this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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ancient Rome had a market and wasn't a capitalist economy but rather a slave economy, for example
'Market' is separate from 'Stock Market'. The Stock Market is a specifically capitalist financial instrument and innovation whose entire purpose is to facilitate private ownership of the means of production by an investor class - ie, capitalism.
'Slave economy' is not mutually exclusive with capitalism.
The economy of the early Roman Empire is a kind of proto-mercantilist proto-capitalist position wherein both advanced investor ownership (such as legalistic forms of corporate personhood, limited liability firms, and, by some arguments, joint-stock companies) and traditional economic forms co-existed, not unlike 18th century Russia.
as it is I can't tell you whether the Chinese economy is capitalist or not. public ownership dominates the economy, and a stock market does exist, but what it does I can't tell you. just knowing what it's called doesn't do much for me. I have yet to read a book about the Chinese economy that would explain it to me. the other aspect about china I was interested in though is that they do use Marxist contradiction analysis a lot, either to solve or create problems.
... the majority of China's GDP and employment is produced by private companies; many of the state enterprises in the remainder offer stock and dividends to private investors like private companies do.
... it trades in ownership of firms.
I do know that stock markets trade in the ownership of companies, but to what end it's being used or whether it has any interesting features I can't tell you. I didn't know about the GDP, but I was going from the top 100 Chinese company's public ownership share (the majority of top 100 companies are majority state owned, plus an additional ~15% that's classified as mixed ownership, between 10% to 50% state ownership). that's a bit misguided of me and I apologize.