what is the meaning of feudal capitalism?

Answer 1

Capitalism means the market economy -- basic things like the profit motive; and prices being determined by supply and demand.

Feudalism was the social structure in mediaeval Europe in which societies were organised on a heirarchy of loyalties with a monarch at the top and a mass of serfs at the bottom. Each person owed a duty of fealty to the person above them.

Feudal society was non-capitalist in the sense that the predominant economic activity, food production, was carried on outwith market forces. What crops were sown and how much was decided by peasants on their own land and by lords on theirs, and if there was a surplus over what the lord and his villeins and serfs ate it was stored in the barn.

But a part of the economy was essentially capitalist in nature. Consumer goods such as pots and pans, investment goods such as quarried stone, services such as those provided by blacksmiths, and work done by artisans such as stonemasons building churches, were all paid for with money. On occasions, kings paid mercenaries to fight wars for them. Rich people paid for services like the hire of a horse and carriage or a fancy hairdo or for goods like jewellery, all of which someone made or provided for money. Ordinary people both bought and sold goods in market towns on market day (anything from weekly to annually depending on time and place). (A market town was a place that a king had granted a charter to giving it permission to hold a market. Some places have 'market' in their name, such as Market Harborough, or the equivalent in an earlier form of language such as the Chipping in Chipping Barnet, because of this.) It is this money economy in which the sellers are predominantly artisans and the buyers may be either the rich or the poor or an institution that can legitimately be referred to as feudal capitalism.