Max Weber: Selections in Translation

In the period of the Warring States, the politically determined capitalism which is common in patrimonial states, based on money-lending and contracting for the princes, seems to have been of considerable significance and to have functioned at high rates of profit, as always under such conditions. Mines and trade are also cited as sources of capital accumulation. Under the Han dynasty, there are reputed to have been multi-millionaires, reckoned in terms of copper. But China's political unification into a world-empire, like the unification of the known world by Imperial Rome, had the obvious consequence that this form of capitalism, which was essentially rooted in the state and its competition with other states, went into decline. The development of a purely market capitalism, directed towards free exchange, on the other hand, remained at an embryonic stage. In all sections of industry, of course, even in the cooperative undertakings to be discussed presently, the merchant, here as elsewhere, was conspicuously superior to the technician. This clearly showed itself even in the usual proportions in which profits were distributed within associations. The interlocal industries also, it is plain, often brought in considerable speculative profits. The ancient classical disposition to set a high value on agriculture, as the truly hallowed calling, hence did not prevent a higher valuation being placed, even as early as the first century B.C., on the opportunities for profit from industry than on those from agriculture (just as in the Talmud), nor did it prevent the highest valuation of all being placed on those from trade.