askchapo

What people immediately missed upon transition to capitalism were two things: the commonly owned land which had been taken from them and the greater autonomy in production and reproduction, which was replaced by strict control. To clarify the latter:

In capitalism, production of commodities and reproduction of labor power (like eating to be able to work again the next day) are strictly separated in two different spheres. Any created value is immediately under the direct material control of the capitalist, who decides, considering their best interests alone, what to funnel back into reproduction (via wages). Under capitalism, a worker can't go to the market, sell the product they created, buy food, eat it and then say:"Sorry boss, that's all that's left of the revenue. Guess we all suffer from the recession." No, the boss takes everything first and is free to give back less, than the worker needs to survive.

This system ensures, that production can thrive for some time, even when reproduction is in crisis (until the crisis inevitably catches up with production when demand lowers, but this can be mitigated by buying labor on a different market than the market where you sell commodities - colonialism). It makes the system more flexible and resilient by enabling over-exploitation. It's also the material basis for the further separation of live into other spheres such as private/family(empathy expected) vs public(empathy punished) as well as political (democratic ambitions are limited to this sphere) vs economic (explicitly non-democratic).

Pre capitalist economies are much less strict in the division between production and reproduction. When looking at different feudal contexts, expect the producing classes to be able to funnel considerable value into the process of reproduction before their lord gets a cut off what's left. This means in a crisis, such as a draught, the capacity of the lord to over-exploit is more tightly limited. People could more easily eat directly from the field first and worry later about what's due to their lord. A feudal lord could still raise taxes above what people need to survive, if they whish to over-exploit, but it's much harder to benefit from this. Their serfs will try everything to survive and hide stuff from the collectors they send around. Also, they are bound to the land. Getting new ones isn't as easy as posting a job offer and hiring new workers.

In general, transitions in economic systems don't take place, if they don't increase the ability of the new exploiting class to exploit. That's how they get an edge over the old class. Else, the old ruling classes would just stay in power. Feudal lords won over slave holders not because they were somehow less evil, but because they were more efficient and/or resilient than slave holders at exploiting people. Capitalist were even better at exploitation than feudal lords. If conditions have in any way improved, it's because the change in economic systems is always caused by change in the means of production, which also became more efficient. And of course because of the organized struggle of the exploited classes.

Edit: Another separation of spheres that gets increasingly enforced under capitalism: female(primarily tasked with unpaid reproductive labor) vs male (primarily tasked with productive wage labor). Until the rate of profit lowers enough, that more types of work need to enter the cycle of production.