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CMP
by Mike Alexander
27 March 2002 23:19 UTC
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There is much discussion about how capitalism arose in the 15th century.
 
Wouldn't the 12th century Spanish shoemaker Jofre Isaac be a capitalist?
 
My understanding of capitalism is it arose from the earlier feudal society through the monetization of the economy.  As land (e.g. a fief) ceased to be thought of as an income (in kind) recieved for miltary service rendered, but rather as an asset which could be bought and sold (for money), the economy became monetized.  Land was now an asset (capital) managed to produce a stream of money revenue which could be used to buy Eastern luxuries, pay workers, who were decreasingly bound to the soil, and to pay money taxes in lieu of actual personal military service.  Capitalism is simply the combination of management of assets to produced money income combined with a desire to increase this income stream.
 
It was the special situation of feudalism, in which military power (and hence politcal power) rested on the fedual obligation of one's vassals that allowed capitalism to arise.  Only after this obligation had become monetized did the quantity of one's money income become critical to power.  But such income can be created by the accumulation of capital (i.e. money income-producing assets) as well as by the subordination of additional vassals through military action.  This created a value for capital in the minds of the nobility, and with it an appreciation for the merchant class.  It is this value attached to capital this is capitalism.
 
This idea interprets the endless accumulation of capital characteristic of capitalism as simple a modern form of the endless quest for power that is characteristic of all societies.
 
Mike Alexander,  author of
Stock Cycles: Why stocks won't beat money markets over the next 20 years and
The Kondratiev Cycle: A generational interpretation
http://www.net-link.net/~malexan/STOCK_CYCLES.htm
 
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