From Feudal Lords to AI Billionaires: Capitalism's Thousand-Year Conquest of the World

Nov 27, 2025

In this engaging discussion, Harvard historian Sven Beckert explores the complex history of capitalism, highlighting its roots in merchant communities and the significant role of slavery in American capitalism. He challenges the notion that alternatives to capitalism could return us to a romanticized pre-capitalist era, arguing that such a regression is both impossible and undesirable. Beckert even delves into the implications of AI on future economic systems, emphasizing the need for political actions to address inequality and environmental challenges in our capitalist framework.

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INSIGHT

Capitalism As A Historical Logic

Sven Beckert argues capitalism is a historical logic, not a natural state of human exchange.
He says capitalism enabled unprecedented productivity and reduced historical scarcities.

INSIGHT

Profit-Seeking Logic Unites Capitalisms

Beckert defines capitalism as privately owned capital invested to generate more capital across diverse forms.
That profit-seeking logic persists across time and places despite varied capitalist systems.

ANECDOTE

Merchants In Aden Illustrate Early Capitalism

Beckert traces early capitalist logic to marginal merchant communities between 1000–1500, citing Aden around 1150 as an example.
He shows similar merchant networks appeared in China, India, Africa and Europe.

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Should we be giving thanks today for our capitalist system? Maybe. But we should certainly be thankful for a 1100-page book about the history of capitalism published this week by the Harvard historian Sven Beckert. Entitled Capitalism: A Global History, this magisterial history, which took Beckert 8 years to write, covers the last thousand years of our increasingly dominant capitalist world. In fact, Beckert suggests, capitalism has become so ubiquitous that most of us can’t imagine an alternative economic system. If we are fish, then it’s our water. So what, exactly, were the origins of capitalism? And is there really an alternative economic system? What, if anything, will come after capitalism? A happy (capitalist) Thanksgiving everyone.

1. Capitalism Isn’t Natural—It’s Historical Capitalism is a radical departure from previous forms of economic life, not the default state of human exchange. Because it’s historical, it had a beginning—and anything with a beginning can have an end.

2. The Death of Capitalism Has Been Wrongly Predicted for 200 Years From Marx onward, critics have forecast capitalism’s imminent collapse. Beckert is skeptical of these predictions—most of capitalism’s history came after someone declared it finished.

3. There’s No Going Back to the Pre-Capitalist Village The nostalgic alternative—returning to some pre-modern arrangement—is both impossible and undesirable. Feudal lords extracting surplus from peasants, subsistence farming at the margins of survival: there’s nothing romantic about scarcity and exploitation.

4. We Have the Means to Solve Our Problems—We Lack the Political Will The capitalist revolution has given us unprecedented productive capacity. We could feed everyone, educate everyone, provide universal healthcare. The obstacles aren’t material—they’re political choices.

5. AI Could Liberate Us or Concentrate Wealth Further—It’s a Political Decision If artificial intelligence delivers massive productivity gains, those gains could go to a tiny elite or be distributed broadly through shorter work weeks, better wages, expanded education. The technology doesn’t determine the outcome. We do.

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