Well I'm sort of taking my thesis from Fernand Braudel (and Andre Gundar Frank.. though he would later reject 'capitalism' as a label entirely, read his
ReOrient for a super-revisionist account of world economic history). That is 'capitalism' refers to the historically phenomenon of the movement of 'capital' starting in Europe and reaching global scale-dominance in the 15-16th Century following De Gama and Colombus. In this account the state by manipulating the market was always an essential part of the project, only that the maneouvers of states always benefitted 'capitalists'. Consider that the first real consumer goods in Euro-American history were crops like Sugar, Tea, Tobacco, etc which were only grown with slave labour but were backed by state-run monopolies; viz. The British East India Company, The British Royal African Company, their French equivalents, etc. The market played little role in this formulation. 19th Century liberal states re-formulated their economies by liberalizing them* by they were formerly national states interested in developing national economies so British Textiles became dominant as the British State destroyed the Indian textile industry... and this continues today with the protectionist policies in the north in say agriculture reducing markets in the 'south'. If we take 'capitalism' to mean free markets or even semi-free markets no such state has ever existed.
* - yes this is economic history 101 (less than that) but a real explanation would take too long
Poll
