Since the Weber-Sombart debate on the birth of capitalism, Alberti's Family Books have been presented as an essential source on the origins of this movement and Alberti himself as a "pioneer of capitalism". The present text aims to show that Alberti is above all an intellectual, who certainly seeks to understand the workings of the business world, particularly in Florence, but who is not in a position to understand it to the end. Indeed, Alberti cannot accept that an individual takes risks to earn even more money when he already has a lot. Nor does he understand how wealth can be created. On the other hand, he knows how to explain very finely how an already rich person can keep his wealth. In this, at least in the De familia books, he is much more "bourgeois" than "capitalist".