Short answer- yes, but the specification of the English social and economic system that led to capitalism was important too. Without the Magna Carta and the unique geography and resources of England, capitalism would likely not have evolved the way it did, if at all. (Ellen Wood's Origin of Capitalism)
I would like to begin by introducing some definitional rigor.
Feudalism is a system in which control of the means of production emanates from a central monarch figure. For example, lower lords and their subordinates all draw their right to own and use a certain plot of land from a privilege granted to them by that monarch. The key point in this context is that the lords do not actually own the property in their own right. Their rights are purely derivative.
In feudalism, the lords I was describing are commonly called vassals.
Effectively, vassals owe allegiance (fealty) to the monarch in exchange for the use of the labor and land and capital vested in them. As such, there is a sort of quid pro quo, but it is impossible for the monarch to ever transfer ownership as such to the vassals who owe him fealty. If such a transfer to take place, it would be creating private property, and together with that it would at least in some minimalist sense be creating the conditions for the emergence of a capitalist system.
By contrast, capitalism is a system in which individuals own the means of production in their own right. That means that an individual may own land, money or even other human beings without actually owing anything, for example fealty, to an over arcing figure like a monarch.
Now in the Marxist conception, feudalism would lead to capitalism because ultimately economic processes would lead to the emergence of a merchant class. This merchant class would, in turn, desire the use of land, labor and capital which was bound up in feudal structures of fealty. This basically means that land, peasants and other useful – from an economic perspective – instruments were locked up and unavailable for purposes of commerce.
Such a process actually took place. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that Marx was prescient. In fact, it's more likely that he was simply looking back on a process which had already taken place in actual history.
In the late 18th century, for example in Prussia, peasants were freed by the ruling monarchs in an effort to encourage movement into cities. An actual law was passed which removed the criminal prohibitions on peasants relocating from their traditional homesteads. This was intentionally done with the aim of developing an urban industrial base. The reason given was exactly the one that Marx stated, namely so that a ready supply of labor would be available in cities on which industrialists could draw. The fact that this was initiated by monarchs rather than by the merchant class is conveniently ignored by Marx, who was more interested in pushing an ideological agenda. So in light of this, the flow from feudalism into capitalism was potentially even initiated from within the existing structures of the feudal system. Marx believed that capitalism would, instead, be born out of a conflict between the merchant class and the old feudal monarchy, with the latter losing.
If we look at history with a more nuanced lens, rather than insisting on a clean linear array of time, it is apparent that feudal and capitalist structures coexisted with each other for hundreds of years. Private ownership of property was certainly possible during the middle ages, especially after the rediscovery of Roman law in Bologna in the 11th century. Even well into the 18th century, we see that one of the main objections raised by the French revolutionaries was the continued existence and enforcement of laws designed around feudal social conventions. The same applies to Germany in the 18th century, where revolutionaries embraced the abolition of individual servitutes, corvee labor and other feudal remnants.
So, my conclusion is that while Marxist theory was quite intriguing, and while it of course also provided a fascinating lens through which to examine history, it ultimately is not sufficiently nuanced to truly reflect what was going on during the medieval era and during the incredibly complex and legally fascinating transition from feudal structures into a dominant capitalist mode of relating to interactions between individuals, the government and other individuals based on freedom of contract.
I would add that it is capitalism which has been an historical constant. Most societies have known private ownership of land, labor and capital, going all the way back to Sumeria and Babylonia. It is the feudal system in Europe which was, for a few hundred years, out of the norm. But even then, the laws and social conventions underlying feudalism were imposed on top of an essentially still capitalist system.
Feel free to ask clarifying questions, I would be happy to provide additional detail.
(Errors and typos due to dictation)
Okay. So you have to understand that England in the 1500s (very generalized timeline here, guys, don't report me to r/badhistory) was relatively unique among European countries in that the monarch was not absolute. The Magna Carta (1215) had given the lords democratic power that rendered the monarch in certain ways (not at today's standards) a figurehead. This is important because it shows the political power of the upper classes in England as opposed to their counterparts in France, for example. It's also important because the Magna Carta and the English monarchy both represented something further: a powerful centralized government.
But let's back up a little first, back to around 1346. The Black Death. Around 50 percent of the European population dies. As in any power structure in which a wealthy few control the vast majority of resources, the majority population is in the underclass. This large concentration of the underclass allows for the power of the few to be relatively unchallenged (not completely, as we will see) due to the competition between the members of the underclass for the resources they can access. Anyway, the Black Death "happens" and 50 percent of the entire European population dies, leaving behind a vastly depleted labor pool. This depletion of the labor pool in turn led to an awareness on the part of the peasantry that the power relationship between them and the feudal lords had changed somewhat in their favor. Those peasants who survived were in a very good situation: land open, cattle, emptying of towns and cities....The peasants had autonomy. The whole feudal system broke down, or was at least in the process of doing so by 1400. The lords, obviously, did not like this very much.
I guess that we should talk about the feudal society. Under feudalism, the peasants controlled the means to production themselves inasmuch as they could provide for their own subsistence, contributing a healthy surplus of their production to the lords in the form of taxation as rent. So, the king owns all the land in the country. The lords control portions of the land and kick back some of their income to the king. The lords have vassals who control further chopped up portions of the land, and so on, until you get to the peasants, who farm the land they are allowed to, kick back a portion of their produce, and consume or trade the rest.
This power relationship works within the parameters of the social control that the Black Death effectively ended. The halving of the population made the old methods unworkable. The political power and wealth of the English lords was not something they were willing to give up, though, and they turned to a different technique of exploitation.
I'm in the process of moving, so we'll pick up in an hour or so.