From the text by James Fulcher, on capitalism, we can see that he mentions three different types of capitalism. Merchant capitalism, merchants trading goods for a profit. Capitalist production, manufacturing goods, and using labor force to create goods for profit. The last type being financial capitalism, creating banks and accumulating money profits in a financial system. James Fulcher ultimately defines capitalism as a process of investing money in order to make some sort of monetary profit. He mentions that capital is investing money to make more money. James Fulcher’s views on capitalism opened my mind to the many different pieces that go into capitalism. I always defined capitalism as private ownership like a monopoly that made a profit. What came to my mind was Andrew Carnegie’s Steel Company or Rockefeller’s Standard Oil business. But what I didn’t realize and even comprehended was the early capitalism methods.
Thinking about capitalism and creating profits, I tied this back to slavery. I realize that capitalism helped feud the use of slaves in order to make more profit. I feel that slaves were part of merchant capitalism. During the Columbian Exchange, we see trading between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. One of the things being traded was Africans that were then used as slaves. This is like the cycle of what James Fulcher defines as capital. Money is being invested into buying Africans for slavery, which is then creating more profit with the workforce maintaining plantations in order to trade tobacco, cotton, and other cash crops. I do have a question about one of James Fulcher’s statements where he mentions that “capitalists existed before capitalism”. He goes on to give an example of how merchants made money investing in goods which they would later sell for profit. Is this action not the same principles of capitalism? How can there be capitalists without capitalism following?
Good breakdown of the three historical “phases” Fulcher mentions, although you seem a little vague on the details of each. What kinds of historical developments, innovations, or technologies does he describe as contributing to the rise of each?
I agree with you that the histories of capitalism and slavery are intertwined; we will be looking more closely at this relationship later in the semester. As for your last question, it may depend how we are defining capitalism. If it just means making profit, then that has gone on since time immemorial; but if you read a bit more closely, Fulcher seems to be saying there is more to it than that for each phase/era. See also the last sentence at the bottom of p.14