Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 07 – 18
The existence of capital does not by itself imply the existence of capitalism. Merchants, money-lenders, investors, commercial enterprises, markets, and private property existed in antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages. Yet these activities formed only one component of economies whose dominant productive sectors remained agriculture, handicrafts, and small-scale manufacture.
The Industrial Revolution marked a qualitative transformation rather than merely a quantitative expansion of commerce. Mechanized production, large concentrations of wage labour, substantial fixed capital, and continuous technological investment gradually made the accumulation and deployment of capital the dominant organizing principle of economic life. It is in this sense that one may properly speak of capitalism rather than simply the existence of capital.
This distinction is particularly important when interpreting nineteenth-century political thought. Many writers of the period—including Proudhon—addressed societies undergoing industrial transformation rather than fully industrialized economies. In the 1840s, agriculture, artisanship, and small-scale production still occupied a central place in France, while many centralized economic systems proposed by contemporaries such as Cabet and the Saint-Simonians remained political programmes rather than descriptions of existing economic realities.
For this reason, later expressions such as state capitalism, financial capitalism, or monopoly capitalism should not be projected uncritically onto earlier historical periods. Distinguishing between capital as an economic phenomenon and capitalism as a mode of economic organization preserves the historical specificity of nineteenth-century debates and guards against anachronistic interpretations.
Hossein Jorjani 