In early modern Venice and Florence, a new form of pooling capital emerged. It was called the “compagnia,” which translates into English as “company.” The literal meaning of the word is “with bread.” Why and how does “with bread” produce a notion of pooling capital and our modern word for an economic enterprise? Because those capital-pooling efforts were often family efforts.

The early modern Italian usage points us forward and backward in time.

Forward because, in recent years, there’s been a big literature on the rise or return of “family capitalism” or “dynastic capitalism” or “patrimonial capitalism.” Where the 20th century was supposed to be the realm of the managerial corporation, with control and ownership separated, and ownership in the hands of shareholders, in recent decades, the argument goes, we’ve returned to more familial forms of economic life. That’s one of the reasons why Trump’s rule is so resonant: in the polity, as in the economy, it’s all about the family.

Backward because, in the Athenian world, the idea of the economy, such as it was, was so completely caught up with the idea of the household. As we often learn in intro political theory classes, the Greek word oikonomia (or economy) derives from the word oikos, or the household. But Aristotle makes an additional and relevant point here. In the first book of the Politics, he argues that because the household is “the community naturally constituted to satisfy everyday needs…its members are called ‘meal-sharers.'”

So from “meal-sharers” to “with bread” to the family capitalism of the Trumps, everything old is new again.