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From Feudalism to Capitalism - Coggle Diagram
From Feudalism to Capitalism
Karl Marx
Marx himself never provided a systematic treatment of its central principles.
To Marx the society is organized around economic structures.
He was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.
The logic of epochal change
The triumph of capitalist production, however, was the result of class struggles that occurred both prior to and quite independently of the development of the productive forces.
If the capitalist landowners formed a subordinate class within the waning ancient regime, it was in the sense that feudal property arrangements militated against the consolidation of the new property form.
Marx rightly claimed that individuals are led and accustomed to organize as a class by the experience of common conditions of exploitation.
The rationale for concerted peasant action disappeared with the defeat of the aristocracy.
There is a fundamental difference between the nature of the class relationships characterized as "oppressor and oppressed".
The peasant economy
Marx attributes the origins of individual property to the cottage economy of peasants and artisans that emerged from the dissolution of feudal lordship.
Marx underscored the pre-modern peasantry's contribution to the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
The majority of peasant families acquired sufficient land on which they could get a living by their work.
Not only were peasant villages older than the ruling aristocracy, but given the tendency of noble families to die out, peasant had a more continuous life and were more deeply entrenched.
Marx drawed a sharp distinction between the pre-modern and the modern peasantry.
Marx's argument is that the triumph of the peasantry as a class led to the economic florescence of peasant agriculture, creating the basis for a revolution in agricultural production.
The primitive accumulation of capital
Two decisive events, Marx contends, marked the genesis of capitalism.
The first, comprised the abolition of all types of personal dependence that is, of serfdom.
The second, is that the labourer, instead of being in the position to sell commodities, must be obliged to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power.
The advent of capitalist class relations was the unintended by-product of feudal processes of class struggle.
Marx's study of the genesis of capitalist production provides an analysis of the process that broke up feudal class relations, giving rise to a capitalist class enjoying private ownership of the means of production.
The immense majority of the population consisted in free peasant proprietors, whatever was the feudal title under which their right of property was hidden.
Capitalist class relations emerged because they were best suited and necessary for, optimal productive development.
The genesis of capitalist class relations
The changing configuration of ownership relations in the countryside transformed the economic and political physiognomy of the English aristocracy.
The process of consolidating the new economic order required the ascending class to complete the destruction of the traditional regime.
The agricultural revolution and the differentiation of the rural producers encouraged the "proto-industrialization" of the countryside, led by the development of textile manufacturing.
The transformation of the ruling class manifested itself in a struggle to secure the dominance of a wholly new form of property in the means of production.
Most farmers employed wage labor.
The feudal crisis
The distinguishing characteristic of the feudal relations of production arises from the fact that the economy is effectively under peasant control.
Marx's most significant and distinctive historical contribution has been his conception of feudal class relations and their economic impact.
The nature of the feudal crisis complex is plainly incompatible with the account of crises given by orthodox historical materialism.
Medieval peasant villagers were quite capable of reproducing their economy without the intervention of any ruling class
The economic activities of lords and peasants were determined by the need to reproduce their conditions of existence
