When we take a detached long term look at human history, it is impossible not to be impressed by the global economic growth experienced since the rise of capitalism in the early XIX century. This was achieved despite two destructive world wars and the subjugation of half of the world population under communism throughout most of the 20th century.
In his history of economic growth Angus Maddison (2005) shows that: “Over the past millennium, world population rose 23-fold, per capita income 14-fold, and GDP more than 300-fold. This contrasts sharply with the preceding millennium, when world population grew by only a sixth, with no advance in per-capita income”.
Yet, during the first eight centuries of the last millennium economic growth barely matched population growth, while life expectancy only rose from 24 to 36 years. However, from 1820 onwards, per-capita income rose twenty-four times as fast as in 1000–1820, population grew six times as fast and life expectancy increased to seventy-nine years in the West and sixty-four in the rest of the world.
Nevertheless, this was not an even process and it is interesting to recall the various phases identified by Maddison as:
1. The “golden age,” 1950–73, when world per capita income grew nearly 3 percent a year, by far the best performance.
2. Our age, from 1973 onwards (henceforth characterized as the neo-liberal order), is the second best.
3. The old “liberal order” (1870–1913) was third best, only marginally slower in terms of per capita income growth.
4. In 1913–50, growth was well below potential because of two world wars and the intervening collapse of world trade, capital markets, and migration.
5. The slowest growth was registered in the initial phase of capitalist development (1820–70), when significant growth momentum was largely confined to European countries, Western offshoots, and Latin America.
This historically unprecedented growth, the result of a combination of science and capitalism, was more pronounced in the West during the post-world war II period. However, since the collapse of communism we have more examples to show the power of capitalism as a production machine. In particular, when we compare the recent experiences of China, Russia and India, we note that Russia and India are lagging significantly largely because they have been more reluctant to endorse capitalism.
Nevertheless, the fact that large populations still live in poverty raises the question of whether they have been left behind by capitalism. This is not a failure of capitalism. On the contrary, it was often the result of misguided pursuits of alternative systems and the slow take-off under capitalism. Indeed, given the recent moves in Africa towards capitalism, one expects that this continent will progressively begin to recover and will accelerate its growth in the next decades.
Likewise, for those who expected the liberation of half the humankind from communism and the recent surge in technological developments to automatically create another era of unprecedented growth, the early history of capitalism from 1820 to 1870 is an important reminder that take-off is usually a slow process.
The transition to capitalism from subsistence, feudal or communist economic systems faces many resistances and the economic cycles of capitalism may slow down such transition. Both need to be assessed separately, as well as the risks of political turmoil. Otherwise, we risk letting such setbacks obscure the remarkable efficiency of capitalism to eradicate poverty and promote economic growth.
Showing posts with label feudalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feudalism. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 July 2015
Thursday, 12 February 2015
How nobility and clergy adapted to capitalism
The rise of the bourgeoisie under the capitalist system inexorably meant a change in the existing social hierarchy. Yet, historians are divided on whether the existing ruling classes - aristocracy and the clergy - waned or simply adapted and became part of the business class. Obviously, there are many individual cases to support both theories but, overall, under capitalism the new social hierarchies no longer were based on inbreeding within the same class.
The nobility had already undergone two major transformations when it changed from a warrior class into a courtier elite and when its income became increasingly dependent on financial investments. However its investment in industry and commerce had to wait until the XIX century, when by necessity or interest they began to marry with rich business people and to sell nobility titles to the wealthy.
This mingling with the bourgeoisie was initially resisted and for many years the nobility tried to position itself as arbiter between workers and capitalists or as sponsors of alternative economic systems.
In what concerns the adaptation of the clergy to capitalism, we need to distinguish between Christians and the other religions and, within the first, a fundamental divide between Catholics and Protestants.
For Max Weber and other authors the protestant ethic is often identified with the rise of the spirit of capitalism, by linking moral righteousness with making money. Indeed, the preaching of puritanism was essential to promote the savings necessary for capital accumulation. Concurrently, the proving of one’s faith through worldly activities was crucial to develop the entrepreneurial spirit associated with capitalism.
On the contrary, Catholicism preached resignation, asceticism and monastic contemplation which favoured the preservation of the status quo in the social hierarchy. Rome has traditionally been slow to breakup from existing powers, whether in relation to the acceptance of democracy or the condemnation of Nazism and communism.
Not surprisingly, protestants embraced capitalism while the catholic church, accepted reluctantly the role of markets and advocated a middle-of-the-road alternative based on the corporatist doctrine proposed by Leo XIII in 1891. The failure of this system has not prevented the catholic church from searching for new alternatives, nowadays mostly through a mix of Marxism, Latin American populism and global environmentalism.
Islam, the other big Abrahamic religion, is also generally anti-capitalist despite being founded by a merchant. Curiously, at the time of the so-called commercial revolution Muslim merchants were probably wealthier than their counterparts in northern Italy but they did not evolve towards capitalism. The main reason resides in the sharia law which, despite being favourable to commerce, prohibited joint stock companies, restricts the use of credit, does not accept the rule of law and favours theocratic regimes. Overall, Islamic theologians have been much more slow than the Christians to reinterpret the ancient scriptures to new times.
In India, Hinduism favoured an endogamy caste system which today still continues to be a big obstacle to the development of capitalism because individuals are not free to be professionally or socially mobile.
Buddhism and Shintoism, despite being religions and philosophies who favour meditation over action, did not hamper the development of capitalism in countries like Japan and South Korea, once their feudal systems and the emperor’s divinity were abandoned. Indeed, many entrepreneurs adhere to Buddhism as a relaxation and productivity-enhancing technique. Remarkably, these countries managed to keep their family and cultural traditions while westernizing and embracing capitalism.
In China, despite attempts to abolish religion during Mao’s Communist regime, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism remained alive and gained a new momentum since the Chinese Communist Party embraced capitalism. Confucian ethics emphasises the importance of the family but is not formally a religion. Unlike biblical religions, the Confucian system has no point of leverage by means of which disobedience to parents could be justified. In principle, its values are not opposed to capitalist principles but it is too early to know if it will impact on the future of capitalism in China.
In general, the clergy cares more about competition between religions and political power than economic systems. Nevertheless, because capitalism values materialism, democratizes economic power and reducesthe importance of political power, the clergy fears that capitalism will lessen the status of religion. Therefore, their preferred position continues to be one of critical acceptance of capitalism or support for alternative systems.
Overall, both nobility and clergy have now reluctantly accepted capitalism as inevitable, but they are not wholehearted about it. In fact, before taking this position, they often supported some of the various failed attempts to find an alternative to capitalism.
The nobility had already undergone two major transformations when it changed from a warrior class into a courtier elite and when its income became increasingly dependent on financial investments. However its investment in industry and commerce had to wait until the XIX century, when by necessity or interest they began to marry with rich business people and to sell nobility titles to the wealthy.
This mingling with the bourgeoisie was initially resisted and for many years the nobility tried to position itself as arbiter between workers and capitalists or as sponsors of alternative economic systems.
In what concerns the adaptation of the clergy to capitalism, we need to distinguish between Christians and the other religions and, within the first, a fundamental divide between Catholics and Protestants.
For Max Weber and other authors the protestant ethic is often identified with the rise of the spirit of capitalism, by linking moral righteousness with making money. Indeed, the preaching of puritanism was essential to promote the savings necessary for capital accumulation. Concurrently, the proving of one’s faith through worldly activities was crucial to develop the entrepreneurial spirit associated with capitalism.
On the contrary, Catholicism preached resignation, asceticism and monastic contemplation which favoured the preservation of the status quo in the social hierarchy. Rome has traditionally been slow to breakup from existing powers, whether in relation to the acceptance of democracy or the condemnation of Nazism and communism.
Not surprisingly, protestants embraced capitalism while the catholic church, accepted reluctantly the role of markets and advocated a middle-of-the-road alternative based on the corporatist doctrine proposed by Leo XIII in 1891. The failure of this system has not prevented the catholic church from searching for new alternatives, nowadays mostly through a mix of Marxism, Latin American populism and global environmentalism.
Islam, the other big Abrahamic religion, is also generally anti-capitalist despite being founded by a merchant. Curiously, at the time of the so-called commercial revolution Muslim merchants were probably wealthier than their counterparts in northern Italy but they did not evolve towards capitalism. The main reason resides in the sharia law which, despite being favourable to commerce, prohibited joint stock companies, restricts the use of credit, does not accept the rule of law and favours theocratic regimes. Overall, Islamic theologians have been much more slow than the Christians to reinterpret the ancient scriptures to new times.
In India, Hinduism favoured an endogamy caste system which today still continues to be a big obstacle to the development of capitalism because individuals are not free to be professionally or socially mobile.
Buddhism and Shintoism, despite being religions and philosophies who favour meditation over action, did not hamper the development of capitalism in countries like Japan and South Korea, once their feudal systems and the emperor’s divinity were abandoned. Indeed, many entrepreneurs adhere to Buddhism as a relaxation and productivity-enhancing technique. Remarkably, these countries managed to keep their family and cultural traditions while westernizing and embracing capitalism.
In China, despite attempts to abolish religion during Mao’s Communist regime, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism remained alive and gained a new momentum since the Chinese Communist Party embraced capitalism. Confucian ethics emphasises the importance of the family but is not formally a religion. Unlike biblical religions, the Confucian system has no point of leverage by means of which disobedience to parents could be justified. In principle, its values are not opposed to capitalist principles but it is too early to know if it will impact on the future of capitalism in China.
In general, the clergy cares more about competition between religions and political power than economic systems. Nevertheless, because capitalism values materialism, democratizes economic power and reducesthe importance of political power, the clergy fears that capitalism will lessen the status of religion. Therefore, their preferred position continues to be one of critical acceptance of capitalism or support for alternative systems.
Overall, both nobility and clergy have now reluctantly accepted capitalism as inevitable, but they are not wholehearted about it. In fact, before taking this position, they often supported some of the various failed attempts to find an alternative to capitalism.
Wednesday, 3 September 2014
A brief history of Economic Systems
Economic systems are characterized by a set of rules defining the relationship between interacting economic agents. The organization of economic activities is not separate from the political and social institutions adopted by the groups carrying out such activities. Thus, we may categorize many economic systems across the globe and throughout human history.
However, if we consider only broad differentiating factors, we may resume our history to five main economic systems – the gathering and hunting economy, the predatory and slave economy, the medieval serfdom system, centrally planned economies and capitalism or free market system.
With the exception of the centrally planned systems (fascism, national socialism and communism) who were driven by a precedent ideology, all the other systems evolved more or less spontaneously after long periods of gestation. In this brief history of these five major economic systems we highlight their main distinguished features in terms of division of labor, property rights, income distribution and capital accumulation.
Our oldest ancestors (the homo sapiens) appeared as a distinct species some 200-500 thousand years ago organized in small groups, mostly made up of family members. They were basically roving hunters and only settled down and began farming around 10-50 thousand years ago. At this stage their level of organization was much more developed and included a clear division of labor between male (hunter) and female (farmer), a division of property rights between common and family property and an acceleration of capital accumulation on durable goods like lodging and hunting/domestic tools, but also on non-essentials such as jewelry and other cultural and religious artifacts.
As hunters they undertook also predatory activities as a short cut to get what they needed, either by stealing from other tribes or by killing similar species (like the Neanderthals) who competed with them for the same territory and preys. As an alternative to predation, primitive forms of barter trade also appeared, but they were not the primary form of wealth exchange, which continued to be mostly done on a kinship basis. Another important development in terms of farming was the domestication of animals as pets and cattle.
All these developments led to a rapid increase in predatory activities which required larger societies (tribes), a further division of labor, beyond gender and age, between warriors/ hunters, shepherds/ farmers, slaves and clergy, as well as a political power structure beyond the traditional family/tribal hierarchy.
So, in the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt and India that appeared between the 3rd and 4th millennium BC, economic activity was mostly based on predation (conquest) and slavery and the military warriors naturally became the most powerful group within those societies. War permitted not only to obtain slaves to perform domestic, agricultural and construction activities but also to achieve a fast accumulation of durable goods. The organization skills required to command large armies and numerous slaves were essential to increase further the level of specialization in the division of labor needed to construct large durable infrastructures like irrigation, bridges, fortresses or temples.
Although most of these activities were under a centralized command, the development of trade and its tools was also inevitable and facilitated by the development of money exchanges that progressively replaced the traditional barter trade. In particular, the development of pictographic writing by the Sumerians, during the Uruk period at about 3400 BC, was essential to keep trading records and turn Uruk into the most urbanized city in the world and a major trade center in Mesopotamia with more than 50,000 inhabitants.
Ancient civilizations progressively turned into agriculture based societies and big estates, producing wine and oil (the most important commodities for commerce), replaced the small self-sufficient wheat-producing farms. Thus, private ownership of land became one of the crucial factors in the social stratification of those societies. For instance, in ancient Athens and Rome the population was divided into slaves, freedmen, free men, foreigners and women and only some of these groups were considered citizens.
Slaves did most of the work in agriculture, mining and manufacturing. The rulers, whether theocratic, oligarchic or democratic, continued engaged in military campaigns, initially mostly to plunder and destroy the property of the vanquished. However, they soon realized that slaughtering and enslaving their enemies was not always the most profitable course of action. So, they began to demand as an alternative the payment of ransoms and tributes (through various types of taxation) from independent producers and traders. This allowed a much faster accumulation of capital in palaces and jewelry as well as a rise in population.
In Europe and the Mediterranean these civilizations were later vanquished by hordes of barbarians who destroyed most of the cities and centralized forms of government, thus splitting the continent into countless kingdoms. This had two important consequences, the rise of monotheist religions (first Christianity and later Islam) who became a unifying force in those societies and an inward return to the big estates as the base of society. These were invariably involved in frequent wars and alliances that led to the development of a vassalage system - the feudal system.
The driving force of the feudal system was still predation but now the territorial range was much smaller (with a few exceptions like the Charlemagne Empire) and reliance on slaves was slowly replaced by a system of serfdom.
In contrast to what happened with the ancient slaves, the serfs’ master did not have the power of life and death. The serf (whether bound to the soil or to the lord) was considered a living creature with soul and the master had to allow him to attend church and could not force him to work on holy days or to commit immoral acts. The serf usually had a separate hut with an attached plot of land and lived with his family.
Production was often organized in a manor system, where the land was split in three parts, one directly controlled by the lord for his own benefit, another used by the serfs in exchange for labor services and a share of their produce and a third considered free land leased against a money rent. Under this system there was very little incentive to produce surplus for trading, and the lords often reserved a large part of their domain for hunting.
Not surprisingly throughout the middle ages the division of labor, the level of trade and capital accumulation were significantly reduced when compared to the ancient civilizations. This system lasted for a long period, appropriately named the “dark ages”, which only began to change slowly with the fragmentation of the feuds and the resumption of the so-called trade revolution in the XII century and the rediscovery of the ancient civilizations during the Italian Renaissance in the XV century. These developments allowed the rise of a new class of rich traders and bankers who questioned an otherwise rigid class pyramid made up of the Pope, King, Nobles, Knights / Vassals, Freemen, Yeomen, Servants, and Peasants / Serfs / Villeins.
The transition from feudalism to capitalism was also a long process that was only completed in Europe by the end of the XVIII century. One may even say that it began as early as the Crusades in 1096 and was only completed by the British Limited Liability Act of 1855.
The key changes that combined to drive the process were the XIII century trade revolution, the Italian renaissance in the XV century, the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery in the XV-XVI and the scientific, illuminist and industrial/transport revolutions from the XV to the XVII century.
At the institutional level the key marks were the progressive repeal/ ignorance of the usury laws that hampered the use of credit and banking, the creation of joint stock companies who enabled capital accumulation and risk sharing, the development of securities markets and the introduction of limited liability laws that facilitated entrepreneurship.
The end result of this process was that the specialization and division of labor deepened to unprecedented levels, free labor progressively replaced slavery and serfdom and the accumulation of financial and non-financial assets accelerated leading to the fastest ever growth in productivity and trade experienced by humankind. Thus old agrarian societies were replaced by commercial and industrial societies and the traditional rigid social hierarchy was challenged by the new money earned on such activities.
In the Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith refuted Physiocratism and Mercantilism and demonstrated the clear advantages of free labor and free markets, which are the essence of capitalism. The word capitalism itself only made its first written appearance in Thackeray’s novel “The Newcomes” (1855) to refer to those whose capital was not the result of land ownership. The term was also used by Karl Marx in Das Kapital (1867) to denigrate the new economic system by claiming that “social wealth becomes to an ever-increasing degree the property of those who are in a position to appropriate continually and ever afresh the unpaid labour of others”.
The nobility and clergy did not accept easily the loss of power and status brought about by capitalism. Indeed, Marx was not the only one to fight the ideal of “the invisible hand” and decentralization subjacent to capitalism. Among both revolutionaries and reactionaries there were two opposite criticisms of a capitalistic decentralized system. Some proposed a return to a system of small communities (e.g. the model villages of Utopian Socialists or the Anarchist and Hamish communes) while the others proposed a centralized system relying more on economic planning than competition (e.g. communism, national socialism and corporatism).
The experiences with decentralized non-capitalist systems were localized and have been subsiding progressively without a major impact on humankind.
On the contrary, the experiences with central planning had a dramatic impact in our world since they were tried in the first three quarters of the XX century in many developed and less developed countries. The three types of experiments relied on dictatorships to control the economy and the labor market, in accordance with their different ideologies.
Following the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, communists established a so-called proletariat dictatorships, initially run by the oligarchy of the only legal party, which invariably transformed into a single god-like dictator (e. g. Stalin in Russia, Mao in China or Fidel Castro in Cuba). Communists abolished private property and reintroduced forced labor, namely slavery in the Russian Gulags, serfdom in Chinese rural areas and modern forms of slavery in Cuba. They also replaced the markets by some form of central planning.
Forced labor, private property confiscation and central planning proved disastrous, causing the worst man-made famines known to humankind, when 6-8 million people died during the 1932-1933 Soviet famine and 15-40 million starved to death during the 1958-1961 Chinese famine. Capital accumulation and productivity growth lagged so much under this system that in the 1980s communism collapsed by itself in the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party replaced communism by a form of state capitalism.
National-socialism was introduced in the 1930s by the Nazi Party in Germany. It was based on an ideology of racial supremacy, proclaiming that the Aryans were a superior race and the other races should be either destroyed (e.g. the Jews and Gypsies) or become servants of the Germans (e.g. the Eastern and Southern Europeans).
The Nazis did not abolish private property and markets for the Germans, but firms had to work under the direction of the party by contracting to receive forced labor and to supply the government. The Nazis reintroduced the most brutal form of slavery by forcing war prisoners and Jews to work until they died of exhaustion. The party also had a god-like leader - Hitler - who repeated the old forms of predatory economics through outright confiscation of the Jews and the Central Banks of the countries occupied and the introduction of ransoms, forced labor, punitive taxes and the coercive supply of his armies.
The German (and Japanese) imperialist wars to conquer new territories originated the Second World War, the most deadly conflict ever lived by mankind, which claimed the lives of more than 60 million people.
Corporatism, was a milder form of centralized economic system introduced in Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain during the 1920s and 1930s. Its ideological origin goes back to the Rerum Novarum papal encyclical on the social question issued by Leo XIII in 1891. The basic idea was that labor and capital should cooperate under the guidance of government.
Private property and markets were accepted, but labor relations were regulated by agreement between unions and employers under the supervision of the state. Other markets were also regulated through price controls and licensing.
At the political level, the dictatorships adopted more or less extreme forms of fascism depending on the moderation and warmongering of their leaders, with Salazar in Portugal being the only one who was not involved in war.
The economic consequences of corporatism and the lack of market competition was the impoverishment of Southern Europe relative to the rest of Europe.
Without exception, all attempts to create an economic system by design based on anti-capitalist ideologies only brought oppression, misery and war and have been progressively abandoned in favor of various versions of capitalism.
Despite having so few supporters and so many opponents capitalism vanquished by itself and is now the dominant economic system. So, one is left wondering what is the beauty of capitalism and how long it will last. But, first we needed to understand how mankind got here.
However, if we consider only broad differentiating factors, we may resume our history to five main economic systems – the gathering and hunting economy, the predatory and slave economy, the medieval serfdom system, centrally planned economies and capitalism or free market system.
With the exception of the centrally planned systems (fascism, national socialism and communism) who were driven by a precedent ideology, all the other systems evolved more or less spontaneously after long periods of gestation. In this brief history of these five major economic systems we highlight their main distinguished features in terms of division of labor, property rights, income distribution and capital accumulation.
Our oldest ancestors (the homo sapiens) appeared as a distinct species some 200-500 thousand years ago organized in small groups, mostly made up of family members. They were basically roving hunters and only settled down and began farming around 10-50 thousand years ago. At this stage their level of organization was much more developed and included a clear division of labor between male (hunter) and female (farmer), a division of property rights between common and family property and an acceleration of capital accumulation on durable goods like lodging and hunting/domestic tools, but also on non-essentials such as jewelry and other cultural and religious artifacts.
As hunters they undertook also predatory activities as a short cut to get what they needed, either by stealing from other tribes or by killing similar species (like the Neanderthals) who competed with them for the same territory and preys. As an alternative to predation, primitive forms of barter trade also appeared, but they were not the primary form of wealth exchange, which continued to be mostly done on a kinship basis. Another important development in terms of farming was the domestication of animals as pets and cattle.
All these developments led to a rapid increase in predatory activities which required larger societies (tribes), a further division of labor, beyond gender and age, between warriors/ hunters, shepherds/ farmers, slaves and clergy, as well as a political power structure beyond the traditional family/tribal hierarchy.
So, in the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt and India that appeared between the 3rd and 4th millennium BC, economic activity was mostly based on predation (conquest) and slavery and the military warriors naturally became the most powerful group within those societies. War permitted not only to obtain slaves to perform domestic, agricultural and construction activities but also to achieve a fast accumulation of durable goods. The organization skills required to command large armies and numerous slaves were essential to increase further the level of specialization in the division of labor needed to construct large durable infrastructures like irrigation, bridges, fortresses or temples.
Although most of these activities were under a centralized command, the development of trade and its tools was also inevitable and facilitated by the development of money exchanges that progressively replaced the traditional barter trade. In particular, the development of pictographic writing by the Sumerians, during the Uruk period at about 3400 BC, was essential to keep trading records and turn Uruk into the most urbanized city in the world and a major trade center in Mesopotamia with more than 50,000 inhabitants.
Ancient civilizations progressively turned into agriculture based societies and big estates, producing wine and oil (the most important commodities for commerce), replaced the small self-sufficient wheat-producing farms. Thus, private ownership of land became one of the crucial factors in the social stratification of those societies. For instance, in ancient Athens and Rome the population was divided into slaves, freedmen, free men, foreigners and women and only some of these groups were considered citizens.
Slaves did most of the work in agriculture, mining and manufacturing. The rulers, whether theocratic, oligarchic or democratic, continued engaged in military campaigns, initially mostly to plunder and destroy the property of the vanquished. However, they soon realized that slaughtering and enslaving their enemies was not always the most profitable course of action. So, they began to demand as an alternative the payment of ransoms and tributes (through various types of taxation) from independent producers and traders. This allowed a much faster accumulation of capital in palaces and jewelry as well as a rise in population.
In Europe and the Mediterranean these civilizations were later vanquished by hordes of barbarians who destroyed most of the cities and centralized forms of government, thus splitting the continent into countless kingdoms. This had two important consequences, the rise of monotheist religions (first Christianity and later Islam) who became a unifying force in those societies and an inward return to the big estates as the base of society. These were invariably involved in frequent wars and alliances that led to the development of a vassalage system - the feudal system.
The driving force of the feudal system was still predation but now the territorial range was much smaller (with a few exceptions like the Charlemagne Empire) and reliance on slaves was slowly replaced by a system of serfdom.
In contrast to what happened with the ancient slaves, the serfs’ master did not have the power of life and death. The serf (whether bound to the soil or to the lord) was considered a living creature with soul and the master had to allow him to attend church and could not force him to work on holy days or to commit immoral acts. The serf usually had a separate hut with an attached plot of land and lived with his family.
Production was often organized in a manor system, where the land was split in three parts, one directly controlled by the lord for his own benefit, another used by the serfs in exchange for labor services and a share of their produce and a third considered free land leased against a money rent. Under this system there was very little incentive to produce surplus for trading, and the lords often reserved a large part of their domain for hunting.
Not surprisingly throughout the middle ages the division of labor, the level of trade and capital accumulation were significantly reduced when compared to the ancient civilizations. This system lasted for a long period, appropriately named the “dark ages”, which only began to change slowly with the fragmentation of the feuds and the resumption of the so-called trade revolution in the XII century and the rediscovery of the ancient civilizations during the Italian Renaissance in the XV century. These developments allowed the rise of a new class of rich traders and bankers who questioned an otherwise rigid class pyramid made up of the Pope, King, Nobles, Knights / Vassals, Freemen, Yeomen, Servants, and Peasants / Serfs / Villeins.
The transition from feudalism to capitalism was also a long process that was only completed in Europe by the end of the XVIII century. One may even say that it began as early as the Crusades in 1096 and was only completed by the British Limited Liability Act of 1855.
The key changes that combined to drive the process were the XIII century trade revolution, the Italian renaissance in the XV century, the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery in the XV-XVI and the scientific, illuminist and industrial/transport revolutions from the XV to the XVII century.
At the institutional level the key marks were the progressive repeal/ ignorance of the usury laws that hampered the use of credit and banking, the creation of joint stock companies who enabled capital accumulation and risk sharing, the development of securities markets and the introduction of limited liability laws that facilitated entrepreneurship.
The end result of this process was that the specialization and division of labor deepened to unprecedented levels, free labor progressively replaced slavery and serfdom and the accumulation of financial and non-financial assets accelerated leading to the fastest ever growth in productivity and trade experienced by humankind. Thus old agrarian societies were replaced by commercial and industrial societies and the traditional rigid social hierarchy was challenged by the new money earned on such activities.
In the Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith refuted Physiocratism and Mercantilism and demonstrated the clear advantages of free labor and free markets, which are the essence of capitalism. The word capitalism itself only made its first written appearance in Thackeray’s novel “The Newcomes” (1855) to refer to those whose capital was not the result of land ownership. The term was also used by Karl Marx in Das Kapital (1867) to denigrate the new economic system by claiming that “social wealth becomes to an ever-increasing degree the property of those who are in a position to appropriate continually and ever afresh the unpaid labour of others”.
The nobility and clergy did not accept easily the loss of power and status brought about by capitalism. Indeed, Marx was not the only one to fight the ideal of “the invisible hand” and decentralization subjacent to capitalism. Among both revolutionaries and reactionaries there were two opposite criticisms of a capitalistic decentralized system. Some proposed a return to a system of small communities (e.g. the model villages of Utopian Socialists or the Anarchist and Hamish communes) while the others proposed a centralized system relying more on economic planning than competition (e.g. communism, national socialism and corporatism).
The experiences with decentralized non-capitalist systems were localized and have been subsiding progressively without a major impact on humankind.
On the contrary, the experiences with central planning had a dramatic impact in our world since they were tried in the first three quarters of the XX century in many developed and less developed countries. The three types of experiments relied on dictatorships to control the economy and the labor market, in accordance with their different ideologies.
Following the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, communists established a so-called proletariat dictatorships, initially run by the oligarchy of the only legal party, which invariably transformed into a single god-like dictator (e. g. Stalin in Russia, Mao in China or Fidel Castro in Cuba). Communists abolished private property and reintroduced forced labor, namely slavery in the Russian Gulags, serfdom in Chinese rural areas and modern forms of slavery in Cuba. They also replaced the markets by some form of central planning.
Forced labor, private property confiscation and central planning proved disastrous, causing the worst man-made famines known to humankind, when 6-8 million people died during the 1932-1933 Soviet famine and 15-40 million starved to death during the 1958-1961 Chinese famine. Capital accumulation and productivity growth lagged so much under this system that in the 1980s communism collapsed by itself in the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party replaced communism by a form of state capitalism.
National-socialism was introduced in the 1930s by the Nazi Party in Germany. It was based on an ideology of racial supremacy, proclaiming that the Aryans were a superior race and the other races should be either destroyed (e.g. the Jews and Gypsies) or become servants of the Germans (e.g. the Eastern and Southern Europeans).
The Nazis did not abolish private property and markets for the Germans, but firms had to work under the direction of the party by contracting to receive forced labor and to supply the government. The Nazis reintroduced the most brutal form of slavery by forcing war prisoners and Jews to work until they died of exhaustion. The party also had a god-like leader - Hitler - who repeated the old forms of predatory economics through outright confiscation of the Jews and the Central Banks of the countries occupied and the introduction of ransoms, forced labor, punitive taxes and the coercive supply of his armies.
The German (and Japanese) imperialist wars to conquer new territories originated the Second World War, the most deadly conflict ever lived by mankind, which claimed the lives of more than 60 million people.
Corporatism, was a milder form of centralized economic system introduced in Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain during the 1920s and 1930s. Its ideological origin goes back to the Rerum Novarum papal encyclical on the social question issued by Leo XIII in 1891. The basic idea was that labor and capital should cooperate under the guidance of government.
Private property and markets were accepted, but labor relations were regulated by agreement between unions and employers under the supervision of the state. Other markets were also regulated through price controls and licensing.
At the political level, the dictatorships adopted more or less extreme forms of fascism depending on the moderation and warmongering of their leaders, with Salazar in Portugal being the only one who was not involved in war.
The economic consequences of corporatism and the lack of market competition was the impoverishment of Southern Europe relative to the rest of Europe.
Without exception, all attempts to create an economic system by design based on anti-capitalist ideologies only brought oppression, misery and war and have been progressively abandoned in favor of various versions of capitalism.
Despite having so few supporters and so many opponents capitalism vanquished by itself and is now the dominant economic system. So, one is left wondering what is the beauty of capitalism and how long it will last. But, first we needed to understand how mankind got here.
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