Obviously capitalism bad, but it bought greater production, technological advance, medicine, and treats for the lucky. I just wonder if 15th century serfs in France got any material benefit from owing most of their harvest to the lord. Did Baron Scrotumface help them make better plows and scythes, or was it all just expropriation?
This is a very low effort question because I’m tired from work.
I greatly appreciate your well informed comment in many ways, but your first sentence is just plain misleading:
Of course feudal economies were diverse and different economic systems always exist side by side. But I could just as well say, that there is no capitalism now. Landlords still exist and make up a huge part of the economy. There were never more slaves than during our time. Capitalism works different in Kongo than in Norway. And different now than in the 19th century.
When people ask about an economic system, they ask about an abstraction. People intuitively deal with abstractions every day. For example when they talk about drivers vs pedestrians. No one is born a driver. These roles we take on are mere abstractions. But that doesn’t make them less real as antagonistic forces within society. It’s the same with classes such as capitalist, worker, serf, lord, etc.
If these are not the best suited terms, then the aim of a medievalist should be to sharpen them: The well established method of historic materialism abstracts from details to define modes of production to analyze long-term historical transformations driven by material conditions and class struggle. However, under capitalist rule, post-structuralist methodology (albeit a useful tool itself) often is used to sabotage our understanding of the real dialectical processes that drive history.