Capitalism and Socialism: Crash Course World History #33

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to talk about capitalism.

Yeah, Mr. Green, capitalism just turns men into wolves. Your purportedly free markets

only makes slave of us all..

Oh god Stan, it's me from college. Me from the past has become me from college. This

is a disaster! The reason he's so unbearable, Stan, is that he refuses to recognize the

legitimacy of other people's narratives. And that means that he will never ever be able

to have a productive conversation with another human in his entire life.

So listen, me from the past. I'm gonna disappoint you by being too capitalist. And I'm gonna

disappoint a lot of other people by not being capitalist enough. And I'm gonna disappoint

the historians by not using enough jargon. But what can I do? We only have twelve minutes!

Fortunately, capitalism is all about efficiency.

So let's do this, me from college: Randy [Ransom] Riggs becomes a best-selling author, Josh

Radnor stars in a great sitcom, it is NOT going to work out with Emily, and do NOT go

to Alaska with a girl you've known for ten days. Okay, let's talk capitalism.

So capitalism is an economic system, but it's also a cultural system. It's characterized

by innovation and investment to increase wealth. But today, we're going to focus on production

and how industrial capitalism changed it. Stan, I can't wear these emblems of the bourgeoisie

while Karl Marx himself is looking at me, it's ridiculous.

I'm changing! Very hard to take off a shirt dramatically.

So let's say it's 1200 CE and you're a rug merchant. Just like merchants today, you sometimes

need to borrow money in order to buy the rugs you want to resell at a profit, and then you

pay that money back, often with interest, once you've resold the rugs. This is called

mercantile capitalism, and it was a global phenomenon, from the Chinese, to the Indian

Ocean trade network, to Muslim merchants who would sponsor trade caravans across the Sahara.

But by the 17th century, merchants in the Netherlands and in Britain had expanded upon

this idea to create joint stock companies. Those companies could finance bigger trade

missions and also spread the risk of international trade. But the thing about international trade

is that sometimes boats sink or they get taken by pirates, and while that's bad if you're

a sailor because, you know, you lose your life, it's really bad if you're a mercantile

capitalist because you lost all your money. But if you own one-tenth of ten boats, your

risk is much better managed. That kind of investment definitely increased wealth, but

it only affected a sliver of the population and it didn't create a culture of capitalism.

Industrial capitalism was something altogether different, both in scale and in practice.

Let's use Joyce Appleby's definition of industrial capitalism: "An economic system that relies on

investment of capital in machines and technology that are used to increase production of marketable goods."

So imagine that someone made a Stan machine (by the way Stan, this is a remarkable likeness)

and that Stan machine could produce and direct 10 times more episodes of Crash Course than

a human Stan. Well, of course, even if there are upfront costs I'm going to invest in a

Stan machine so I can start cranking out 10 times the knowledge - Stan, are you focusing

on the robot instead of me? I AM THE STAR OF THE SHOW. Stanbot, you're going behind the globe.