I have complained about it before but I heard on of the guests from guerrilla history on the deprogram make this argument and it made me want to gouge my eyes out. This kind of trans historical argumentation is both stupid and unmarxist, just stop! Sorry I felt the need to vent.

These states were not imperialist and they weren't settler colonies. This framing doesn't make any fucking sense when transfered to a medieval context. Like the best you could say is that the Italian city states represented an early firm of merchant capital, but even then that is an incredibly complex phenomenon that has only a tenuous connection to modern capitalism. Calling these city states early capitalism is just a fancy way of saying "lol u hate capitalism yet you exchange good or service! Curious!"

Seriously just stop. I don't know why this set me off but it was like a week ago and I am still mad about it.

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[–] Moonworm@hexbear.net 24 points 2 years ago (3 children)

The nature of production and "economy" (which almost doesn't feel appropriate as a term) in medieval Europe was very different from later in the early modern period where we find the first manifestations of capitalism and colonialism and imperialism in our contemporary, Marxist sense.

The incentives are just different for the people involved in the crusades than that of settlers. Sure, in a superficial sense, there are similarities: some people from place go to another place and make war for their own gain. But when we break it down, the specifics of the incentive structure are different because they relate to different society and economy underpinning them.

The crusaders weren't going to the Levant or Egypt to establish a periphery with exploitable natural resources and labor to feed their manufacturing back home. Even if some of them moved there, they weren't quite doing it to settle either. These were already developed, wealthy places. The crusades were basically peer-conflicts. The European polities and Kings did not have the technology or infrastructure to subjugate in such a totalizing manner the people there.

It's difficult. There's a lot of things I want to express and touch on that give shape to the particular nature of the crusades as opposed to other wars of conquest or colonization. There's the religious aspect, which isn't just meant as a sort of basis for the crusades absent any material incentive, but that the Catholic Church was an immensely important and present force in the political (and personal) lives of the people who carried them out. Maybe the most important thing is that there was not capitalism and that the direct, important players of the crusades were not capitalists. The concept of reinvesting your surplus into more numerous, more productive, more intensive capital in order to expand ever-faster was not the way that kings were negotiating power then. The holy land was wealthy. It would provide a tax base, it would provide opportunity, it would provide glory, status, and legitimacy among peers and challengers. That's probably more along the lines of what the incentives for the crusades were for the nobility.

At least, this is a loose organization of some of my thoughts on the matter. There's more to say, certainly.

[–] CrimsonSage@hexbear.net 12 points 2 years ago

For me the fact that a majority of the big players in the crusades were already powerful individuals who effectively lost everything in their prosecution, exemplifies what you put so well.

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