How did economics work before capitalism? What major differences

> trade especially was for a long time not continuous like our own, but consisted essentially in a series of individual undertakings. Only gradually did the activities of even the large merchants acquire an inner cohesion (with branch organizations, etc.).

- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

>>2750261
It was basically feudalism.

>>2750425
But what did feudalists do different compared to us today, if we put aside whole "the whole kingdom is technically owned by the king and everybody else is renting it".

Marxists insist that capitalism didn't exist prior to the industrial revolution but that's wrong.

>>2750891
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manorialism

>>2751221
It did exist, but only in merchant city-states.

There's a difference between something existing in very small parts of the world, and something being the dominant economic system everywhere.

The basis of capitalism, i.e. use thing you have to buy thing you want in an exchange of goods you both seem to be a good trade has been around since man first walked upright.

>>2751237
Capitalism isn't simply trading with people. Capitalism is a specific system of people working for a wage, and certain people not associated with the State owning private property.

Until after WW2, bartering was still the most common form of transaction in the world.

Remember that.

>>2751237

That's not what capitalism is. That's just trade. Capitalism means a particular kind of trading, specifically of productive labor rather than the products themselves. If you have a job that makes your employer money, your employer is a capitalist. (Also, if you own stock in any company, YOU are a capitalist, technically being the employer yourself.)

>>2750261
there has never been a time "before capitalism"

>>2751246
just before WW2, Korea was the second poorest country in the world, beaten only by Haiti

economic history is fun