Talk:History of capitalism

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WikiProject Echo has identified History of capitalism as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the French language Wikipedia.

I suggest that re-ordering of this page is appropriate:

Finance capitalism is both a tautology and (as Finance - the use of money for profit in the forms of rent, interest, dividends and unequal pay for work) forms the action element of capitalism (the pre-conditional element - ownership of property or theft from and of the commonweal depending upon the mode of analysis - preceding the action elements (each of which has their own history).

Since access to finance (money and its equivalents) is the precondition (under capitalism) for the 'owned/stolen' elements (land, banking rights, knowledge ownership rights and sanctioned variable paid work income rates), then the history of capitalism is probably co-extensive with the history of money.

In support of this, the Wikipedia entry under usury points to the pre-mediaeval existence of a capitalist element within (even) largely feudalist societies (ie those where the ownership of land was the predominant source of power).

The pivotal changes seem to have come with the permission to charge interest on lent money: particularly the Act 'In restraint of usury' of Henry VIII in England in 1545 (see: a) 'In Restraint of Usury: the Lending of Money at Interest', Sir Harry Page, The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accounts, London, 1985, b) the Bibliography therein, and c) especially 'The Idea of Usury: from Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood', Benjamin Nelson, 2nd Edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1949, enlarged 2nd edition, 1969.)

Accordingly, I suggest the inclusion of such a starter text as the above at the start of the article, and will wait a few days for responses before doing so.

John Courtneidge

[edit] Life expectancy

The claim about doubled life expectancy in developing world seems extremely unlikely, especially given the dramatic drop in life-expectancy in Africa over the last decade. It looks like a hand-picked selection of a few places, with very careful futzing with years considered nation-by-nation... if not a fabrication whole cloth. LotLE×talk 17:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Laissez-faire

• Mid- to late-nineteenth-century Britain is widely regarded as the classic case of laissez-faire capitalism.

Is this statement true? If so, does it matter that this widely held belief is quite simply wrong? I think this article would be better off without this line. -- TexasDawg 01:52, 20 January 2007 (UTC)