I have made no apology for capitalism. If this is what you got from what I wrote, then you have trouble with reading comprehension.
I did not make a comparison between Mesopotamian property law and present property law. My point was that private ownership of property is a function of human society literally as old as recorded history, as well as the idea of legal privileges around property ownership.
Because the cartoon is based on the premise that these ideas come from capitalism, the entire argument is faulty.
I’ll quote from my original post:
I am not arguing that these things are right and good. I am arguing that linking them specifically to capitalism represents a desperately uneducated understanding of human society and history.
You are falsely equating the concept of owning physical things that you interact with every day (your clothes, your home, your fields, your tools) to private ownership as it exists under capitalism which as I said before is utterly ridiculous in every sense.
Property ownership in ancient Mesopotamia did not involve abstract for profit entities. It did not involve ownership of ideas, or words, or concepts, it involved the land you worked on, specifically with regards to buying and selling agricultural land that you and your family directly worked on for generations.
Ima just bold the following, since you seem to have not read the comic
Capitalism has created the concept of abstract property, and it has created a legal system that enforces and manages this property. It includes ideas, concepts, words, and time. Capitalism claims to own the means by which all things are produced, and the law enforces that all the fruits of human labor are given wholesale to capitalism. The CEO of a company legally possesses hundreds of thousands of people’s labor every single day. This did not exist in Mesopotamia or any other culture around the world until the 17th century and the deconstruction of the peasantry as a class that both produced and self-managed their production.
Prior to capitalism and prior to the death of free labor, workers entirely self managed. The concept of hiring and firing didnt exist. Peasantry were paid by the day, not by the hour, for their labor and generally only worked the minimum amount of days they had to afford their homes and their food. Food was provided to workers throughout the day, and a part of their general working day involved napping for an extended period of time. Their time still belonged to them, and they were free to spend it how they chose so long as some amount of work was completed.
Capitalism has constructed the concept that both all things belong either to capitalists themselves or to lords who have legal authority to steal half of workers labor. Capitalism has constructed legal frameworks by which they can control a workers time down to the minute, and are not required to pay them for a days work. Capitalism has gone even further to create legal framework by which not complying with their demands for your time and your labor can result in them literally throwing you out on the streets and refusing to allow you to labor such that you cannot feed and house yourself and your family.
I repeat,
Nothing like this concept of ownership has EVER existed prior to the early 17th century.
I have made no apology for capitalism. If this is what you got from what I wrote, then you have trouble with reading comprehension.
I did not make a comparison between Mesopotamian property law and present property law. My point was that private ownership of property is a function of human society literally as old as recorded history, as well as the idea of legal privileges around property ownership.
Because the cartoon is based on the premise that these ideas come from capitalism, the entire argument is faulty.
I’ll quote from my original post:
You are falsely equating the concept of owning physical things that you interact with every day (your clothes, your home, your fields, your tools) to private ownership as it exists under capitalism which as I said before is utterly ridiculous in every sense.
Property ownership in ancient Mesopotamia did not involve abstract for profit entities. It did not involve ownership of ideas, or words, or concepts, it involved the land you worked on, specifically with regards to buying and selling agricultural land that you and your family directly worked on for generations.
Ima just bold the following, since you seem to have not read the comic
Capitalism has created the concept of abstract property, and it has created a legal system that enforces and manages this property. It includes ideas, concepts, words, and time. Capitalism claims to own the means by which all things are produced, and the law enforces that all the fruits of human labor are given wholesale to capitalism. The CEO of a company legally possesses hundreds of thousands of people’s labor every single day. This did not exist in Mesopotamia or any other culture around the world until the 17th century and the deconstruction of the peasantry as a class that both produced and self-managed their production.
Prior to capitalism and prior to the death of free labor, workers entirely self managed. The concept of hiring and firing didnt exist. Peasantry were paid by the day, not by the hour, for their labor and generally only worked the minimum amount of days they had to afford their homes and their food. Food was provided to workers throughout the day, and a part of their general working day involved napping for an extended period of time. Their time still belonged to them, and they were free to spend it how they chose so long as some amount of work was completed.
Capitalism has constructed the concept that both all things belong either to capitalists themselves or to lords who have legal authority to steal half of workers labor. Capitalism has constructed legal frameworks by which they can control a workers time down to the minute, and are not required to pay them for a days work. Capitalism has gone even further to create legal framework by which not complying with their demands for your time and your labor can result in them literally throwing you out on the streets and refusing to allow you to labor such that you cannot feed and house yourself and your family.
I repeat,
Nothing like this concept of ownership has EVER existed prior to the early 17th century.