The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism

Abstract

The concept of ‘capitalism’ emerged in the mid nineteenth century as one of a number of key concepts designed to characterise the changing nature of Western European society. In company with such concepts as ‘industrial society’ as used by Saint Simon and Spencer, ‘contract’ as deployed by Maine, and ‘gesellschaft’ as elaborated by Tönnies, the term ‘capitalism’ possessed two important features. First, all such notions entailed a sense of qualitative change in the character of entire social systems (or wholes) not simply in some particular sphere of social activity. Second, they focused on the overwhelming importance of changes in economic life in the shaping of nineteenth-century society. In both these respects, the character of nineteenth-century Europe was seen as marking a significant shift away from the ‘feudal’, ‘militaristic’ status-bound and communitarian concerns felt to be characteristic of the European ‘past’. For many this shift was also associated with two fundamental episodes of revolutionary change, namely, the French Revolution, where the forces of reason struggled against the ‘feudal’ ancien regime, and the Industrial Revolution, by which a self-sufficient agrarian economy was replaced by a dynamic industrial system.