Gimme Culture

[A]ll historical evidence confirms that the sudden appearance of large amounts of ‘capital’ (in the form of a stock of precious metals and other treasures) in a society previously confined almost exclusively to natural economy (to the output of goods possessing only use-value) was the result not of ‘frugality’ and ‘thrift’ but of large-scale piracy, robbery, violence, theft, enslavement and trade in slaves. The history of the origins of Western European usury and merchant capital between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, from the piracy of the Mediterranean through the plundering of Byzantium by the Fourth Crusade to the regular plundering razzias into the Slav territories of Central and Eastern Europe, is very eloquent in this respect.