> The word only needed to be created when there was something to contrast it to. The term capitalism started to be used during the Enlightment in order to desc

> The word only needed to be created when there was something to contrast it to. The term capitalism started to be used during the Enlightment in order to describe the new economic system that replaced the one that immediately preceded it, often loosely referred to as feudalism, a system where large land-owners held all the economic power and effectively ruled the lives of their serfs/tenants, and didn’t feel the need to invest their excess wealth into improving the means of production to increase productivity. The merchants, traders and crafts-people had little to no power under this system – at least not until they had their own revolutions.