I knew someone once who thought capitalism was basically all forms of commerce.

Here’s the problem: if capitalism is essentially just a remix of mercantilism and industrial manufacturing, then it’s not something fundamentally new. If it’s not something fundamentally new, then it is not itself going to lead to anything else fundamentally new; that is to say: the belief in a future utopia DEPENDS on a history being an arrow instead of a circle. The more you tie capitalism back to earlier eras, the more you erode the belief that there is something better coming after the Bell riots.