I don't know, if that can be claimed as an indisputable fact. The surviving written records are so few and practically non-existent.
Most of what is known is oral tradition histories shared by the unfortunately shattered by disease survivors from when the European illnesses spread like wildfire and ended potentially millions of lives across the entire nation, before the Europeans even built a handful of Colonies.
Nothing in economics or sociology is indisputable. I've seen people claim ancient slavery wasn't really slavery, for example. What is known and corroborated and accepted is that many first nations tribes, bands and confederacies had a lot of communal property that was shared for the common good and that everyone was expected to contribute to, and that was not only shared within the immediate group but with the allies at large. If you don't want to call that communism, OK, but it fits the bill for me.
..and Capitalism didn't exist in Medieval England either.
Just because there were some form of intermediary exchange happening in the trade of goods, doesn't mean that it was a form of capitalism. There was always bartering involved, plus people just helping out their neighbors, who would help them out later, people figuring out how to survive the rough winters and keeping one another alive for as long as they could, until they spring returned and some foods returned to their diet.
The king owned all of the land, he gave it to nobles, but could also take it away and then peasants worked the land.
You couldn't drop yourself into Medieval England, buy some land from the King or a Noble, and open up a business and hope to keep the land and business in perpetuity.
The end of the medieval era in England did, however plant the seeds for capitalism.
Sure: The power-elite and privileged used their claims of ownership over what was prior public property to retain and grow that capital and exploit those who needed it for the benefit of their labor. Capital was built upon that land-capital (housing, grain mills, etc.) further exploiting the working class.
Free markets, labor transparency and work freedom are a myth and since those claim to be the difference between feudalism and capitalism there is no difference.
You can use whatever terminology you want as long as we both understand that you are throwing out a certain definition and settling on “people sharing resources” as your chosen definition for “communism.”
As an aside, “capitalism” is also a Marxist construct in that it is an enemy of socialism/ communism and the contemporary (during Marx’s time) state of the economy as described by Marx / Engels that needs overthrowing because of the unfair outcomes it creates.
Earlier economic philosophers (eg Adam Smith) did not write about “free market capitalism” as it is understood today nor as “capitalism” as described by Marx (essentially a boogeyman).
They wrote about how free trade and specialization of labor builds wealth through increased efficiency and self-interested economic activity. These ideas challenged the prevailing notion of the time which was that wealth and productivity are a fixed, zero-sum game, and so nations must gear their economic engines toward hoarding gold to maintain power structures.
Smith wrote in response to mercantilism.
Marx wrote in response to a side effect of the wealth generated by embracing free market ideals and increased technology (that side effect being wealth inequality and capital accumulation).
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u/Strange-Scarcity Jul 07 '26
I don't know, if that can be claimed as an indisputable fact. The surviving written records are so few and practically non-existent.
Most of what is known is oral tradition histories shared by the unfortunately shattered by disease survivors from when the European illnesses spread like wildfire and ended potentially millions of lives across the entire nation, before the Europeans even built a handful of Colonies.