The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View

Excellent overview of the historical development of capitalism that challenges the conventionally accepted commercialization model. The way the analysis centers the economic compulsions at the heart of capitalism is inspiring and you can see the influence it had on more modern works like Søren Mau's Mute Compulsion.

In contemporary thought capitalism, at least in embryo, has always been with us. People have always traded, merchants have always profited and the market has always existed. By some magic England initiated an industrial revolution in the 18th century and thereafter (after a lengthy brutish period) liberal civilisation finally swept the globe - provided the forces of reactionary-populism can be kept at bay.Such an ideological narrative obscures everything about true causation and real historical dynamics. Ellen Wood's book (above) essentially builds on Marx's arguments in Capital Volume 1, specifically Part 8, Primitive Accumulation, to outline the actual genesis of capitalism.Classic feudalism exhibited what she terms parcelized sovereignty. A hierarchy of lords and nobles culminated in the monarch. This edifice was supported by explicit expropriation of the social surplus product of the peasantry, forced to work the nobles' land or pay rents in kind or money.Feudalism of this type is not particularly stable. Power and wealth depend upon the possession of worked estates. It's a zero-sum game in which successful aggression - lord against lord, lord against monarch and monarch against monarch - is well-rewarded.One route out of this is for the central power to win bringing about the absolutist state (purest example: the French state of Louis 16th who was deposed in the 1789 revolution). The French bourgeois revolutionaries were not capitalists (Wood insists on this distinction); they were urban professionals who used state office as the source of their wealth.The pre-capitalist absolutist state might have been an end-point for the feudal polity, but it locked feudal relations of production into place - it did not organically produce capitalism.England took a different route. The state was centralised early, yet was somewhat decoupled from the absolute power of the monarchy. Much of English history can be understood as a conflict between the leading nobles and the monarch for control of the state apparatus, including the means of taxation and repression, through the institutions of parliament.The early centralisation of the UK market, the centralised, uniform state and the lack of a requirement for local lords to use their own military muscle on their peasants produced a tendency to demand rents in money rather than in kind or by corvée. This led to the phenomenon of agrarian capitalism: large farms (larger than could be cultivated by a family household plus a few hired hands) which relied upon landless workers as paid labourers. The farmer-tenants paid a monetary rent to their aristocratic/noble landlords.Capitalist tenant-farmers could be turfed off their leases and the rent raised for more productive incomers. This gave the farmers an interest in increasing productivity - such a motive is unknown under the feudal-confiscatory mode of production. Landowners invested in surveying services precisely to ascertain optimal rents.Where did the capitalist farmers come from? I think they were the most successful yeomen in the first instance, the kulaks of England. Certainly not part of the gentry, as Jane Austen would be the first to point out. This transition occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries primarily. Enclosures and the move to sheep farming (peaking in the late 18th/early 19th centuries) drove depopulation of the countryside and the mass separation of small-scale peasants from their means of livelihood. Facing starvation, these would flock to the towns where they became the first proletariat.The first capitalists were those guild-masters who were able to thrown off the egalitarian shackles of guild law and increase the size of their enterprises, hiring tens and hundreds of newly-arrived workers. They were joined by usurers and merchants, looking for new opportunities to increase capital. Through this process, England produced dominant classes of landless workers and capitalists, quite separate from the feudal three estates of the church, the land-owning aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie and peasantry.Once capitalism had gained traction, it was both self-sustaining and expansive. In its formative period the workers had no choice but to work hard or die; the capitalists, if defeated by the competition, would be bankrupted and pauperised. Even today, redundancy and bankruptcy are bad news. Capitalism, unlike every other mode of production, is experienced as a never-ending compulsive treadmill, forced to ceaselessly develop the productive forces.Wood argues that this capitalist lift-off happened just once in history, in England, due to the unique set of circumstances outlined above. She then proposes that under the impact of England's consequent economic and military success, the European absolutist states were forced to introduce their own capitalisms -essentially top-down - as 'modernising' reforms under the threat of obliteration.I think you could make a similar case for the dynamic of Stalinist Russia .. and for China today.Incidentally, I was not that impressed by Ellen Wood's book itself, although the topic she writes about is important and sorely neglected. Her writing is unengaging and repetitive. The book is heavily padded and would have worked better as a long essay.She spends the first half of the work criticising at length other Marxist authors who, she correctly notes, assume what they are trying to prove, seeing the genesis of capitalism as inherent in trading or petty commodity production (all phenomena of many historical periods, geographies and modes of production which in general never led to capitalism).Her analysis of the transition to capitalism itself is largely derivative from Marx (Capital Volume 1 Part 8, et al) and other works on agrarian capitalism (there is an extensive literature).Finally, she finishes with the usual platitudes about the superiority of a never-explained socialism over capitalism and parochially finds evidence for capitalism's deep flaws in mad-cow disease of all things! So a clever writer but derivative, not too creative, someone who doesn't rise above genre cliche.

Das Buch von Wood stellt den Ursprung des Kapitalismus in sehr oberflächlich bleibenden Kapiteln dar. Sie hinterlassen manchmal den Eindruck wie von einer Wikipedia-Seite übernommen zu sein. Ich habe nichts gegen Wikipedia aber für ein Buch erwarte ich präzisere und dichtere Synthesen. Ärgerlich ist auch die stark marxistische Ausrichtung des Buches. Das führt dazu dass die Kapitel des Buches in einen sehr tendenziöse Kontext einer bestimmten Form marxistischer Kulturkritik gebettet sind. Insgesamt finde ich das Buch daher nicht überzeugend. Gerade weil das Thema viel 'hergibt' hätte ich mehr Theorie und tiefer gehende Analysen erwartet.

historischer marxismus und die daraus abgeleitete erklärung zu der entstehung des kapitalismus. sehr spannend! kann ich sehr empfehlen und hat mir persönlich eine sehr verständliche entstehungsgeschichte angeboten mit verbindungen die ich so vorher nicht gezogen hatte.

資本主義の起源に関して、非常に説得力のある論考が展開されている。この本でも述べられているが、近代経済学もマルクス経済学も資本主義の起源に関しては「商業化モデル」をベースにしてきた。商業化モデルとは、古代より存在していた商品交換市場と技術発展が、近代に至り奴隷制や封建制の桎梏から解放されることで生産力を増大させ、資本主義として結実したとする説である。つまり資本主義は、交換という人間本性に基づいた自然法則の中から発生したというのが、商業化モデルのキモなのである。マルクス経済学も、人類の歴史的必然として資本主義を位置づけ、その生産力の延長線上に共産主義を置くという、商業化モデルの一亜流にすぎずない。それは資本主義自動崩壊論や待機主義といった右翼日和見主義の理論的源泉として存在し続けている。これに対してウッドは、資本主義が１７世紀イングランド農村における所有関係の転換という特殊性と偶然性から拡大してきたことを明瞭に解説する。モザイク状でまとまらなかった資本主義の起源が、鮮やかに一つの流れになる知的興奮を感じることが出来た。資本主義が農村を起源とするならば、都市と農村、工業国と農業国の分断を克服する視座を持てる予感を抱かせる本でもある。

WWood recent death and my own interests in longer view of capitalism strangely overlapped and I revisited this gem of historiography. Wood and Brenner have been key in getting me to re-think some over-generalizations about capitalist teleology assumed in both liberal and Marxist circles. Many Marxists after Marx have made the same assumptions as liberals about the natural development of capitalism out of feudalism as if it were an innate process of development to economics. Wood not only contested this view, but her synthesis of Brenner with E.P. Thompson explains many otherwise hard to explain traits of capitalism: Why was capitalism so much more tied to England and England’s settler colonies than to Spain or to the various early modern European merchant states like the Italian city states or the Dutch Republic, why did France require a bourgeois revolution whereas England had a religious revolution, why do Locke’s myths about property origins seem so crucial to capitalist thinkers?This book is divided into three sections. The first is an excellent overview of the various models for the origins of capitalism including most of the figures around the various liberal models, the world-systems quasi-Marxist answers, and the key figures on the transition debate (Paul Sweezy, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Georges Lefebvre, and Kohachiro Takahashi) as well as the Brenner Debates on Agrarian capitalism. While knowledge of these debates that happened between late 1950s and late 1990s does help, Wood presents them clearly and without assuming much prior knowledge. Through these debates, one can see that part of the issue is that the definition of capitalist pre-conditions isn’t settled. Is capitalism the existence of a market or the social compulsion for the market to dominate? If it is the former, then capitalism does seem natural as markets between societies for certain goods have existed in almost all societies. If it is the latter, then such systems as early modern French absolutism or the merchant systems that liberals often call mercantilism are not actually capitalism.The second section book more clearly lays out this option while Wood acknowledges her intellectual dependence on E.P. Thompson and Robert Brenner more clearly. This section discusses how specific political arrangements after the Tudor period led to English aristocracy being dependent on value from land-holdings on the market instead of pure taxation from extra-economic forces to increase their wealth. This agrarian model creates the pre-conditions for the industrial model but did not exist elsewhere in Europe nor really even outside of England until colonialism pushed it out in search of my growth. Woods focuses on the fact that most of Europe, even colonial states like Spain, put its surplus into the military or into the use value of aristocrats, whereas the legal structures of England required re-investment and improvement to be profitable. This was power was more centralized in the hands of land-owners in the English civil war (revolution), and even after the monarchy was restored, this power was not lost. Woods also goes into why the Dutch and Italian merchant states did not give up extra-economics means of enrichment and thus didn’t develop the same culture or reinvestment. Then Woods convincing shows John Locke laying out a argument and a myth that naturalized these English developments after the English Civil War.Admittedly, one can become slightly frustrated with Wood here. Here argument is sound, but she does not show specific instances. While she does do this in other books, one gets the feeling that this is only to lay out the logic and the minimal of empirical evidence for her position on the debates but not necessarily go deeply into the empirical historical case. Some people may be frustrated by this tendency, but she does go into these details in other works.In the third section, Wood talks about the relationship to Enlightenment and Modernity. Wood uses Weber’s arguments about the collapsing of various kinds rationality into instrumental rationality, but unlike someone like Horkheimer or Adorno, does not assume this was the only direct result of Enlightenment thinking. If French absolutism were more sustainable, a different model may have been developed. In this sense, Wood seems to argue against critics like Adorno or Frederic Jameson that only one modernity was possible. This also opens her to be combined with theorists who don’t necessarily agree with her on the origins of capitalism when talking about capitalist development outside of Europe. For example, Jairus Banaji’s critique of overly simplistic schemas being read unto the development of capitalism in Asia can work with Wood even though the two thinkers disagree on the origins of capitalism. This third section, however, does seem to be less historiographical and more into taxonomic debates in popular left philosophy and thus seems slightly out if place in the book.While I regard this book as excellent, it does leave a few areas unexplored. What exactly was primitive accumulation needed for it? Were the enclosures a form of primitive accumulation or something else? How crucial was the Protestant reformation for the differences in aristocratic privilege to have developed in England but not France? The timing seems to indicate that it was crucial but the direct relationship is never discussed even though it seems the breaking of church property tithe systems were just as vital as enclosures to making property the key vision of liberty in England and English speaking colonies? Another question, how crucial was US chattel slavery and what was it relationship to agrarian capitalism? Wood does mention that there is a relationship but doesn’t go very deeply into it. She explains, for example, that US slavery and primitive accumulation accelerated capitalism because of its reliance on the English model whereas the Spanish model did not even though it accumulated and enslaved as much. However, she doesn’t go into specifics here in how the developments were related.These caveats aside, however, this book is particularly helpful at getting a grip on global capitalism origins and why it seems so related to Anglo-culture in specific and to Western Europe in general without completely Eurocentric exceptionalism being involved. It is clear and readable and presents a complicated but convinced argument.

Genesis of Capitalism Ellen Meiksins Wood I am a life- long student of Marxism and studied this book as a part of my research for a book project, "God, government and Globalization,".Ms Wood offers an overview of the development of capitalism: " Marxists advocate bourgeois revolution to break the fetters of feudalism. Capitalist market is only the most advanced form of exchange. Industrialization was the inevitable outcome of human instincts. Cyclical recessions and meltdowns are inbred in capitalism. Capitalism recovers from recurrent crisis at the cost of suffering of hundreds of millions of people. Human labor is a commodity for sale. Bulk of work is done by property less laborers who create profit for those who purchase their labor.The capitalists exercise control by financing the election campaigns, obliging the officials to do their bidding, purchasing the media so people hear only what they want them to".She goes on to describe theories to explain the emergence of capitalism: Commercialization model theory:Classical political economy, enlightenment and Marxism all agree that capitalism is the natural outcome of human practices and required only passing of the feudal and mercantile phases for it to mature.Adam Smith "with truck, barter and exchange", individuals have been engaged in exchange of goods and services since the beginning of history. In this model capitalism is thus not a qualitative break, but a quantitative increase.These restraints were removed in the West in ancient Mediterranean Society, but with several century long feudal hiatus of the Roman Empire.The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne attributed the hiatus to Muslim empire's expansion, which closed off the trade routes between the East and the West and the Mercantile Society was replaced by a rentier one.In this view mercantile practice of buying cheap and selling dear is the same as capitalist exchange and accumulation of wealth through appropriation of surplus value.Bourgeois are by definition town dwellers, not noble and work for a living, but use their mind rather than the body..Other models:Weber contends that capitalism arose only in specific historical conditions, and emphasized the uniqueness of Western cities and religion.The Demographic model attributes European economic development to cycles of population growth and decline; that transition to capitalism is governed by the law of supply and demand-Malthusian blockages.World systems theory intersects with dependency theory; world economic development by unequal exchange between core and periphery regions and exploitation by imperial power in colonial times and neo-imperial-post colonial form.Karl Polayni challenged Adam Smith that propensity to `truck, barter and exchange' did not regulate the economy till a century after Adam Smith assigned the dominant role to it. Markets operated under different logic from that of the modern capitalist one.Polayni points out that that only internal national markets, a very late development, resisted by merchants and autonomous towns, were run on competitive principle. Integrated internal market were the result of state intervention largely based on self -sufficient peasants. State regulation continued to prevail over competition.The main theme of Polayni's historical account is that industrial revolution brought about a market society, invention of complex machines made it necessary to convert "natural and human substance of society into commodities".. Commercialization model is based on the premise that Europe deserves the credit for lifting barriers to development of capitalism. Marxists believe that certain historical conditions, not European superiority produced specific consequences like capitalism. Euro-centric accounts assume that Europeans replaced superstition with rationalism, enlightenment and technology progress and liberated the bourgeoisie.This book helped me understand the essence of capitalism.