Capitalism celebrates 500th anniversary

This year the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary, which is great! But the birth of capitalism is even more significant because it changed the world far more than has the U.S. and this country would not exist as it is without the birth of capitalism. Capitalism lifted a starving world out of poverty to wealth impossible to imagine before. From prehistory until the 17th century, the entire planet was mired in frequent episodes of mass starvation due to famines. There was very little improvement in living standards for 10,000 years. Europeans were hardly better off than the Egyptians who built the pyramids. Capitalism ended that misery and lifted living standards for the first time in history. See the hockey stick graph of per capita GDP for an illustration. 

The principles of capitalism were first distilled from natural law with Biblical support by theologians at the University of Salamanca.  In 1526, 500 years ago, Francisco de Vitoria obtained the chair of Theology at that university and launched a revolution. The Centro Diego De Covarrubias honors the launch of the School of Salamanca. You will need to ask your browser to translate the page from Spanish. In English, the article states, "...the School of Salamanca proposed some solutions that would later make Locke (in politics), Adam Smith (in economics), and Hugo Grotius (in international law) famous." In fact, Lock and Smith learned their political philosophies and theologies from the School of Salamanca. You can learn more about the theologians associated with the School of Salamanca here. 

Some have asked why it took Christianity 1500 years to arrive at these principles of government. The answer lies in the veneration that church fathers had for Aristotle. Most got their political and economic philosophy from him instead of from the Bible. The first to challenge that veneration of Aristotle were the theologian/astronomers like Copernicus who proved Aristotle wrong about the solar system. That crack in the supremacy of Aristotle led to further investigations into his politics and economics. The Reformation also caused reconsideration of traditional ideas on government and economics. 

The Dutch Republic first implemented the political philosophy of the School of Salamanca after it gained freedom from Spain in the late 16th century. It became the first capitalist nation and the place where living standards first began to rise permanently. The Dutch called the principles Godly government. They spread their philosophy to England in the Glorious Revolution then to England's colonies.  Adam Smith called the principles the system of natural liberty and used the Dutch as the best example. Marxists labeled the system capitalism in the late 19th century. 

By the founding of the U.S. 250 years later, atheists like Hume and deists like Jefferson had embraced the Biblical principles of government. From 1600 until about 1900, laissez-faire was Christian economics. Then in the late 19th century, German liberal theologians denying the deity of Christ invaded the U.K. and U.S. They proclaimed Marx as their savior. They lied and claimed to be Christians and that socialism is Bible economics. As Christianity receded, envy exploded and dragged onstage socialism. Today, the U.S. is mostly socialist.