Economic systems How societies have answered the economic questions — what to produce, how, and for whom: from sharing and command to the market, the mixed economy and the Islamic alternative of riba-free trade and zakat.
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Sharing and command + Before 10,000 BCE The gift economy + c. 10,000 BCE Surplus and the command economy The market economy + c. 600 BCE Money makes the market + 8th–15th c. The Islamic trading economy The Islamic economy + 610–632 The revealed economy + 622–632 The market of Madinah + 8th–13th c. An economy of partnership Capitalism and its critics + c. 1600s Mercantilism + 1776 The Wealth of Nations + c. 1760–1850 Industrial capitalism + 1848 / 1867 The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital + 1929 The Great Depression The mixed economy and its rivals + 1944 Bretton Woods and the welfare state + 1917–1991 The planned economy + 1978 China’s market socialism + 1963–1975 Islamic economics returns Now + 2008 The financial crisis + Today Three systems in contest 