This has always puzzled me…why joint-stock companies didn’t exist in Roman times. Everything necessary seems to have existed in first-century Rome…take banks. Banks and lettersd of credit existed, and Roamn merchants used them to finace trding ventures. Demand: demand was high, as wealthy romans needed furnicture for their villas, wines, floor tiles, and all manner of manufactured products. The large Roman army also had vast demans for swords, armor, etc.
Communications: were quite good-Tacitus records that an Imperial message would reach the farthest reaches of Britain in 3 week’s time.
So what worked AGAINST the formation of investor-led enterprises in Rome? Was the imperial system not conducive to it, or were there other reasons?
With respect, the OP seems to be conflating two issues. The Romans, as he acknowledges, had private property, a monetary system, banks, etc. The Romans did have capitalism by most definitions. Captialism is one thing. The availability of corporations as a medium for transacting business in a capitalist or socialist economy is another.
Assuming for the sake of argument that they did not also have a parallel to the modern corporate system of ownership–I am unsure on this point–its lack would not be particularly surprising.
People in ancient times were well familiar with the concept of partnership and pooled interest. It is said that commercial insurance dates back to the Babylonians in fact, with merchants contributing to a common pool to cover the risk of running caravans between cities. I don’t have a site handy; I only rmember this because I did a report on insurance for my American History class way back in high school, and found this in the 1960s vintage encyclopedia we had at home.
Corporate structure, and the accompanying limited liability for owners, though, was looked on with suspicion for a very long time. Today forming a corporation is a formality, a matter of registration not entirely unlike getting a library card. As recently as the mid 19th Century in America forming a corporation was a very rare undertaking, and was looked on by governments with extreme suspicion. In the mid 1800s there might have been only a dozen or so corporations registered with a particular state, and those limited to very large and important undertakings such as businesses formed to lay railroads.
An illustration of the hesitation and suspicion with which coprorations were approached carries over in the custom of par value. Par value represents the maximum obligation a stockholder is contracting to assume should a business fail; if you buy stock with a par value of five dollars for one dollar and a company goes belly up, in theory the bankruptcy administrator can sue you for the other four dollars per share so he will have money with which to pay the corportion’s debts. In practice this hardly ever happens, and today many corporate shares are issued at zero par value as the “protection” provided by par value is essentially meaningless. Back in the 19th century and before, though, par value had real meaning as an assurance to creditors, especially as stock was generally sold to investors at par value, so that the reported par value of stock issue was usually a good indicator of initial capitalization.
If the ancient Romans did not have corporations, it may be because people found the idea of doing business with people who had guaranteed limited liability too scary.
I think the client/patron system sort of took the place of a joint stock system. For example, if I were a small merchant and I wanted to expand my business, I would go to my patron for a loan/gift.