t to
consider it "anticapitalistic". But to affirm this is to affirm the
existence of capital. That organization recognized the existence of
capital since it tried to defend itself against it, since, from the end
of the thirteenth century onward, it took more and more measures to
escape from its abuses. It is incontestable that, from this period on,
it succeeded by legal force in diminishing the role which capitalism had
played up to that time. In fact it is certain, and we shall have
occasion to observe it, that the power of capital was much greater
during the first part of the urban period of the Middle Ages than during
the second. But even in the course of the latter period, if municipal
legislation seems more or less completely to have shut it out from local
markets, capital succeeded in preserving and in dominating a very
considerable portion of economic activity. It is capital which rules in
inter-local commerce, which determines the forms of credit, and which,
fastening itself on all the industries which produce not for the city
market but for exportation, hinders them from being controlled, as the
others are, by the minute regulations which in innumerable ways cramp
the activity of the craftsmen.[8]

Let us recognize, then, that capitalism is much older than we have
ordinarily thought it. No doubt its operation in modern times has been
much more engrossing than in the Middle Ages. But that is only a
difference of quantity, not a difference of quality, a simple difference
of intensity not a difference of nature. Therefore, we are justified in
setting the question we set at the beginning. We can, without fear of
pursuing a vain shadow, endeavor to discern what throughout history have
been the successive stages in the social evolution of capitalism.

Of the period which preceded the formation of towns, that is, of the
period preceding the middle of the eleventh century, we know too little
to permit ourselves to tarry there. What may still have survived in
Italy and in Gaul of the economic system of the Romans has disappeared
before the beginning of the eighth century. Civilization has become
strictly agricultural and the domain system has impressed its form upon
it. The land, concentrated in large holdings in the hands of a powerful
landed aristocracy, barely produces what is necessary for the proprietor
and his _familia_. Its harvests do not form material for commerce. If
during years of exceptional abundance the