[civvv]

I don't know. Certainly the underlying mechanisms of capitalism remain the same, but it does not hurt to clarify the context that it exists within. The world is very different today, than say the 1960's, but the "rules" were the same. Capitalism has been accelerated a lot by the rise of information technology, specifically the internet, and today it is a whole different beast with unique "opportunities" and consequences.

[LargeWu]

I think the differentiating feature is that capitalism used to be tethered to producing things that were useful. The current model of wealth acquisition, so called "late-stage" seems to have shifted more towards rent seeking and extraction.

[iamacyborg]

The only things that's true now is that there's more laxity around consolidation of power in big business. The core tenets of capitalism haven't changed in thousands of years.

[cardanome]

Capitalism only exists for like 500 years. In some places of the world it did not fully develop until the 20th century. It is very young.

Are you confusing capitalism with class society in general? Yes, class society exists since the neolithic revolution. Those economic systems had barely anything in common with capitalism though. Even medieval feudalism is very different.

And yes, late stage capitalism is a term. It was coined by Lenin in his book about Imperialism. You might not agree with the term but that doesn't mean it is not real.

I think it is very obvious that 20th and 21st century monopoly capitalism is qualitatively different to 18th and 19th century free market capitalism.

[gzread]

The current financial system, which is integral to the current form of capitalism, only existed since 2008.

[civvv]

I would be reluctant to say that capitalism, as we have had after the industrial revolution, has existed in the same form for thousands of years. That just seems silly.

[iamacyborg]

What seems silly about it? Labour is certainly more efficient but the principles and the outcomes remain largely the same.

[civvv]

I think you are right in that the primary mechanisms remain the same, or at least similar, but that was not my point anyways. The surrounding adjectives describe more the context of which capitalism exists within.

The effects and consequences of capitalism under feudalism or the age of slavery is, for example, fundamentally different from capitalism under a freer modern democracy. A slave or serf did not have the opportunities of capitalism, which changes how the system behaves and its effects.

The term "capitalism" becomes kind of meaningless, because it just describes a broad set of mechanisms. In the case of the question in this thread it is much more descriptive to include the context of which it exists within.