The origin of capitalism has been the subject of multiple economic and sociological positions, although everyone agrees that it was born in the 15th century in Europe. The crisis of feudalism (previous system) gave way to the new capitalist system. Its characteristics begin to be visible to historians at the end of the Middle Ages, when economic life temporarily migrates from the countryside to the city.
Manufacturing and trade began to be much more profitable and profitable than working on land. Which resulted in an unusual increase in income from feudal families to peasants. All over Europe there were peasant revolts protesting the sharp increase in taxes.
The demographic catastrophe of the bubonic plague meant one of the greatest famines in history. People felt that feudalism would not respond to the economic and social demands of the population, that is, when the transition from one system to another begins.
Burgos (new urbanisms) were installed across Europe. In them, people began – incipiently – to specialize in working mainly with leather, wood and metals. In other words, adding value to things and selling or exchanging them.
While the inhabitants of the Burgos (bourgeois) took power and accumulated capital, the feud suffered from meteorological attacks, bad harvests and plagues that weakened them.
Factors for the origin of capitalism
One of the characteristics that gave rise to capitalism is that in Europe a bourgeois could have more wealth than a feudal lord and a king, while in the rest of the feudal world no one could have more wealth than the one who wielded power.
Etymologically, the word capitalism derives from the idea of capital and the use of private property. However, today its meaning goes further, contemporary capitalism has taken the form of a market economy and, for many authors, it is a system.
For the father of classical liberalism, Adam Smith, people have always tended to ” trade, barter, and trade some things for others ” for this reason, capitalism spontaneously emerged in the Modern Era.
Karl Marx Moteja, in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the bourgeois class as a “revolutionary class” for opposing the feudal system, established another mode of production and universalized it. For Marx, the bourgeois class created capitalism and, in turn, the contradictions that would enclose it.
Renaissance philosophy and the spirit of the Protestant Reformation became ideological strongholds of capitalism in the fourteenth century. These movements questioned the worldview of the feudal state and introduced ideas of modern national states that provided the ideological conditions for the emergence of capitalism.
Capitalism emerges as a historical need of the moment and responded to various social and economic problems of feudal society.
Historical stages of capitalism
Over its six centuries, capitalism has been transformed, it has gone through different stages that will be examined below.
commercial capitalism
It took place between the 16th and 18th centuries. It should not be confused with simply trading goods, because merchants and exchanges have been around since the dawn of civilization.
Commercial capitalism first appeared in England with the port trade. The accumulation of wealth generated by trade gradually introduced the structure of market society and increasingly complicated transactions.
industrial capitalism
The second phase of capitalism begins with the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 18th century. It was a decisive economic, social and technological transformation that exponentially increased capital accumulation and consolidated capitalism.
Historians and sociologists argue that, for the first time, the population experienced a sustained increase in living standards. From that moment on, machine schemes were replaced, instead of animal traction and manual labor.
financial capitalism
Monopoly capitalism emerged in the 20th century and continues to this day. The rapid increase and multiplication of capital also caused the development of banks and financial institutions.
Bankers and bag owners discovered that one of the ways to produce money is to have money. Previously, the way to produce money was under the DMD (Money-Merchandise-Money) scheme, now it has become D + D: D (Money + Money: Money)
Contemporary capitalism integrates these three stages in terms of capital accumulation. Authors such as Vladimir Lenin argue that the last phase of capitalism is not the financial one, but the imperialist phase as a form of economic domination of industrialized nations for backward nations.
Mercantilism
It was born as a form of nationalist capitalism in the 16th century. Its main characteristic is that it united the interests of the State with those of industry. In other words, it used the state apparatus to boost national companies inside and outside the territory.
For mercantilism, wealth is increased through what they called a “positive balance of trade”, in which, if exports exceed imports, the original accumulation of capital would result.
Weber and the Protestant Reformation
The German sociologist and economist Max Weber, in his book Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism, in 1904, exposes the influence of the religious element in the emergence of capitalism.
In this book, Lutheran and Calvinist Protestantism and their significance in culture are studied. For Weber, Calvinism was more decisive and influential than Lutheranism in the way of life and morals of the bourgeoisie in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Weber thinks that capitalism arose because Calvinism proclaimed habits and ideas that favored economic well-being as a condition for gaining redemption. Calvino advocated maximizing performance and minimizing unnecessary expense.
According to Weber, Calvin, in his Protestant ethics, placed as a sine qua non condition the scope of prosperity to approach God. This led to the massive idea of work and capital accumulation in devotees of this trend.
Some researchers attribute to Protestantism the accelerated growth and expansion of the USA, which ceased to be a colony of the United Kingdom where Protestants arrived, becoming – today and for 200 years – the capitalist power and the richest nation in the world.
For Weber, it is Calvinism that gives rise to capitalist morality, the spirit of progress and the accumulation of wealth. This conception succeeds in instilling the idea of glorifying God while achieving success in economic life.
Beginnings of capitalism and state participation
In principle, the processes of capitalism and modernization emerged as an initiative of the bourgeois classes that opposed feudalism. The state played no role in the early development of European capitalism. In the United States, the processes of modernization and industrialization – on the contrary – are sponsored by the State.
The first political and economic doctrine that studied the question of the state in the economy was liberalism. Its most prominent representatives are John Locke and Adam Smith. Classical liberals argue that state intervention should be kept to a minimum.
Classical liberal thought established that the state should only deal with laws to preserve private property, defend liberties, and design policies so that the market could regulate itself freely.
Opposite was the Marxist current, whose ideas were carried out in the Soviet Union from 1917 onwards. In the view of Marxist authors, this free competition and reduction of the state left the majority without rights.
For this reason, the main levers of the economy must be managed by the State to guarantee the well-being of the majority.
Though later theorists such as Angel Capelleti, he would call the order of the Soviet Union “State Capitalism” . After seeing the effects of an uncontrolled market in 1929 and feeling the inefficiency of overly large states, the authors considered another way.
One of the most accepted approaches is that of researcher John Keynes, “keinesianism”, in which there must be a balance between the functions of the State in the economy and the freedom of the private sector to carry out its work.
Capitalism in history
All new systems have come about as a result of the implosion and crisis of old systems. Without wars, crusades, plagues and the increasing material needs of the population, the transition to capitalism would certainly have been delayed for several centuries.
Capitalism meant an advance in the mode of production and in the generation of wealth for the bourgeoisie and the nation states, but it has a significant debt to the environment and workers’ rights.
For some researchers, capitalism has been the cause of wars between nations and, for others, the greatest advance of the millennium.
