Ahmet Aykac

If one looks at the Western experience, one can distinguish several clear epochs: Antiquity, the Feudal order, and the capitalist order in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. In Antiquity slave ownership was the source of power; those who owned the people had a right to the fruits of their efforts. In the Feudal period, the source of such power was the land; those who owned the land on which people worked had the rights to the fruits of their efforts. In the current, capitalist, period, as its name implies, those who own the capital can extract the surplus value created.

Each of these long periods has recognizably different characteristics but each ‘successful’ society has been similar in a number of respects. In particular, they were all efficient at acquiring and using the critical source of power at the time. Each had appropriate legal structures, governance structures, financial systems, measurement systems, and organizational styles. At each historical transition of the source of economic power, moreover, there were upheavals as social systems had to change to accommodate a new order. Those that did not make the transition simply ceased to be ‘powerful’ entities.

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