Budding capitalists cannot get very far unless there are people willing to work for them in exchange for wages. We take this for granted today, but there was a time, not so long ago, when it wasn’t quite so easy. Up through the Middle Ages, the vast majority of people in Europe – at least outside the city states – wouldn’t have wanted to work for wages. People didn’t need to earn wages in order to live. Most people lived as ‘peasants’ – in other words, as small farmers cultivating the land to provide for their own needs. And for the most part they were quite happy doing so.
