The explanation of the origins of capitalism goes back to a long history in which we face the most diverse political, social and economic experiences. In general, we understand the start of this process with the commercial renaissance experienced in the first centuries of the Low Middle Ages. During this period, we see a transformation in the self-sufficient character of feudal properties in which land began to be leased and labor began to be remunerated with a salary.
These first changes came with the emergence of a class of merchants and artisans who lived on the margins of the feudal unit, inhabiting an outer region, called the village. It was based on this name that the aforementioned social class was called the bourgeoisie. The medieval bourgeoisie introduced a new configuration to the European economy in which the search for profit and the circulation of goods to be traded in different regions gained greater space.
The commercial practice that had been tried out imprinted a new economic logic in which the trader substituted the use value of the goods for their exchange value. This made the economy begin to be based on amounts that numerically determined the value of each commodity. In this way, the merchant failed to judge the value of goods on the basis of their utility and demand, to calculate costs and profits to be converted into a given monetary amount.
With this monetization process, the trader began to work with the ultimate aim of obtaining profits and accumulating capital. This practice demanded a constant demand for the expansion of commerce and thus, towards the end of the Middle Ages, it incited the growing bourgeois merchant class to support the formation of National States. Allied to the military power of the nobility, the bourgeois began to rely on political encouragement to dominate new markets, regulate taxes and standardize currencies.
These transformations that marked the passage from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age encouraged the birth of the so-called mercantile capitalism and the great navigations. In this context, National States encouraged the discovery and mastery of new areas of economic exploration through the colonization process. It was at this time that the American and African continents became part of an economy that was globally articulated with the interests of the powerful European nations.
In addition to enabling an impressive accumulation of wealth, mercantile capitalism has created a competitive economy in the which economic powers sought agreements, implemented tariffs and waged wars with the aim of broadening their prospects commercials. However, the harmonious relationship between the bourgeoisie and the monarchs took on a new look as that the maintenance of the privileges of the nobility became an obstacle to development bourgeois.
It was during this period that the principles of Enlightenment philosophy defended greater autonomy for political institutions and criticized the authoritarian action of royalty. It was in this context of values that liberal revolutions were started by the sociopolitical upheaval that gained ground in 17th-century England. On the British island we observe the first experience of limiting real power in favor of greater economic autonomy during the process of the English Revolution.
For the first time, the monarchic authorities came to be subject to the interests of another power with a strong capacity for political intervention. This change in England directly benefited the national bourgeoisie by granting greater freedoms to undertake diplomatic agreements and articulate the various sectors of the British economy to the interests of activities commercials. It is not by chance that it was in this same place that capitalism began to gain new strength with the Industrial Revolution.
The experience of the revolution imprinted a new pace of technological progress and economic integration in which we perceived the closest features of the economy experienced in the contemporary world. Technological development, obtaining raw materials at low cost and the expansion of consumer markets made the system capitalist could generate a situation of extreme ambiguity: the apex of the enrichment of the capitalist elites and the impoverishment of the class worker.
Reaching the nineteenth century, we realized that capitalism promoted wealth financed by the exploitation of labor and the formation of large industrial monopolies. During this period we see the rise of socialist doctrines in open opposition to the model of social, economic and political development brought about by the capitalist system. Even moving several revolutions and uprisings against the system, socialism did not manage to interrupt the capital development process.
In the last century, capitalism has lived through several moments of crisis in which we clearly perceive the problems of its logic of permanent growth. Despite this, we see that new forms of re-articulation of economic policies and the famous technological progress managed to support capitalism to reach new frontiers. With this, many come to believe that it would be impossible to imagine another world outside capitalism.
However, is it even plausible to claim that capitalism will never have an end? For a statement as secure and linear as this, we can only make use of time and its transformations so that new perspectives can offer a new form of development. Whether immortal or mortal, capitalism is still present in our lives in forms that reconfigure themselves with increasingly surprising speed.
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See more:
Feudal Economy
Mercantilism
Industrial Revolution
By Rainer Sousa
Graduated in History
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
SOUSA, Rainer Gonçalves. "Origin of Capitalism"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/origem-capitalismo.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
