Where “feudalism” refers to a specific form of society and not just “that time period”
Uuh. I mean it doesn’t, really? That viewpoint is incredibly reductive and eurocentric. It probably made sense in 1860 but it’s nonsense now. A bunch of totally unpredictable shit like the invasion of the Americas and the invention of the heavy plough and the enclosure of the commons and dozens of other things happened and they all, eventually, over the course of several hundred years, ended up at what we call capitalism. But there was a thousand years of “Feudalism” and “Feudalism” isn’t even a particularly useful description for that period because it meant different things in different places and times. And it only really applies to Europe, because China had a wildly different economic history and didn’t ever really arrive at capitalism until Europe started meddling. Same thing with India. There were “Feudal” economic arrangements in India and they never really developed in to capitalism indigenously. Same thing with Japan. Japan was sorta kind Feudal, if we use feudal as a big tent term, and they didn’t really develop in to a capitalist society until the end of the Tokugawa era/early Meiji period and even then it’s complicated.
EDIT: and that’s not even getting in to the ancient world, which had it’s own bevy of weird economic systems.
“feudalism laid the groundwork for capitalism” is just something I’ve heard a few times here and elsewhere, I wanted to know what people meant by it.
the vague impression I always got was more along the lines of “capitalism started because there were just too many non-nobles with money and guns”
or maybe that was my take on early democracy.
In addition to industrialization, one important prerequisite of capitalism is the global market. Mass industrialization requires mass resource gathering through global trade networks. This is done through colonialism, slavery, and exploiting existing strained feudal relationship conflicts in other regions, on a global scale. With the creation of the Gutenberg press and the ‘Age of Exploration’, global trade networks and mass communication was possible, which allowed for the creation of the global market. It’s only when all these material conditions are in place, along with a bourgeoisie revolution (where the merchant class revolts against the aristocracy), that the primary mode of production can change from feudalism to capitalism.
WRT Japan, remember that having capitalism as the mode of production in a society only means that it’s the primary way to produce in that society. The classes of merchants and specialized craftspeople existed under feudalism, but they weren’t yet the main class conflict until the previous rule of aristocracy was overthrown.
