, and re-invest the profits into more expeditions. Later, this practice expanded to Europe, then other countries, but this was the start.
The next interesting item to me was how the Industrial Revolution was the start of investing capital in means of production (factories, equipment, etc.), moving away from the financier-led capitalism, and how it was difficult to convince people to work in factories. They were used to working for themselves or in small groups (peasants/serfs) for a local leader. Another “step-up” in the growth of capitalism was the use of slavery, and how Europeans invested in plantations in the US, which used large amounts of slave labor. I was not aware that plantations arose from foreign investment. Also, Beckert mentioned that the island of Barbados in the Caribbean Sea was populated by slaves and ran large sugar plantations.
The final part of the episode discussed the impact that capitalism has had on the world economy, and the possibility of developing other economic systems. Overall, this was a very good episode, well worth listening to again.