The pre-capitalist economy went through three main stages: primitive, slave and feudal.

The feudal stage belongs to a much later period (the Middle Ages), and the primitive stage was discussed in the context of the the Paleolithic. In Mesopotamia, the dominant economic organization was a form of slavery.

However, in Mesopotamia, the bulk of work was carried out by a dependent class similar to slaves, who were not legally the property of their masters but were deprived of the fruits of their labor through physical or ideological coercion.

Large landholdings dominated the economy. Landowners exploited their land directly by hiring workers, or they rented out their land in exchange for rents. They also engaged in financial activities, lending money at high interest rates, generally around 20% to 33.3% per annum, practices that contrasted sharply with the stricter rules of the neighboring Hebrews.

The loans taken out by farmers were not intended for productive investment - with the exception of shipping companies - but rather to ensure their survival until the next harvest. This situation frequently led to chronic indebtedness of the farmers.

Allow me to draw a parallel with a more recent period during antiquity (Rome), where citizens lived off the agricultural rents produced by peasants and unfree labor, as well as the spoils of war. These revenues were distributed among the citizens, not to generate more profits, but to enhance their social status. Trade and crafts were generally left to groups outside the social elite. All this contrasts with the medieval economies oriented towards profit through trade and crafts.

This illustrates a key pre-capitalist principle: financial tools were used for subsistence, and profits were directed toward social prestige rather than productive reinvestment. This stands in contrast to the later capitalist spirit, where surpluses are pursued and reinvested to generate further profit. The Mesopotamian economy, therefore, had not yet reached the final, profit-oriented stage of economic evolution.

Karl Polanyi distinguishes three forms of economic exchange: reciprocity between symmetrical groups, prevalent in primitive societies where informal credit and gift-giving suffice. Redistribution centralized around temples and palaces, compatible with Mesopotamia, where temples and palaces centralized economic activity and redistributed wealth, often in the form of rations. This preceded the development of wage labor. The third form is market exchange. Although a modern market did not fully exist, the presence of market exchanges in Mesopotamia is indisputable, attested by the existence of specific terms in Akkadian and by archaeological evidence of prices, profits, losses, fluctuations, and scarcity.

Mesopotamian households independently managed all stages of agricultural production, from sowing to final processing into bread and beer. Women also produced the textiles needed by their dependents. For goods not produced locally, households turned to specialized merchants.

Family ties were particularly important in trade. During the Paleo-Assyrian period (c. 1910-1830 BC), merchants from the city of Ashur established a trading colony at Kanesh in Anatolia, importing tin and textiles in exchange for gold and silver. Trade was based on family businesses closely linked by marriage and commercial partnerships. Kanesh was just one link in a vast international trade network.

Precious metals, unlike utilitarian metals like copper, were often exchanged with an awareness of their function as a store of value. This represents a shift from pure barter, where goods are exchanged for their immediate utility, to a form of payment where value is hoarded for future use, rather than being consumed as a commodity (e.g., bronze for armor).

Tributes and taxes were mainly paid in kind (barley or weighed silver). Temples and palaces were the main economic, administrative, political and religious centers, and also performed the first banking functions through the secure deposit of goods, first grain, then other agricultural products and finally precious metals. In this way, the first credit and loan operations were developed, long before the appearance of coins.

The Mesopotamian economy mainly used barley and silver as standards of value. Silver was weighed in standardized units, such as the sìqlum (shekel) of around 8.33 grams. As early as the ancient Babylonian period (under Hammurabi), silver was used as a common means of payment, with an early notion of nominal value ("nūbum") as opposed to real weight ("šuqulum"), anticipating the modern concept of fiat currency.

This was not yet fiat money in the strict sense, as it lacked the stamp of state authority. However, the linguistic distinction between a nominal unit of account and weighed metal represents a crucial conceptual development.

The transition to a wage labor market was a difficult one. It required two major conceptual innovations: the separation of the person's work from the final product, and the introduction of "working time" as a measurable unit. These innovations were prerequisites for the concepts of wages and salaried employment. In the IIIᵉ millennium, work was initially remunerated by fixed rations, before gradually evolving towards a wage system at the beginning of the IIᵉ millennium.

Finally, from the 26th century BC onwards, a real notion of monetary value took root, even though Mesopotamian "money" was not a coin, but rather a weighted measure of grain or metal. Thus, for important transactions or as a store of value, people often preferred to convert grain into more easily preservable silver. This practice is exemplified by the trade at Kanesh, where silver was specifically received as a store of value.

From the 21st century BC onwards, with the virtual disappearance of asymmetrical exchanges, a significant linguistic development occurred in assignment contracts. The verb "sa" began to refer specifically to the payment of a price, rather than the measurement of a commodity. Anthropologists note this as a key breakthrough, marking a clear conceptual shift in the understanding of payment and value.

We can't ignore the empirical data present in Near Eastern archives attesting to the existence of some market mechanisms, incorporating notions of profit and loss, price fluctuations and situations of scarcity. But the fundamental difficulty lies in determining the relative importance of market-based exchange within the ancient Mesopotamian economy as a whole.

While evidence confirms the existence of these market concepts, experts debate their relative importance. It is unclear whether market mechanisms were the primary driver of pricing and trade or if other economic systems were more dominant.

We know it existed, but we don't know if it was the main way, say, of determining prices or trading.

This concludes the section on economic organization in Mesopotamia. The following sections will apply a similar analysis to the economies of Egypt and China.