From Feudalism to Capitalism | Part II
From Feudalism to Capitalism | Part II Skip ahead 900 years and cross the Channel to England, and we find laissez-faire industrial capitalism at high tide. Kings, nobles and clergy have been reduced to figureheads, replaced by a ruling class of bankers, merchants, mine-owners, mill-owners and financial speculators, all preoccupied with money, profit and the accumulation of capital. The peasant class has been wiped out and nearly half the population and most of the wealth now reside in cities. Everyone who works, whether rural or urban, works for wages. Except among those who make their own clothes, all production is for someone’s profit. Markets are everywhere, from the smallest Cotswold village to the vast sprawl of Birmingham, Manchester and London. With the British Empire at its height, goods are being exported to, and imported from, every corner of the globe. Marx offers an explanation for this profound change in Capital, ...