From Feudalism to Capitalism | Part VI

From Feudalism to Capitalism | Part VI

A further step in the transition came in the 1530s and 40s.  Under Henry VIII, the assumption of absolute power over church and state enabled him to order the destruction of the monasteries, which in turn broke the power of the third leg of the feudal triumvirate – the bishops and clergy – and made vast tracts of land available to the crown for sale and taxation, often to the rising merchant and gentry class.   

Which brings us to the influence of the Reformation in nurturing market-driven capitalism.  In opposing the Roman Catholic church, Luther, Calvin, Knox and Henry VIII were taking on the ideological center of feudalism and drawing in not only the urban and rural poor, but the new layer of untitled rich.  The appeal of a flatter hierarchy, a simpler, more democratic infrastructure, church services in each nation’s mother tongue and, as Weber points out, salvation by hard, earnest work, aligned Protestantism far better with the spirit of capitalism than feudal Catholicism did – for both exploiters and exploited.  

Trade networks and towns across northern Europe spread Protestant ideas and simplified differences, threatening the hegemony of Catholicism and the Catholic nobility.  But the feudal ruling class, especially in Spain, France and southern Germany, did not sit idle.  It reorganized around the Jesuits and mounted a sustained counter-reformation, spawning not only the horrors of the Inquisition, but a devastating take-no-prisoners Thirty Years’ War in the 17thC.  By 1648, reactionary forces had effectively crushed nascent capitalism in Germany and Bohemia, and reawakened outright serfdom throughout central and eastern Europe.  On the Continent for the next 150 years, only the Dutch bourgeoisie and their manufacturing enclaves were able to progress.

In Britain, the reformation/capitalist forces of gentry, merchants and the newly titled had more success in their war.  By the end of the 1640s they had decapitated both the archbishop of Canterbury and the king and routed most of the old Catholic nobles from power.   Cromwell had fared much better than his continental counterparts for two reasons: because the new capitalist class in Britain was larger and more deeply rooted, and because he was a more capable leader, better able to construct, inspire and hold together a coalition of reformers. 

In 1660, however, the English grew homesick for pageantry and decadence, and chose to restore the monarchy.  But, only a few decades later, in another about-face, they emasculated it at the first hint of a return to feudal Catholic ways.   A Dutch Protestant was installed on the throne in 1689, with specific instructions to let parliament and the rich, pious bourgeoisie run things.  Thereafter, at least in Britain, kings, lords and bishops retreated from the corridors of power, leaving the economic future to those in trade, finance and manufacture.

In France, however, as Perry Anderson points out, the effects of an absolutist state were quite different from those in England.  The Bourbon monarchs sided with the counter-reformation and with the nobility, driving Huguenots into exile and discouraging the ambitions of the newly rich.  While the capitalist class grew unimpeded in 18thC England, the ancient regime in France kept the lid on the physiocrats and the coming new order right up to the storming of the Bastille. 

Secondly, there’s the influence of the Renaissance to consider.  It gets scant mention from Pirenne-Wallerstein and none from Dobb-Brenner, perhaps because it represents a hard-to-measure kind of soft power.  Still, if we compare the architecture and building techniques of feudal and Renaissance Europe, the shift toward a capitalist mode of production is clear.  The rules of Gothic construction allowed individual artisans a measure of freedom to craft niches, statues, and archways to their own liking, while Renaissance workers had no such freedom. They were, like the slave laborers of ancient Rome and Athens, expected to follow the architect’s strict, uniform design in every corner, arch and window casement of a St. Peter’s or a St. Paul’s.  They were artisans reduced to wage-slaves in the service of someone else’s vision and profit.

Lastly, it’s worth a quick look at the influence of the Enlightenment in furthering a shift to capitalism.  It has often been noted – especially the Enlightenment’s enshrinement of Reason and its bias toward the educated, secular man of the world, eager to innovate and enrich himself.  John Locke, one of the gods of the movement, did a good deal to advance capitalist thinking in the 18thC, arguing that he who “improves” a property best, deserves to own it.  “Improvement” soon came to be equated with maximum profit.  That, in turn, became a rationale approved by the English and their colonial courts for taking land from the native-Americans and once again ramping up the process of enclosure across most of England and Scotland.  As a result, by the second half of the 1700s British cities were swollen with disenfranchised peasants looking to sell their labor wherever they could.