Feudal collapse transferred power to merchant capital that birthed capitalism

Evidence

By the thirteenth century, that phase of European development was at a close; the system collapsed. The ruling classes of feudal Europe were succeeded by their Mediterranean factors: merchants, traders, and bankers. They in turn spawned or defined the roles for those actors who supplied capital, technical, and scientific expertise, and administrative skills to the states that would lead the emergence of capitalist Europe. By then, however, European culture and consciousness had been profoundly affected. Legend, as we have seen, acquired the authority of history. Moral authority continued to dissipate. The mystifying veil, which the feudal ruling classes had created to hide, or at least soften the crushing oppression that they had put in place, was in tatters. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 514

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Capitalism’s final crisis has birthed a new system of concentrated power — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 240