Trade has always existed, and rich merchants have always been a part of the economic and political picture, but merchants have not always been the rulers, as they are today…
In a recent essay for The Imaginative Conservative, I claimed that capitalism had its origins in England. I had expected such a sweeping statement to raise the ire or the eyebrows of some readers and was not surprised that it elicited a puzzled response. “When,” one correspondent inquired of me, “did capitalism begin in England? Did it not start in Florence with the Medici?” It must be conceded that my correspondent has a point. Although I don’t agree that capitalism began in Florence, I am nonetheless constrained to confess that my naming of England as the birthplace of capitalism lacked the necessary nuanced clarification.
It all depends, of course, on what we mean by capitalism. If capitalism is merely the use of capital, the first capitalist was the first of our ancestors to pick up a stick and use it. Such a definition is too broad to be of any use. After all, if capitalism is merely the use of capital, even the communists are capitalists.
Refining our terms, we might be tempted to say that capitalism is bound up with the practice of moneylending at interest, or what some would call usury, the practice of which was condemned by both Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece and by Cicero and Cato the Elder in ancient Rome, and by the God of the Old Testament (Exodus 22:25), the Psalmist (Psalm 15) and the prophet Ezekiel. Clearly, if we define capitalism in such terms, its origins predate the very existence of England.
Others might prefer to define capitalism as the practice of trading goods. If so, it can be said to have had its origins in the first merchants at the very dawn of civilization. As with the first definition, regarding the use of capital, this definition is also too broad to be of much use. All of us trade, as all of our ancestors traded. It is a universal part of the communal dimension of human life. Even communists trade. If, therefore, we are to connect capitalism with trade in any meaningful sense, it will become necessary to refine our understanding of the former’s relationship with the latter. “In all normal civilizations the trader existed and must exist,” writes G. K. Chesterton. “But in all normal civilizations the trader was the exception; certainly he was never the rule; and most certainly he was never the ruler.” For Chesterton, the problem was not trade per se, which is an integral part of human life, but the elevation of trade to a position of political dominance. This was a “falsification” of right order, “arising from a very recent trick of regarding everything only in relation to trade”. He continues:
Trade is all very well in its way, but Trade has been put in the place of Truth. Trade, which is in its nature a secondary or dependent thing, has been treated as a primary and independent thing; as an absolute. The moderns, mad upon mere multiplication, have even made a plural out of what is eternally singular, in the sense of single. They have taken what all ancient philosophers called the Good, and translated it as the Goods.
Since trade is relative, of its nature, relating the price of one thing to another, its political ascendancy has contributed greatly to the rise of relativism. If, as Oscar Wilde quipped, a cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, we can say that the ascendancy of Trade is the triumph of cynicism. Thus we are meant to surrender good things, such as our own political freedom and the political freedom of sovereign nations, to the juggernaut of globalized trade, which is seen as the “good” that trumps all other goods. It is in this modern and recent sense of the word that I claimed in my article that capitalism was born in England.
It is true that trade has always existed and that rich merchants have always been a part of the economic and political picture, but it is not true that the merchants have always been the rulers, as is the case today. Modern globalism has its roots in the industrialism of eighteenth century England, which grew from the seeds of plutocracy planted by Henry VIII in the pillaging of the Church in the 1530s and from the founding of the Bank of England in the wake of the plutocratic revolution of 1688, both of which handed England over into the hands of what Chesterton called its “new unhappy lords”. The power of England’s central bank, which would be emulated by the rise of the other central banks, combined with the power of the East India Company, the world’s first global corporation, brought together the forces of usury and the forces of trade, transforming England into the greatest power in the world, its Empire laying the foundations for the growth of global corporatism. It is in this specific context that I claimed that England was the cradle of capitalism and, in this context, I believe I was justified in making the claim.
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Thank you, this was a very interesting article. I hope you get some good comments.
Interesting article. I hope you’ll write more on this topic.
The Apple
(GM Foods)
In Reflections on a Rotten Apple
‘Capitalism has turned the good into Goods’.
That’s what capitalism does:
Turns the good into Goods.
But now we are in the process of-
Turning the good itself artificial.
Squeezing the good out of the good;
Squeezing the goodness out of an apple.
(Uniformity)
All these flawless uniform apples on the supermarket shelf.
You never see anyone choose an apple any more.
I used to like to choose an apple for itself.
There’s something rotten about it,
At the core.
(A wish)
Oh, for knarled up old English apples; different sizes,
Different shapes, different colours; dark-spotted,
Dirty.
(Money)
The Beatles ripped off the apple as well.
Labeled their record label Apple.
Spinning round and round the turn-table.
A real money spinner?
At the end of the sixties rotten to the core.
So they chopped it up,
Between all four.
(Modern technology)
I hate the flawless apple-
Of Apple Macintosh.
I don’t think I like the iPod,
The iMac, the iPhone,
I don’t think I like the designs-
Too smooth, overly-refined.
I don’t think I liked Steve Jobs (R.I.P),
When he would take to the stage;
With his new message; his new teaching;
He was about to present…
(A new tablet of stone- the iPad,
A new miracle of communication-
The iPhone).
The solemn nature of the event,
The sombre atmosphere…
A revolution in our very being-
If we would only see and hear.
I feel like suing Apple
For ripping off the apple.
The apple belongs to all of us.
You have picked the apple,
Taken it to yourself,
Transferred it to an alien place;
Turned it into something else;
The logo for a commercial company.
I would start my court case-
‘As sure as God made little green apples….’
‘The apple should be forbidden fruit
For a commercial company’
‘You have made it the logos
For International Capitalism’.
Why do you say England is the birthplace of capitalism and not the Dutch Republic. Remember, the Glorious Revolution was really the invasion and takeover of England by William of Orange.
I argue for that below.
@Matthew: The Tudors came in on the coattails of the War of the Roses, very much as unwanted guests. Their claim was very unstable since they just sort of barged in, but since much of the strongest noble families had been weakened the Tudors took advantage of this and placed many of their cronies in positions of influence, doling out estates and privileges. These noveau riche, so to speak, did not really have an thorough understanding of the reciprocal obligations of feudal society (many were city people – lawyers, merchants, and the like), and tended to see new estates as a means to make a fortune without regard to those who worked their land (peasants were viewed as accessories rather than stakeholders in the land their families worked for generations, and many of their property rights were abridged under the Tudors).
“Thus we are meant to surrender good things, such as our own political freedom and the political freedom of sovereign nations, to the juggernaut of globalized trade, which is seen as the “good” that trumps all other goods.”
Who gets to define capitalism? It seems that everyone thinks they have the right and uses it as much as possible. Shouldn’t the people who coined the term be the people who define it? Marxists invented it in the late 19th century to describe the economic system of England during that time. But the English didn’t invent the system. They implemented most of Adam Smith’s system of “natural liberty.” But Smith got everything he knew about economics from the Dutch, whom he credits for having the most fully implemented his system. The Dutch got it from the theologians of the University of Salamanca, Spain. Those theologians distilled the principles from the Bible and reason. The Dutch were the first to implement them. For example, they noted the Bible’s sanctification of property and understood that property doesn’t exist with free markets.
But if you look at their principles, capitalism actually began with the Torah and the God-created government of Israel under the judges. The Torah civil laws are mostly about protecting property and other than forbidding theft and fraud there were no restrictions on the market. Israel had no human executive and no legislature, only judges to adjudicate 613 laws, most of which applied to religious ceremony.