What if capitalism isn't a thing?

I am too tired to answer this more fully, and I am sure someone else can do it better than me, but what was prevalent in ancient rome was not wage labour...

I had to look up the word

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It's evinces not envinces.

Wage labour (and commodity exchange) existed in pre-capitalist societies. That's not especially controversial, Marx discusses it for example. The difference is that these farmers hadn't yet been dispossessed of their land, thereby becoming proletarians - they did not have nothing to sell but their labour. The difference is that commodity exchange was not the organising fundamental principle of pre-cap society and dispossessed proletarians did not exist as a class, except in a very limited sense.

Marx:

The point isn't that wage labour or commodity production never existed in some form in earlier societies. Quite the opposite, because for capitalism to come in to being earlier societies had to develop some of these social forms first. The point about capitalism is that it is the society where wage labour and commodity production are the forms that dominate social relationships. This wasn't the case in Ancient Rome when seen as a totality. They had huge slave labour camps just outside of the big cities producing grain and lots of subsistence farming too. There were contradictions between wage labour and slavery that threatened to destroy Roman society, because if all the slaves were doing the work then there was none for citizens to do and so citizens would starve (hence the giving of 'bread and circuses' being such an important part of social stability.) So there are obvious ways in which Roman society can be understood as developing social relationships similar to our own at times, but, at the same time, the overriding general character of social relationships was quite different.

Antonio, Django and Malva are correct regarding Rome, and the key differences between wage labour then and today.

On one level, I agree with you, of course all those kinds of exploitation/oppression are bad. However how can we practically "fight feudalism" or chattel slavery? We can support struggles like that where they crop up (as we do, mostly in terms of publicising them http://libcom.org/tags/peasants for example). But capitalism is the dominant economic force on the planet, and wage labour (or absence of wage labour) is the condition most of us experience, so is what we should focus on.

I'm also not sure what the title is supposed to mean, "what if capitalism isn't a thing". I mean, I doubt anyone here would actually say it is, so I can't really see the connection between the topic title and the OP, which rightly points out that all forms of exploitation are to be fought.

Debts are not new, but the nature of debt has changed quite a bit. And feudalism was not characterised primarily by 'debt' in the same way as either the household/consumer or commercial debt of today. If anything, feudal Europe was notable for the assertion of political power to wipe aside or repudiate such debt. When powerful feudal rulers became heavily indebted, it was time for a pogrom/accusation of heresy/seizing some mines and going on a minting spree, or just declaring a revaluation of the local currency. Indeed, both Christianity and Islam banned usury, and feudal rulers often took the side of rebellious peasants against usurers (typically in order to reinforce their own claims over the land, labour and produce of the peasants, of course).

The personal relations of patronage, levies/tithes and use-rights that predominated in feudal Europe followed a logic of direct hierarchy and customary responsibilities and privileges. This is quite different to the logic of 'free' labour and 'free' contracts characteristic of capitalism.

Commercial debt had a bit more of a role in ancient/classical societies, but these societies were based much more on taxation and tribute (in coin, produce, or labour), and redistribution through the state, temples, and personal patronage. Both commercial interest-bearing debt and some forms of wage labour were usually present in some form, but typically peripheral to or even at odds with the dominant political economy.

With all respect to Marx, I'd probably say that the key class struggle was between the patrician slave-owning class and the slaves who were the main productive base for society, while the original proletariat were basically a marginalised strata excluded from both the patrician landowner-slavery complex at the base of the economy and also from the patrician-freedman relations that dominated the state administration. They could find some wage work, especially in the military, although soldiers often went years without seeing any pay (besides a share of the plunder). However, many proles relied heavily on the corn dole and various other state payments, and/or were supported as miscellaneous hangers-on for powerful households.

Proletarian riots and unrest were a fairly regular part of Roman political life, but slave revolts were much more threatening to the system as a whole.

Capitalism isn't "a thing." It's a social relation of production. The expansion of debt, the incorporation of "primitive" facets of accumulation, etc. are dependent on that primary relation of production.

Wage-labor is not historically unique, no more than value is historically unique. Getting it, wage-labor/value/capital, to this level of expression is unique to capitalism.

OK, too little sleep, not enough coffee, I'll try to make some sense.
Given that the the primary cause of exploitation is capitalism, then trying to ameliorate it while ignoring the root cause is ultimately an unproductive course of action. Of course fighting exploitation individually is important, to do so while ignoring the prevailing economic ideology will only bring about reforming capitalism, rather than replacing it. I'm pretty sure that wasn't what you were suggesting, but IMO I don't think that it is possible to successfully fight exploitation in a capitalist system without fighting capitalism. You might be able to win some battles over eg wages, conditions in some arenas, but then the same exploitations will crop up somewhere else.
I don't feel that household debt is anything new within capitalism, it just feels like it's a recent phenomenon, because in the last few decades household debt has been relatively low. Excuse my poor citation skills here, but according to Hobsbawm "Age of Extremes" in 1933 nearly half of all US mortgages were in default and a thousand properties a day were being foreclosed. Another example of how much household debt was prevalent can be found in Robert Robertsons "The ClassicSlum" which articulates just how much the population of edwardian Salford were dependent on pawn shops to survive. You only have to read Dickens to get a feel of how much the spectre of debtors' prison haunted victorian society. I think that household debt is nothing new, but the form it takes is different to that in feudal societies. Under capitalism a certain amount of household debt is deemed desirable, as it allows people to continue consuming and it only becomes problematic when it large numbers of people default and the lenders risk losing their profits on peoples' debts.

Additionally, although some interesting points of comparison can be made, I don't think that it is particularly useful to compare contemporary capitalism to ancient Rome, given that the two things are so structurally different. As well as Rome being predominantly agrarian society, the state apparatus was vastly different to what we have now, even though modern society has tried to ape roman institutions ie political systems have senators, much of british law is called roman law, what the romans had would be unrecognisable to us. The judiciary, education, media -or absence of it- are just some of the things that made the functioning of roman society very different. Some of the wealthiest people in the early empire period( 1st and 2nd century A.C.E.) were actually freed slaves, who had made their money in commerce, but because of their social status held little or no political sway, other than throwing money at the patrician class, which was a bit of a dangerous thing to do given the constant internecine conflicts between the ruling families - always a good chance of backing the wrong horse.

I think what Antonio de cleyre meant to write was "What if capitalism isn't the thing?" because he thinks the primary economic goal of anarchists is to fight exploitation, not capitalism.