CHAPTER 1. The long march of capitalism

Market forces are taking over the planet.

This inexorable onward march of money explains most of history’s recent convulsions.

The ultimate expression of the triumph of individualism, and having become the world’s overriding law, the market will soon produce the hyper-empire, unleashing hyper-conflict, and potentially giving way to hyper-democracy.

Two deadly waves, and possibly a third.

But to understand what this future may be like, we need to take a brief historical tour of the past, around the 9 “hearts” of capitalism.

Since earliest times, every human group has organised itself around wealth, language, land, a philosophy, and a leader.

Three powers have always co-existed:
. religious,
. military,
. mercantile.

The ideal of the Market Order, where the dominant group is the one that controls the economy, is individualistic.

A society remains stable so long as the dominant group controls the distribution of wealth.

In the Market Order it expends it on productive investments. The defense of its own power is its number one priority.

It is constantly seeking to make technical progress, increasingly exploit the weak and expand its dominion so that it can continue to thrive. If it fails, another group takes its place.

The history of this Market Order is marked by the laws of history, by constants, which shape its development, and it is vital to have an understanding of them.

They will still be at work in the future and will help us predict its course.

For the same force is always in play: the one that gradually frees man from all constraints.

This individualistic order, holding human rights up as an absolute ideal, is capable of generating wealth far better than any other before it, but only by constantly going against its own ideal.

Twelve centuries before Christ, the Market Order is at first no more than a tiny parasite working at the heart of theocratic or imperialist societies. Later, it starts competing with them, gradually replacing all the princes with merchants, all services with mass-produced industrial goods.

At the origin of the idea of freedom, two thousand years later it will lead to the creation of the market democracy. So far, the Market Order has existed in nine successive forms, nine “hearts”. It is the history of these “hearts” and this frame of reference of capitalism that we shall be looking at in this series.