Liberalism and Capitalism Today. Paul-Jacques Lehmann
Weber insists that, in Antiquity, capitalism had a strong political and military coloration. Armies played a central role in public life and their influence grew as their members succeeded in uniting. However, only the rich were able to access military functions because recruits were obliged to finance their equipment themselves. At the same time, the nobility had to turn to them when faced with financial problems.
It is clear that slaves, both as debtors and as prisoners of war, could not exercise any political or economic power. Yet, this was also true of freed slaves – those slaves whose owners had given them back their freedom. As second-class citizens, even outside of military activities, all trades under the jurisdiction of the state were closed to them: tax collector, provider of state supplies, public officer in commercial operations, public works builder, etc. As for craftsmen, they could not play any political role. Small landowners who were free but condemned to pay their debts to their creditors aimed to raise enough money to buy or buy back their freedom.
It has already been pointed out that the economy remained traditional, with the father of the family having absolute power over the domestic unit. The state came to the aid of the population to provide the necessary grains when the harvest was poor. Slavery and serfdom remained in the agricultural domain, and it was only when they had begun to diminish that artisans from these two social statuses began to appear. However, many remained unemployed, and therefore in poverty, and played no political role. Others managed to live a decent life and build up significant financial resources.
1.3.2. The emergence of the urban bourgeoisie: a Western phenomenon
Pre-capitalism changed substantially at the end of Antiquity when the Roman Empire no longer emerged victorious from the wars it waged and was no longer able, contrary to what had happened previously, to bring back to its soil the defeated who had, until that point, been used as slaves, as domestic labor, by rich aristocrats. From the 12th century onwards, as the medieval period developed, the situation that had prevailed until then changed with the rise in power of the city.
Max Weber points out that this development can only be seen in the West, where, as far back as Antiquity, the city was the only place where one could change from being a non-free person to a free person. However, as has just been pointed out, royal and military power exerted such an influence there that no political commune could emerge, and no commune of autonomous citizens could emerge in the face of royal power, because the citizen was not a military man. “Modern capitalism and the modern state were not built on the soil of ancient cities, whereas the development of medieval cities was decisive” (Weber 2019) thanks to the coalescence of several conditions, namely: they had fortifications and a court with a specific right, they had a market place, they enjoyed complete autonomy and they were run by officials who were accepted by all and who applied regulations decreed by the citizens.
Weber explained that such a system was unthinkable in Asia because of family conditions and in India because of the caste system. The medieval cities would be transformed, first in Italy, then in the other countries of Northern Europe, because of their cultural history, while those of the South would long remain excluded from this evolution as the nobility there remained very powerful.
1.3.3. When economic power…
Weber insisted that the existence of the bourgeois as a social body preceded the development of capitalism. The urban environment would gradually become more important thanks to the wealth accumulated by a certain number of its citizens. Farmers who managed to amass a small fortune and who wanted to avoid paying taxes moved to the city or sent their children there. The countryside lost its importance, as the farmers who lived there had to go to the city, both to sell the products from their harvest and to shop there: the flow of the products was not a problem.
Several other factors contributed to the expansion of some cities. For example, maritime cities became richer thanks to the conquest of overseas colonies and the installation of trading posts, allowing them to achieve a certain fiscal autonomy. What followed was the need to create rational rights, as opposed to supernatural ones, which were specific to the cities: market rights and trade police who controlled the quality of goods, monitored prices, ensured the maximum number of apprentices and companions of each master whose appointment was reserved for the sons of masters, prevented people outside the city from acquiring too decisive a role in existing companies and so on At the same time, an administration composed of specialized civil servants was set up.
For Weber (2019), it is thanks to the initiative of the bourgeoisie that capital exists. Indeed, they are “risk-takers, calculating and daring men at the same time, wise and greedy, who amass more than they spend, men above all sober and sure, perceptive men entirely devoted to their task, professing severe opinions and strict bourgeois principles […] They are neither adventurers nor upstarts. They are men who exist according to their enterprise and not the other way around. From the very beginning, the medieval bourgeois-citizen is much more homo oeconomicus than the one in the ancient city cannot or will not be. He abandons violence and weapons in politics for peaceful means in the search for the possibilities of gain available to him in the urban environment”.
The new inhabitants of the cities, traders and free craftsmen, would group together sociologically to form the class of the bourgeoisie, which would acquire economic power at the expense of the aristocracy, despite the privileges it retained. A rivalry then took hold between these two social classes and would not cease to grow as the influence of the bourgeoisie asserted itself. For example, in France, commoners gradually took the place of nobles, not only in the cities, where having been simple consumers they became merchants and then producers, but also in the countryside where they bought land and replaced former landowners.
As a result, the person who, as a representative of the state, had become the most important element, settling all the administrative and economic affairs of the territory on which they officiated, was no longer the nobleman, but the steward from the bourgeoisie, which allowed royal power to annihilate the influence of the great feudal lords.
1.3.4. … transforms into political power
These bourgeois, first merchants, then industrialists, were at the same time transformed into citizens taking over the administration of their common affairs. Indeed, as soon as they became rich, the inhabitants of the cities and the companies established there became more powerful politically than the local lords. They seized political power at the expense of the military elite in order to defend their cities. Weber (2019) argued that “the urban middle class has usurped a breach in seigniorial law and the economy was thus a continuation of the war by other means […] Throughout the Middle Ages, the city was the main support not only of the monetary economy, but also of the administration exercised by virtue of official duty, the first step towards the development of the rational state where the administration lost all personal dimension”.
Similarly, in The Old Regime and the Revolution, de Tocqueville (1856) wrote:
In the eighteenth century, all parochial business was transacted by who were not seigniorial, and who, instead of being chosen by the seigniors, were either appointed by the intendant of the province, or elected by the peasantry. It devolved upon these officers to distribute the taxes, to repair the churches, build schools, to convene and preside over parish meetings; to administer and superintend the expenditure of the funds of the commune; to institute or answer, on behalf of the community, all necessary legal proceedings. The seignior had lost not only the management, but even the supervision of these petty local matters […] The seignior was in fact nothing more than a simple individual, isolated from his fellows by the enjoyment of peculiar immunities and privileges; his rank was different – his power no greater than theirs […] The French nobility persists in remaining apart from the other classes, and gentlemen end up allowing themselves to be exempted from most of the public burdens that weigh upon them. They figure that they will preserve their greatness by evading these charges, and it seems at first to be so. But soon an internal disease seems to have attached itself to their condition, which gradually reduces without anyone touching them, and they