The problem with the common depiction of the history of the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in England being focused the Enclosures of the Commons is that the existence of the Commons was actually a problem for either Feudalism or Capitalism, they both require all the land monologized by a ruling class. And indeed most Enclosures that happened during the Middle Ages and even into the 17th Century were for the Feudal Aristocracy not the proto Bourgeois.
Liberalism in the modern English Speaking world began during the English Revolution with The Levellers led by John Liburne and Richard Overton, just like how Communism was revived with the Diggers led by Gerrard Winstanley. Overton called for the unenclosing of previously Common Land, the Levellers didn’t want to abolish Private Property entirely like the Diggers, but there being Common Land was a vital piece of their vision.
Under Capitalism Private Property is not actually a Right, it’s a Privilege, but people with Privilege love to treat an attack on their privilege as if it violates their rights. The early Liberals from the Levellers to John Locke to Rousseau saw Property as a Right that all are entitled to. I am still a Communist who sees ending Private Property entirely as the correct answer. But I refuse to see these true Liberals as more aligned to Capitalism than Communism simply because of one thing Karl Marx said.
Robert Filmer in Patriarcha created a Private Property ideology much more like what modern Capitalism Apologists believe, and he did so as a Jacobite Royalist supporting Feudalism not as a Revolutionary. He is who John Locke wrote his discussion of Property to refute as James Tully documents in A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his Adversaries. The Inclosure Act of 1773 was passed by the Tory Government of Lord North.
However, in time some wealthy landowners became influenced by Liberal ideology and slowly started corrupting it with Laisseze-Fair and Meritocratic ideas, principally David Hume in England and the Physiocrates in France. Real Liberalism is not an ideology that Justifies Capitalism at all, that’s it’s corrupt Prodigal offspring.
The first half of The Communist Manifesto has been described as the most Pro-Capitalist text ever written. The idea that Capitalism was good when it started, that it “resolved the class contradictions of Feudalism”, that it was necessary for Capitalism to happen before we can do Socialism or Communism is still dogmatically held to by too many modern Marxists especially MLs.
The Liberation that actually happened during this period was accomplished by Liberalism, but even then not everything they were fighting for. Then Capitalists Co-Opted Liberalism as they destroyed the only upsides of Feudalism. Then Marxists start giving Capitalism credit for what Liberalism accomplished while calling Liberalism the Justifying Ideology of Capitalism so they can label any Leftist with actual Democratic Values a “Bourgeois Liberal” while they slowly turn into Fascists with a USSR Fetish.
We also have MLs rejecting the concept of being Left Wing anymore because of how that terminology originated with the French Revolution and so to call yourself Left Wing is merely “the Left Wing of Capitalism”. The problem is NO the French Revolution didn’t truly create a modern Capitalist state out of France until its Right Wing prevailed on the 18 Brumaire. The Left during the Revolution included the Enrages and the Conspiracy of the Equals who Marx acknowledged as true Communist precursors. But it also included Anti-Capitalist Liberals like Claude Fouchet and Nicolas Bonneville.
And the problem with Marxism being too Pro-Capitalism was becoming apparent already in the 19th Century, where Russia was still under Feudalism. Early Russian Marxists like Georgi Plekhanov argued that Russia needed to make Capitalist first, and this was vehemently opposed by the Narodniks who went to form the Socialist Revolutionary Party. This issue in Russian Marxism led directly to Leninism.
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