this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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I mean, go back and read up on The Inclosure Acts and you're going to see the real bedrock of modern capitalism.
The relationship between aristocrats and serfs was materially different than capitalists and wage laborers. The former was more a method of formalized raiding and looting, while the later never lets labor have their hands on the goods to begin with.
In the same vein, Guilds were - at their heart - a system of professionalizing a craft and passing that knowledge on generation to generation. The modern academic institutions simply don't do that. Academic students have to demonstrate a broad competency in academic skills, but they have very little exposure to the commercial applications of their labor until the start their careers. A guild apprentice or journeyman is already building a client network as part of their training, while a college student only cultivates these relationships extra-curricularly (via internships or fellowships outside of the classroom).
These are radically different systems in practice, even if you can draw some vague parallels between instances of labor exploitation.
Never said that the relationship was the same, only that exploitation still existed back then, though I must admit I worded my sentence poorly.
Granted, you're painting the guild relationships as if they were merely teaching devices, while that's far from the truth and just falls to medieval ideological propaganda. In reality, they were an early form of "capitalist exploitation" for the lack of a better term in a pre-capitalistic society, it's very similar to the surplus value extraction that we see today. The master owned the tools, workshop, guild membership, etc which constituted as means of production of that time. The apprentice sold their labor power and essentially themselves thanks to the contracts in exchange for subsistence which is literally what wages are designed to do also.
The other forms were different though, yes, but they were still exploitative. Marx didn't write "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." for no reason.