Capitalism is based on the theoretical right of ownership in an era where only feudal aristocrats could own anything, in the present day and age many people in a capitalist society own their home and primary mode of transport and there isn’t a law per-se that restricts anyone from even being allowed to own a home or car or horse or whatever other than being under aged.
The next step is the degree to which that right should be that you can in theory own a home, vs the right to own a home in fact. IE, the equality of opportunity vs the equality of outcomes. This is another dimension in which class struggle is in fact intersectional with identity politics, as that same equality of opportunity vs equality of outcomes struggle is what defines a lot of modern race and gender relation conflicts in the present day, or at least what did before the right decided to drag us all kicking and screaming back to the 50s, the 1850s.
Actually, while under feudalism all land is the king’s land, peasants still owned property, in the same sense that you can own land and a house atop it while still paying land tax to the government and being on its soil. In the feudal system, you would spend your adolescence as an apprentice, your young adulthood as a journeyman, and your full adulthood as a master, who was married and owned property. This mode of social progression existed in some form at all levels of society, and across gender lines.
For example, take a lady-in-waiting at a noble’s castle. What she is waiting for is to be married and for her household to receive her family’s dowry, at which point she will become a noblewoman in full. Until that time, she works as a servant in another noble’s domain, learning about noble life and what will be expected of her once she is married. Contrast that with a peasant boy, who works as a farmhand on someone else’s farm into he is old and experienced enough to marry, and use the dowry to purchase a farm of his own. He still owes the local lord a tax and the church a tithe, but the land he owns is his responsibility and his livelihood. Culturally, he is not considered a fully fledged adult until he owns the tools of his own trade, whether he be a farmer, blacksmith, cobbler, mercenary, knight, or baron.
The great innovation of capitalism was really the idea of owning the tools of someone else’s trade en masse, and permanently. If every older man has one or two apprentices, there’s enough to go around. But if someone has 1000 wage labourers, then suddenly society has to change, else culturally those labourers will be trapped in a state of permanent adolescence, which is exactly what happened when capitalism began. Suddenly a man with no land and no title has a power on par with that of a baron. Or perhaps even a duke or a king. Suddenly, the entire economic and governmental structure of feudalism is in crisis.
Capitalism is based on the theoretical right of ownership in an era where only feudal aristocrats could own anything, in the present day and age many people in a capitalist society own their home and primary mode of transport and there isn’t a law per-se that restricts anyone from even being allowed to own a home or car or horse or whatever other than being under aged.
The next step is the degree to which that right should be that you can in theory own a home, vs the right to own a home in fact. IE, the equality of opportunity vs the equality of outcomes. This is another dimension in which class struggle is in fact intersectional with identity politics, as that same equality of opportunity vs equality of outcomes struggle is what defines a lot of modern race and gender relation conflicts in the present day, or at least what did before the right decided to drag us all kicking and screaming back to the 50s, the 1850s.
Actually, while under feudalism all land is the king’s land, peasants still owned property, in the same sense that you can own land and a house atop it while still paying land tax to the government and being on its soil. In the feudal system, you would spend your adolescence as an apprentice, your young adulthood as a journeyman, and your full adulthood as a master, who was married and owned property. This mode of social progression existed in some form at all levels of society, and across gender lines.
For example, take a lady-in-waiting at a noble’s castle. What she is waiting for is to be married and for her household to receive her family’s dowry, at which point she will become a noblewoman in full. Until that time, she works as a servant in another noble’s domain, learning about noble life and what will be expected of her once she is married. Contrast that with a peasant boy, who works as a farmhand on someone else’s farm into he is old and experienced enough to marry, and use the dowry to purchase a farm of his own. He still owes the local lord a tax and the church a tithe, but the land he owns is his responsibility and his livelihood. Culturally, he is not considered a fully fledged adult until he owns the tools of his own trade, whether he be a farmer, blacksmith, cobbler, mercenary, knight, or baron.
The great innovation of capitalism was really the idea of owning the tools of someone else’s trade en masse, and permanently. If every older man has one or two apprentices, there’s enough to go around. But if someone has 1000 wage labourers, then suddenly society has to change, else culturally those labourers will be trapped in a state of permanent adolescence, which is exactly what happened when capitalism began. Suddenly a man with no land and no title has a power on par with that of a baron. Or perhaps even a duke or a king. Suddenly, the entire economic and governmental structure of feudalism is in crisis.