"'Capital' imperialism and exploitation in ancient world systems"

Abstract

The above title may appear provocative to those who would maintain that capital is, by definition, wage-labor capital, that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, and that before the industrial revolution there were only embedded economies whose goals were related to the gaining of prestige, conspicuous consumption, and the maintenance of alliances for social reasons (Polanyi, 1947; Finley, 1973: 130, 158). This is because our argument is aimed at a tendency in anthropology and anthropologically influenced history and archeology to divide the world's history into distinctive market/ non-market or capitalist/ pre-capitalist systems. We feel that such substantivist and historical materialist