Pre-industrial countries having certain characteristics that resemble capitalism is taken as proof that capitalism is traditional. But Lambda was unable to be consistent about that over the course of a single post, since he couldn't help but describe older societies as (woefully) "agrarian and mercantile." Traditional societies were not characterized by generally free markets in land, labour, and capital. Land - ever heard of the manorial system? Labour - heard of guilds, or again, of the restrictions placed on labour mobility by the same manorial system? Capital - heard of barter, necessitated by the widespread scarcity of money, or perhaps of restrictions on lending at interest? Someone with more interest in economic history could greatly enlarge the list, but I think that's enough.
I won't argue that capitalism and traditional social organization don't have several points of intersection. He's right about low taxes, for instance. But the central pillar of capitalism, that the market should be self-regulating and free from interference, and even more so the corollary that everything or damn near it should be included in the market, could not be less traditional.
You essentially missed the point of the post. The point was two fold. The second and only minor point was not that capitalism is traditional, but merely, as you say, that it does have points of intersection with traditional society, whatever "traditional society" actually means. In other words, the point is that it was not as abrupt and revolutionary as typically claimed, but that there did exist a historic precedent to it, one whose earliest form really only existed in the Catholic world. Again, there is not an economic historian out there, as liberal as he or she may be, who thinks Marx got really anything right about history. For some moronic reason, 19th-20th century Catholic writers (and Popes) granted that Marx got his history right but his solutions wrong, when in fact he got it all wrong. The growth of capitalism was slow and gradual, evolutionary, so gradual that it only came to fruition in the West where it had a thousand years to unfold, and there are a billion different ideas out there as to why this only happened here.
The larger point was that the traditionalist narrative of industrial capitalism, with its foundation in the writings of Leo XIII, is absolutely false. It completely inverted the reality of the situation. Capitalism did not result in the "utter poverty of the masses" as the good Pope implied, but in fact has raised the real wage of the unskilled laborer to more than 10 times his pre-industrial earnings. To date it is the only economic system ever put in place that actually alleviated the utter poverty of the masses. He of course had no way of knowing this, and like Pope Francis simply regurgitated the imprudent words of the men who advised him on these issues. Turns out they were wrong. He inadvertently condemned a hundred thousand years of human social history. Using the standards listed by him, his own era was more economically just than any previous era, yet he considered the socio-economic condition of his own era to be unjust. He was the first Pope in 1800 years to write about this. Yet every complaint about wages and distribution levied at capitalism was only worse in times past.
You can try to falsify the words of Dr. Clark on land, labor, and capital, but you're out of context. He said
generally free. You can similarly find dozens of examples of modern land, labor, and capital to show that our markets are also not completely free. For example, for some reason people think guilds are analogous to unions but they're really not. They're more analogous to groups like the AMA which hold a monopoly on who can practice medicine and fight primarily for the benefit of employers rather than employees (see Steven A. Epstein's
Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe). I however think that is a good thing. Our markets are not truly free now either, but compared to the world in the past outside of western civilization it is completely fair to characterize both our markets and pre-industrial English markets as
generally free.
For the record, the deification of the ideological tenets you point out at the end have been non-essential to capitalism as it has actually played out and still plays out in the real world. When economic historians speak of capitalism they are speaking of the form of economy and economic policy that has generally been in place in western civilization since the mid 18th century, though there are a growing number of scholars who would push that date into the 17th century or earlier because of the fact that it was gradual and lacking any sort of demarcation (see for example Roman Studer's
The Great Divergence Reconsidered). True, unregulated markets are essential to capitalist policy but typically the policy has been enacted as a means to stimulate commerce and generate wealth rather than as a means to achieve some sort of ideological end. Remember when I speak of unregulated markets I mean it in a relative sense, since as a whole the market has never really been completely unregulated but compared to the alternatives can fairly be called "unregulated." Unregulated markets typically take the form of a lack of the characteristics of a command economy. It's not so much a thing as a lack of a thing. To wit, unregulated markets have been around for a lot longer than the ideologies which deify them, and have existed prior to capitalism itself. Ideologues will pen their words but they're not essential to the policy.
Adam Smith wasn't really a modern or industrial capitalist for that matter. He lived before modern economic growth really took off and could not fathom a world in which sustainable economic growth took place. His words mean nothing to me nor to any of the actors currently putting policy in place. Consider this: There has never been an economic system in which there was no regulation. There has never been an economic system in which the government does not intervene in the market in some situation or circumstance. Most people will admit this. Most people will also admit that the West has been living in a captalist system for the past couple hundred years. Therefore there is clearly a discrepancy between the real policy and the words of ideologues. The real reason every western nation on earth adopted capitalist policy within the last few hundred years has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the simple fact that it creates wealth, for the individuals, for the community, for the State, and for the entire nation. In other words, it works.
I think it is beyond idiotic that traditionalist Catholics are trying to solve problems that are not actually problems instead of trying to put the faith back to where it belongs. Nobody has any reason to be so concerned with "just wages" or "income inequality" when they are objectively better than ever. This world has always been fallen and will never be perfect. Those who advocate unprecedented alternatives to capitalism in order to enact a "just wage" or reduce "inequality" even more are working for something that has never existed. They are trying to make heaven on earth and in doing so are doing exactly the same thing as secular liberal humanists, which is precisely why every Trad who takes up the mantra of economic/social justice is an utter sell out. Not only are they fighting a make believe battle but in the battles before us with real lasting consequences they are doing more harm than good by giving others unjust cause to hesitate.
