5 - THE LATE ARRIVAL OF CAPITALISM

Summary

Capitalism in the form of a broadly used and durable economic system did not become a fact until late in the nineteenth century. It has been with us for less than two centuries, a very small percentage of the time that humans are known to have existed. What took it so long to arrive?

Human activity during the greater part of mankind's history was coordinated through collective or hierarchical organization within groups containing relatively small numbers of people. These groups competed with wolf packs and other predators but, since they consumed vegetation as well as meat, they were able to specialize: women to tasks of gathering edible vegetation, preparing food, and taking care of the young; men hunting and defending. Contemporary work by paleontologists indicates that human population near the beginning of the Stone Age, about two and a half million years ago, was small (Rogers, 1995) and was confined largely to the African continent. Population began to fan out from Africa to other parts of the world about 2 million years ago, reaching Europe about 500,000 years ago and Australia and the Americas much more recently. Toward the end of the Stone Age, from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago, human population increased rapidly. Up until fairly recently, people experienced no significant trend-like improvements in living conditions. Advantages that people gained from occasional improvements in the tools of hunting and improved knowledge about animals went mainly into population growth and not into sustained improvement in life.