Foundations & Logics of Capitalism
This Greek term means “household management” and describes how economic life was understood before capitalism.
Oikonomia
This early form of capitalism was based mainly on long-distance trade before factories dominated production
Merchant capitalism
This sociologist linked capitalism to rational organization, bureaucracy, and cultural values.
Max Weber
This theory presents European development as a natural, linear move from “traditional” to “modern.”
Modernization theory
This Marxist concept refers to early capital accumulation through dispossession (Amerindians and enslaved Africans) and coercion
Primitive accumulation
This Greek term refers to the desire to enrich oneself or to take more than one’s fair share.
Pleonexia
This later form of capitalism involved more coordination, regulation, and organized market structures.
Organized capitalism
This historian separated “market economy” from “capitalism” and focused on elite economic networks in his work The Wheels of Commerce.
Fernand Braudel
This idea claims Europe was historically unique and internally destined for industrial success.
European exceptionalism
This term refers to global developments that shape multiple regions at the same time.
Global conjunctures
Van der Linden uses this concept to describe a system where accumulation becomes an end in itself, not just a way to satisfy needs.
Abstract accumulation
This mechanism defined by Norbert Elias allows a few firms to dominate a market instead of competing freely.
Monopoly mechanism
This scholar developed world-systems theory, describing capitalism as a global system divided into core and periphery.
Immanuel Wallerstein
This concept describes a world where population growth tends to cancel out economic gains.
Malthusian world
This comparative method treats both sides of a comparison equally, without assuming one is the norm.
Reciprocal comparison
This term describes a system where money replaces personal and traditional social ties as the main way people relate economically.
Cash Nexus
This practice happens when firms cooperate to control prices or production rather than compete with each other.
Cartelization
This economic historian argued that strong institutions and secure property rights support economic development.
Douglass North
This scholar argued that Europe’s marriage patterns helped control population growth.
Hajnal
This early thinker said that trade means “buying goods at a low price and selling them at a high price, whether these goods consist of slaves, grain, animals, weapons, or clothing material."
Ibn Khaldun
These three processes describe how capitalism increasingly measures, calculates, and formalizes social life.
Pantometry, Taxametrization, and Depersonalization
This concept by Karl Marx refers to an economic system where not only goods and services but also the inputs of production become commodities.
Generalized commodity production
This historian argued that England’s landlord–tenant system helped create the conditions for capitalism.
Robert Brenner
Pomeranz criticizes using these large units of analysis because they hide important regional differences.
Continental or “civilizational” units
This historian showed that early modern globalization was driven by complex trading systems, particularly in the Indian Ocean trading world, long before full industrial capitalism emerged.
K. N. Chaudhuri