The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism

4ZZ6 Honours Essay By Nima Chooback Supervisor: Dr. James Ingram April, 16th, 2009

Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2 Chapter 1: The Commercialization Model and the Marxist Alternative ....................................................... 6 Chapter 2: Colonialism and the Emerging Capitalist System ...................................................................... 25 Chapter 3: The Agrarian Origins of Capitalist Production ........................................................................... 38 Concluding Thoughts .................................................................................................................................. 51 Works Cited................................................................................................................................................. 54

Introduction

On the face of it, the domination and the omnipresence of capitalism today go largely uncontested. Looking back now, it appears that we owe much of our progress, improvements and even freedoms to this marvel of economic achievement. Yet to what extent have we considered the origins and processes that have allowed for the system to become what it is today? This is this papers central issue; to what degree does capitalism owe its existence to natural, inevitable processes? Or conversely, in what measure has its maturation been the result of identifiable processes rooted in issues of class and relations of production? The deterministic defence of capitalism dates as far back as the mid-eighteenth century and to such notables as Adam Smith. Their contribution to what would come to be known as the commercialization model moved towards the narrative of capitalisms existence as something of a transhistorical inevitability. With a surprising level of influence, this model and variations of it have made commonplace many of the assumptions that we associate with capitalism today; notions such as ones natural inclination to truck, barter, and exchange, or the age-old practice of wanting to buy cheap and sell dear, despite having little to do with the mechanics of capitalism as a system, are usually taken seriously as explanations for capitalism. As a response to this view, this paper offers Marxist alternatives as a better, more accurate option; the Marxist insistence on historical materialism and the importance that it places on the conditions and transformations needed for the development of any system allows one to avoid the assumptions of a seamless transformation that is often employed by advocates of the commercialization model. From this angle, the historiography employed by Marx and subsequent Marxists becomes indispensable as it expresses capitalisms origins contextually; in it, the role of property
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relations, class struggle, the means of subsistence, available modes of production and ownership and access to the means of production present a much better case than looking at the system as having existed in one form or another throughout human history. Filling in this picture will be the objective of this essay; having argued that capitalism has not been a system in embryo since man developed the means and rationality to engage in commercial activity, this paper will try and outline the particular developments that have contributed to the formation of capitalism. This will include the role that the European colonial enterprise has played in the development of capitalism. Lastly, the English experience with agrarian capitalism will be offered as an example of the very specific historical conditions that were necessary for the early stages of capitalism. In line with theorists like Robert Brenner and Ellen Wood, this paper will explain how the accumulation of wealth was a necessary condition for the cultivation of capitalism, how the so-called primitive accumulation gave rise to capitalist social property relations and how without colonial expansion the transition to capitalism could not have taken place in Europe. Through the connections and interconnections of these processes, it will be made clear how the conditions that were necessary in order to make the existence of agrarian capitalism a possibility. Lastly, agrarian capitalism is presented as the only feasible mechanism from which modern capitalism has could have emerged. From there it will be explained how a system that is described to have developed from within (as has been the English narrative) could account for its global proliferation. In response to this we are forced to look at the many imperatives, requirements and contradictions that came with agrarian capitalism some three hundred years ago. It was the systems relentless need for accumulation and expansion that did not allow it to stay at home for very long. Nevertheless, the outward pressure exerted by these early English

capitalists on the rest of Europe will illustrate some of the systems imperatives at work early in its development. Ultimately this paper seeks to put the ambiguity surrounding capitalisms origins to rest. And since the aim of this project is to articulate the inherent mechanics of capitalism, they can be extended to answer many of the contemporary concerns regarding the system. In the end, it will be clear that the systems insistence on asymmetrical development, centralization of wealth, an endless hunger for new markets and a systemic exploitation of the working class paints a worrying picture that is unique to capitalism a system that was created, not one that is as an extension of ancient human inclinations. I hope that this paper will help to correct the misguided notion that capitalism is and has always been the natural impetus of humanity. The idea that capitalism, by representing an inevitable law of nature, in turn represents a default tendency of humanity is built on shaky ground and one that I feel needs to be resisted. For too long those with a vested interest in the status quo have rallied behind the banner of capitalism as an organic economic system as a means of ensuring faith in the systems operations. By championing the current capitalist system as the blossoming of natural and intrinsic human qualities, the proponents have successfully taken much momentum out of resistance movements, especially from the left. It is the optimistic ambition of this paper to help take steam and ammunition out of this wrongful justification of the contemporary capitalist system. In order to make a case against determinist-style arguments for the emergence of capitalism, this paper will be broken up into three chapters. In addition to providing a general background, chapter one will mainly be concerned with a basic introduction to the debates from the advocates of the commercialization as well as those who support Marxist alternatives. Chapter two will address the question of trade and its growth during Europes successes with
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colonialism. This chapter will highlight the fact that while the increase in trade was beneficial to capitalism, it did not directly produce it. The third and final chapter of this paper will deal with the factors that did give rise to capitalist production; here, class struggles and social property relations are presented amongst other forces that brought about a transformation in Englands agricultural sector that was recognizably capitalist. Hopefully, at the end of these three short chapters, it will be clearer that the origin of capitalism has not been a natural or inevitable consequence of human nature, but a product of a number of factors.

Chapter 1: The Commercialization Model and the Marxist Alternative

It is important, before we begin, to conceptualize what is meant by origins. It would serve us well to clear up the ambiguity of the word origins to mean not only the beginning of a phenomenon but also its causes. This distinction is necessary, as the initial debate discussed here already turns on this definition. The most commonly accepted explanation for the origins of capitalism to date has been through what is called the commercialization model of economic development, which, as we will see, uses the term origins the in absence of its connotation of a beginning. This classical approach instead accounts for the causes of capitalist development in terms of the removal of external obstacles that have hindered the systems realization. The competing Marxist view in the debate, does try to pinpoint a concrete stage that can be seen as the beginnings of capitalism. Both theories have a respectable genealogy of contributions from respected intellectuals. Both theories have also changed dramatically over the course of their intellectual careers. For example, the economic models proposed by Adam Smith in the eighteenth century lacked the mechanical intricacies beyond his supply and demand type explanations that led to metaphors like the invisible hand that theorists like Immanuel Wallerstein affixed to them. Just like the additions that Robert Brenner made to Karl Marxs explanations for the creation of wage labour, just a few decades ago. Its helpful not to associate either model with a particular political affiliation as support for both theories come from all directions; advocates for the commercialization model have been known to come from both leftist and right wing camps and the same is true for the opposing side of the debate.

Although there has been much contention concerning the origins of capitalism, what is generally agreed upon is the role that it has played in catapulting Europe into a new era of prosperity. Before the early seventeenth century, most of Europes accomplishments had been eclipsed by advances in the East. Besides the few financial republics on the Italian peninsula and elsewhere, Europe had very little international presence. Yet over a few centuries Europe went from having very little influence beyond its geographical boundaries to exercising its sway over 84.6 per cent of the land surface of the globe by the 1930s.1 Europes success cannot be seen in disjunction with the development of capitalism the emergence and entrenchment of capitalism would prove to be undeniably beneficial for the financial and colonial domination of the continent over the rest of the world. Capitalism was able to provide not only the impetus but the fertile grounds needed to transform a region whose scientific activity had been overwhelmed by superstition and whose economy had been ensnared by ancient feudal hierarchies into the intellectual and industrial hub of the planet. Although its effects may be obvious, capitalisms causation or origins have been a topic of much debate. Some hold that modern capitalism is simply the embodiment of the long awaited emancipation of commercial activity from various institutions (political, religious, etc.). Within this perspective, capitalism is not a system created, but a system finally unleashed. Others have argued for a much more complex narrative of the origins of capitalism, with it having been conceived out of specific and identifiable conditions and circumstances. For them, capitalisms development was neither inevitable nor natural. The ramifications of this debate on how we interpret the contemporary world system are substantial. If the capitalist system is thought to be just that, a system that is man-made, then there can be hope for activism and realistic change.

Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism (The New Critical Idiom). New York: Routledge, 2005. p19.

Conversely, if the system is perceived as the organic pinnacle of human economics, then we have little choice but to watch passively as the system has its way. This chapter will initially entertain the arguments put forth by those who maintain that the system is one that has been in embryo since time immemorial. An alternative account will then be presented as a better and more accurate representation of the origins of capitalism. The classical accounts of capitalism are very much in line with the optimistic Enlightenment conceptions of progress and human development. In eighteenth century Europe, perceptions of reason, opportunity, liberty and individuality were beginning to be extended to more and more sectors of society and thus it was only natural for it to be extended into the realm of economics. In these earlier accounts, there is little reference of capital-ism as a system. The historical narrative that would come to be known as the commercialization interpretation of history paints a distinctly continuous picture of commercial activity throughout Eurasia. Since the basis of these accounts held that rationally self-interested individuals have been engaging in acts of exchange since the dawn of history2, there were only a few instances where commercial society had been wholly interrupted. Though its advocates noted moments of commercial rupture, such as the Dark Ages or the feudal period, they nonetheless held firmly to the assumption that commercial activity, and insisted that trade and markets had remained unchanged since man had been able to engage in them. According to Smith the natural pressures of population growth and universal human capacities and desires (including ones self-interest in bettering ones conditions) led to the emergence of more efficient means of providing subsistence and comfort.3 Although Smith never

2 3

Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism A Longer View. New York: Verso, 2002. p 11. Smith, Adam. Lectures on jurisprudence. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Clarendon P, Oxford UP, 1978.vi25ff.

dismisses the importance of noneconomic factors to a societys development, for him, human progress is an extension of these very natural forces. Smiths deterministic position stems from the view that these forces would inevitably develop in a similar direction (regardless of societal arrangements) in the absence of bothersome obstacles of intervention. In A Turn to Empire, Jennifer Pitts points out that for Smith, certain steps of societal development and certain institutions develop naturally, unless the harshness of the climate or other inconveniences of their surroundings prevent a people from developing beyond a certain stage.4 Although within this framework, societies are sometimes bound by an immutable environmental constraint, humanity is depicted to have within it a natural tendency towards self-interest, commerce and individualism. This legacy of Adam Smith, who was able to boil down human development down to trade and commerce, is echoed throughout the commercialization camp. The liberation of commercial activity in early modern period from various constraints was seen by Smith as enabling the massive increase in trade that would be accumulated and then invested as capital. From this view, other factors, such as class antagonisms, resistance movements and property relations, are seen to be or less auxiliary; their contributions to societal change were overshadowed by developments made in trade. This legacy would be inherited by such diverse thinkers as Immanuel Wallerstein, Paul Sweezy, Alan Macfarlane, Henri Se, and even Andre Gunder Frank. The massive increase in trade amplified by overseas routes and discoveries, coupled with the developing laissez-faire attitude, induced in Europe the imperatives that we associate today with modern capitalism. Of course, not all of these theorists subscribe to a

Pitts, Jennifer. A Turn to Empire The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. New York: Princeton UP, 2006.p 29-30.

uniform narrative of capitalist development, yet they all downplay societal relationships in favour of economics and especially trade, as opposed to the reverse. Amongst the commercialization narratives, there is an added emphasis on historical continuity. It is for this reason that historians with these commercialist convictions have tended to downplay the tumultuous appearance of history, in support of a more stable and continuous narrative. So historians like Henri Se find capitalism in almost every historical period: capitalism, in the form of financial capital, was present but not in possession of industry within the Ancient World. Later, in the first centuries of the Middle Ages, capitalism disappears only for trade to be extended and stimulated in the Mediterranean by the Crusades, allowing for capitalism to re-emerge once again. Here the increase in trade and commercial expansion allowed for the Genoese, the Pisans and the Venetians to accumulate the wealth necessary for industrial capital to blossom.5 In his publication Modern Capitalism: Its Origins and Evolution, Se explicitly argues that aside from a temporary rupture of trade during the Dark Ages, commercial capitalism was more or less in full swing by the 13th century in Italy. During the Middle Ages the first manifestations of capitalism appeared in those regions where internal commerce had developed-notably in Italy and the Low Countries...the Crusaders opened the East and gave an opportunity to the Italian republics.6 In Ses account, this early development of capitalism in Medieval Europe is accounted for by the absence of restraint: capitalism was free to develop in Europe because an essentially fragmented, decentralized political order, which is a fundamental characteristic of the feudal arrangement. Although Se did not subscribe to a commercialization model per se, his historical account of capitalism is very much consistent with

See, Henri. Modern Capitalism: Its Origins and Evolution. Trans. Homer B. Vanderblue. New York: Adelphi Company, 1928.p1-3. 6 Ibid. p25.

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it. In this account, while the feudal period represents a derailment of commercial society, the intrinsic logic of the market never significantly changes. From the beginning it involved rationally self-interested individuals maximizing their utilities by selling goods for profit whenever the opportunity presented itself.
7

Moreover, in Ses narrative, capitalism was a

phenomenon capable of endless reproduction as well as endless replication in other words, although capitalism may have germinated in some Italian republics, it could also have died there only to remerge elsewhere. This understanding allows for the existence of Ancient, Medieval and Modern capitalism. In this view, there is no origin of capitalism; commercial society is seen as more of a quantitative increase in trade rather than a total qualitative transformation of socio-political arrangements. It is the accumulation of wealth produced by the increase in trade that allows for investment to occur and eventually gives birth to commercial society. Here, the extent of trade had always been at the mercy of various institutions (what Marx would later call the superstructure) that had, until the birth of the free market, limited the natural potential of trade. Accordingly, up until the emancipation of commercial activity, these institutions limited the markets natural potential by siphoning surplus value either for its own reproduction or for various ideological purposes. Above all, the glue holding this model together is its insistence on continuity. The model prides itself in its ability to, almost genealogically, trace commerce and trade back into antiquity. The analogy of a modern businessman haggling over stocks on the phone and a Persian peasant haggling over apples and pomegranates four thousand years ago is sufficient proof for its advocates that the fundamentals of trade have been conserved though its medium may have changed.

Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism A Longer View. New York: Verso, 2002. p 15.

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This element of continuity is central to the models integrity and its defence has led scholars like Alan Macfarlane and Jonathan Clark to simply negate evidence of revolutionary change. In his controversial book The Origins of English Individualism8, Macfarlane erases social conflicts, struggles and crises from English history in an attempt to represent capitalism itself as a natural, organic product.9 This attempt at isolating capitalism from the tumultuous appearance of history, though harmless at first, is not without intention. Macfarlane seeks to demonstrate in his book that the development of English capitalism has been the elaboration of conflict-free events that have been ever present within English society. His attempt to retell English history as one that has been individualistic and has remained unchanged since antiquity aims at the negation of historical transformation. From a traditional peasant society to a modern capitalist economy, nothing has really changed; indeed there was never any English peasantry to begin with. The Origins of English Individualism argues that property relations in England had been highly individualized even before the thirteenth century and thus competition in the selling and buying of property had always existed. Macfarlane thus tries to repudiate traditional wisdom that the peasantry were long chained to their feudal plots, reliant entirely on the land for their basic subsistence. Although I will be coming back to this point on property relations later, it is important to note Macfarlanes claim that the so-called peasantry had always relied on the market for its subsistence. In any case, his claims that there were no revolutionary change from a pre-capitalist economic formation to a capitalist one and that capitalism itself represents not a transformation so much as a maturation of early English property forms is very much in line with other subscribers of the commercialization model.

Macfarlane, Alan. Origins of English individualism the family, property and social transition. Oxford: Blackwell, 1978. 9 Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Pristine Culture of Capitalism A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States. New York: Verso, 1992.p 146.

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The reason for this insistence on maturation as opposed to transformation is simple: if the system is to be seen as something organic, natural and essentially benevolent, then it would not make sense for its midwives to have been blood, conflict and violence that is after all what we associate with great transformations10. In this narrative the Dark Ages and the feudal period presented a temporary interruption in the overall maturation of capitalism, suggesting that the transition from feudalism into capitalism amounted to nothing more than a simple increase in trade and specialization. This bloodless transition is not only found in Macfarlane, but is shared by almost all advocates of this model. Smiths notion of original accumulation11 for example assumes a bloodless shift in socio-economic reproduction as a by-product of voluntary participants. Smith and Macfarlane describe the changes in economic formations as seamless and nonviolent. Although some like Pitts accuse Smiths theory of having difficulty accounting for movement from one stage to the next12, Smiths narrative describes natural progress and economic change as driven, among other factors, by the pressures of population growth and universal human capacities and desires, such as the desire to better ones condition and the disposition to truck, barter and exchange13 In this regard, Macfarlane joins Smith in maintaining that for the most part, the serfs/peasants along with the landlords all voluntarily surrendered their traditional means of subsistence in pursuit of a new and different one. Smiths account of this issue is indeed very much in line with Macfarlanes; there were no mass resistance to the Enclosures or the privatization of public land as the idea of private property was already common practice in England before the 1300s.
10 11

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon P, 1957. p 42. Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations: Books I-III. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970. In the introduction to his second book, Smith asserts that "the accumulation of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to the division of labour" 12 Pitts, Jennifer. A Turn to Empire The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. New York: Princeton UP, 2006.p 266. 13 Ibid. p28.

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What this model cannot accommodate, however, are the series of agrarian riots that engulfed England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Ketts Rebellion (1549), the Midland Revolt (1607), and the Newton Rebellion (1607) are just a few examples of where the peasantry engaged in open armed conflict with the gentry over the states ambitions of privatizing common land. This tendency of the evolutionary model to describe English history as

relatively uneventful since the Middle Ages is a difficult point to make: the century from 1450 to 1550 was punctuated by a series of tenant rent strikes, tax protests, anti-enclosure riots, and industrial disturbances, as well as half a dozen serious regional revolts.14 Not to mention the turbulent political landscape referred to as the century of revolution(1700s), a time of civil war, the trial and regicide of Charles I, the cromwellian commonwealth, the Restoration of the monarchy and the Glorious revolution of 1688.15 Immanuel Wallerstein, a world renowned world-systems analyst, quotes Smith in his 1976 article From Feudalism to Capitalism: Transition or Transitions?, to have said that capitalism is not one of several historically successive social or economic forms but simply what comes naturally.16 To be sure, there have existed historically many political systems which have interfered with these natural propensities of man, but these are the path of human unwisdom.17 This is of course not to construe Wallersteins position as a simple extension of Smithian economics; the point here is that Wallerstein is grouped within the commercialist camp precisely for his insistence on the role of trade and the insignificance of transitions. Wallerstein is in fact a notable exception amongst the commercialists for it is his vision of a seamless shift
14

Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Trumpet of sedition political theory and the rise of capitalism, 1509-1688. Washington Square, N.Y: New York UP, 1997.p 27. 15 Ibid. p4. 16 Wallerstein, Immanuel. "From Feudalism to Capitalism: Transition or Transitions?" Social Forces 55 (1976): p 273. 17 Ibid

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into socialism that forces him to abandon theories of transition. Nevertheless, in the same article Wallerstein answers the question of how a Smithian who believes that capitalism is natural reconciles this view with the recognition that the modern capitalist world-economy is a new and unique phenomenon.18 This can only be done, he maintains, through a variant on the Smithian theme: Although capitalism is natural, mans nature had always been frustrated until a unique conjuncture permitted the establishment of institutional arrangements and property rights that created an incentive to channel economic effort into a wholly new direction.19 Although moving away from an orthodox Smithian approach, Wallerstein accounts for capitalism through the voluntary actions of participants who found the new institutional arrangements and property rights much more advantageous in their daily lives. Having said that, it is important not to conflate Wallersteins intentions with those of others within the commercialization camp. His uneasiness with theories of transition stems from his focus on a long-term and almost invisible changes that occur initially on the world-system level that trickles down to affect local and domestic social arrangements.20 In this, it is his exogenous conception of change that makes it difficult for him to give a larger role to societal transformations as the initial mechanism for economic transformation. What is perhaps the most attractive feature of the commercialization model is alsoits largest shortcoming: The model accounts for an intricate and protracted phenomenon like capitalisms origins with a simple and coherent explanation. The system exists today as it always has or the system is the inevitable flowering of intrinsic human characteristics and it is true, little has changed on the surface. As mentioned before, the haggling businessman is
Ibid. p 276. ibid 20 Ibid. p 281. In his conclusions, Wallerstein sides with Schumpeter in stating that we are living in the early stages of the transition from capitalism to socialism, which is going on under our eyes.
19 18

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analogous to the haggling peasant; individuals today, just as centuries ago, try and take advantage of opportunities when and if they arise. Unfortunately, however, these explanations are as persuasive as they are superficial; for a better understanding of a system as multifarious as capitalism, a look below the surface is needed. For Smith, the increase of productivity in the economy was seen by its parts and not in the operations of the system as a whole. Specialization and the division of labour, for example, are the celebrated accomplishment for Smith, not the emergence of a wholly new economic system. In this it is easy to see why capitalisms origins are explicitly missing from Smiths influential commentaries. In his view, the change is accounted for through improvements: the transition into wage-labour and industrial production was justified by improvements beneath the level of a great transformation in socio-economic arrangements. Nevertheless, from Smith to Se to Macfarlane, the modern economic arrangement, whatever you want to call it, has always been mans inevitable destiny. For Se it had been the various historical conditions throughout human history that allowed for lax enough political arrangements to enable the brief flowering of capitalism. For Macfarlane, it was Englands past experience with individualism that made capitalism an inescapable fate for England. And for Smith, it was simply a matter of time before the market was liberated from its formal constraints. Marxist alternatives in their explanations of the origins of capitalism are especially helpful for they generally tend to avoid the superficiality that the commercializationists are usually accused of. These alternatives pursue this question from the assumption that capitalism has not been the fate of humanity, nor has it been the maturation of a system in progress since the dawn of trade and commerce. The origin of capitalism for Marxists is anything but the extension of age-old practices. For them, the economy and, by association, society is constantly in a state
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of flux. The various relations housed within society such as social status and property relations have seldom been stagnant as countless forces drive them towards fluctuation. In this view, transformation is a necessary element of socio-economic change. Class struggle, the most recognizable idiom of Marxism, with its connotations of social volatility, already stands in opposition to the classical models of commercialization-here, the two models already conflict on their theoretical framework alone.21 Marxs historical materialism is to views history in stages, with each stage distinct from the ones leading to it and from those that will eventually follow it. In this formula, feudalism is entirely separate and distinct from the Asiatic social organization preceding it and is a world apart from the capitalist organization that follows it. And while an orthodox understanding of Marxism would insist on each epoch as being defined by its particular mode of production, what needs emphasis is that a change in stages is an enormous feat. This flows from the model of Newtonian physics that had captivated the Enlightenment the laws of motion dictated that under normal circumstances anything in motion will continue to move until other forces work against it. This in essence is what Marx saw in socio-economic arrangements of any society: the system will tend to continually reproduce itself ad infinitum, unless the forces of change are able to overcome the systems inertia.22 Baechler indicates that during Marxs intellectual career he entered the subject of the origins of capitalism several times.23 The German Ideology, the Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, and Capital, all analyse the problem of capitalisms origins at length, each with sufficiently divergent solution used to justify separate analyses.

Marx, Karl. and Frederick Engles. The Communist Manifesto. New York: International, 2001. p9. Marx, Karl. Capital a critique of political economy. London: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1981.p 101. 23 Baechler, Jean. Origins of capitalism. Oxford [Eng.]: Blackwell, 1975. p5.
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As stated above, a great deal of force was necessary for change to take place, and on the account of the tenacity of the feudal order, it would be troublesome to presume capitalism could exist prior or even during an established order such as feudalism. A clear line would need to be drawn to distinguish on one side where feudalism ends and on the other where capitalism could begin. Here, Henri Ses insistence that capitalism can blossom in multiple places at multiple times throughout history, requires refutation. Out of the debates initiated by Robert Brenner in 1976 came the general wisdom that the emergence of capitalism was the product of one possible contingency out of several that could have materialized upon the dissolution of feudalism. In fact, Brenner makes it clear that the dissipation of the feudal order had more than one political outcome in Europe capitalism in England and absolutism in France. Amongst the New Left the emergence of agrarian capitalism in rural England (which will be presented shortly) is seen as the one outcome out of several possible outcomes. The weakening feudal bonds created a volatile social landscape that created in Europe a sense of urgency within the aristocracy to clamp the peasantry back into their traditional social positions.24 Stressing the point that capitalism had not simply been dormant, awaiting feudalisms demise. The level of instability brought about by feudalisms dissolution, simply created an atmosphere where a number of possible systems could have developed, of which capitalism was one. In short, as Wood puts it, feudalism in Europe was internally diverse and produced several different outcomes, only one of which was capitalism.25 She goes on to clarify that the autonomous city-states that prospered in medieval and Renaissance Italy, for example, or the absolutist state in France, were distinct formations, each with its own internal logic that need not

24 25

Anderson, Maurice Thompsons War, London Review of books, 4 November 1994, p17. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism A Longer View. New York: Verso, 2002. p 73.

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have given rise to capitalism.26 As we have seen with the commercialization explanations, it has always been the quantitative increase in trade that allowed for the liberation of capital on which a system was eventually built. This accumulation of wealth, partly attributed to the growth of cities, is used to account for the eventual and inevitable maturation of capitalism. Placing commerce and the growth of cities as equally contributing to the birth of capitalism is naturally an invention of the commercialization model that allows for capitalism to appear as more or less the aggregate of automatic sequence of age-old human practices (trade and city-building) almost a direct consequence of our natural inclination, in Adams Smiths words, to truck, barter and exchange.27 Yet this position, like Henri Ses, neglects the fact that a great many towns and a great deal of trade have existed throughout human history without giving rise to capitalism until relatively recently. High civilization with far-reaching commercial networks that have made extensive use of market opportunities have existed in Asia, Africa and even the Americas, yet none have systematically experienced what we tend to associate with market imperatives. Moreover, that there have been many societies with technologies (for both agriculture and commerce) much more advanced than that of medieval England: therefore, Englands inability to produce modern capitalism reveals that the emergence of capitalism does not depend only on prior superiority, commercial sophistication, accumulation of wealth or science and technology.
28

What will hopefully be made clear in this section is that what

happened in England was not only an unprecedented shift in social property relations, but that it was unlikely to have occurred elsewhere and that after it was spurred in England, it was never repeated in the same exact manner anywhere else.

26 27

Ibid. Ibid. p75. 28 Ibid.

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Within the New Leftist camp, including Ellen Wood, Robert Brenner, Perry Anderson and Maurice Dobb, the commercialization model is rejected in favour of the view that capitalism was essentially an internally generated system brought about by profound changes in class relations in the British countryside. This was the proposition put forth by Dobb in the infamous Sweezy-Dobb debate of the early 1950s. This debate offered a mechanism for exactly how capitalism was created and not simply unleashed. This mechanism was in direct opposition of the Wallerstein-style exogenous explanations for how change took place. Dobb suggested that the change had resulted from the changes in class relationships before leaking into behaviours in trade. Conversely, within the other models, it is the breakthroughs in commercial activity that in turn affect domestic class relations. One key Marxist tool for differentiating between capitalist and pre-capitalist modes of production is the manner in which the relationship between the producers and appropriators are determined. This perspective groups traditional pre-capitalist methods of surplus extraction with extra-economic practices, where the landlord or the state employs their superior military, judicial and political forces to coerce the producing population into submission. In contrast, what is symptomatic of the more modern, capitalist attitude is the systems ability to enforce submission in the absence of brute strength, through economic means. This shift from the extra-economic to the economic is a monumental move in establishing the social arrangements necessary for capitalism. It is evident here already that the transition to capitalism has nothing inherently to do with the type of production (urban or rural) and everything to do with the relationship of producers to appropriators. In the capitalist mode of production, this relationship is arbitrated by the market. Although markets have existed in various forms throughout history, within the capitalist marketplace the degree of dependence that is imposed on all participants is
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unprecedented: both the producers and the appropriators are transformed from a relation of relative independence into utter dependence on the market for basic subsistence. Where the producer was able to preserve his life and that if his family and community through his own means (directly with his labour), he was forced, economically, to sell his labour on the market in order to purchase his means of subsistence. This shift to market dependence is especially significant as it accounts for much of the systems imperatives and particularities, such as competition, accumulation and profit-maximization, which will be discussed in the following section of this paper. It is yet another aspect of the birth of capitalism that cannot be accommodated within the commercialization models; for if these imperatives had been with us, as Adam Smith surely thought, as an extension of our natural human inclinations, they cannot be accounted for as having been produced through any transformations. Although the actual mechanics offered by these Marxist alternatives will be explored at length in the third and final section of this paper, what is important for now is their endogenous approach to economic change. First of all, commercialization models are generally inconsistent in their explanations. At one end, its more contemporary supporters like Wallerstein insist on change as only explicable through exogenous forces of trade and commerce that put pressure on domestic relations of property and production.29 At the same time, the classical view rejects change and transition all together, for the system itself has not changed, but simply been freed to develop. Although on the surface, both endogenous and exogenous explanations seem plausible; the latter simply presupposes the forces already needed on the ground for the exogenous forces even exist. For example, overseas trade would not be possible without the division of labour and
29

Wallerstein, Immanuel. World-Systems Analysis An Introduction (A John Hope Franklin Center Book). New York: Duke UP, 2004.p18-24. Word-systems analysis looks beyond a central actor in its recounting of social change, rather observing the larger picture of economic development that appears to be mediated by trade and commercial activity.

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the level of organization necessary for the production of large and durable merchant ships. More simply, the impetus and zeal to conduct extensive trade is not something that is created external to domestic markets. There would have to exist a consumer market with demands already in place to drive the ambitions of trade ever farther. In short, ships cannot be blamed for the application of outward pressure on the domestic relations of production that made their existence a possibility. It is on this point of logic that this paper takes issue with the advanced Wallersteinstyle commercialization models. It was not the expansion of the world-system marketplace that triggered capitalistic inclinations, but the other way around. As the next section of this paper will point out, it was because of the advances made in relations of production in Europe that were in turn able to transform age-old commercial activity into something completely new and different. Commercial activity, especially from the commercialization camp appears to be inescapably linked to the origins of capitalism and since their main arguments tends to equate capitalism with the increase in trade, we are forced to place Europes colonial experience onto one of the focal points of this discussion. Not surprisingly, the correlation between capitalism and the European colonial enterprise is in fact closely intertwined. Europes experience with colonialism coincides with the regions ascent onto the global landscape after a long period of decline following the fall of Rome. With the Iberian successes in the discoveries of entire continents and more efficient sea routes, it appeared that Europe had finally found the ideal combination of zeal and ability to secure for itself significant power and influence over the rest of the world. The debates within this section are essentially concerned with what came first: the zeal for colonial and commercial expansion that transformed Europe, from the outside in; or the domestic environment back in Europe, which was able to transform the colonial enterprise?

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Questions of this sort are the legacy of Sweezy-Dobb debates of the early 1950s concerning the transition of feudalism to colonialism. In attempting to answer these questions, both sides of the debates reflect on the particular changes that can be agreed upon as having taken place in the course of European colonial expansion. The creation of wage-labour and the working class in addition to the shift in the direction of commodity production illustrate just a few of these changes that need to be accommodated within both models. The commercialization model takes the side of economic pressures as an agent administrating an outside force that is able to provide the needed impetus for internal change. The alternative model takes the contrary position and accounts for developments in economics through the pressures that were created by the reorganizations in social arrangements. And while there is no one simple answer to these issues, how they are eventually answered will become decisive in reaching a clear explanation to the origins of capitalism. In the following chapter, trade will be looked at more closely to highlight its effect on economic development. Here we will find that although the massive influx in Europes commercial trade (as a result of its colonial enterprise) impacted the regions overall development, it was in fact the internal changes within Europe that transformed Europes trade worldwide. Moreover, we will find that although trade and commerce themselves have satisfied some of our most ancient cultural and material needs, they have always been auxiliary to the forces of change and transformation within societies. It will be made clear, within this framework that the zeal and impetus of expansion, profit maximization and competition that were introduced by capitalism to the colonial enterprise was something unprecedented. In contrast to the conflicting view that capitalism was induced through commerce, this chapter will

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shed light on how the capitalist mode of production, stemming from changes in domestic relations was able to leak into commercial activity.

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Chapter 2: Colonialism and the Emerging Capitalist System

Traditionally, the European colonial enterprise had been seen by theorists as a stepping stone in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Imperialist efforts in the New World, Africa and Asia have been credited with creating the proto-capitalists who were capable of producing the critical mass of wealth necessary to jumpstart the capitalist industries that would distinguish the West from the rest of the world. For classical theorists, the massive increase in trade networks and trade routes in the 16th century were on par with the increase in trade that was brought about by the Crusades centuries earlier. In this sense, the compulsion towards the increase in trade and commercial activity had remained unchanged: Europe had simply expanded the world market through its sheer will and strength, extending prosperity to more and more regions of the globe. Not only does this view portray commercial superiority as a European characteristic; it also seeks to demonstrate a world divided between the East and West, with the West as the uncontested commercial champion. The models support of Eurocentric dichotomies notwithstanding, commercializations narrative of colonialism is rather linear and one dimensional, for it maintains simply that feudal society was stimulated by the increase in overseas trade enabling the accumulation and reinvestment of capital, making capital-ism possible. In other words, capitalism is paradoxically defined through the increase in trade that once gave it rise and now embodies. This perspective is interestingly not limited only to the proponents of the capitalist system; it is also incorporated into the works of some of the systems most prominent critics. Immanuel Wallersteins presentation of the world-systems theory in 1974 appeared to have finally resolved the ambiguity surrounding the rise of capitalism and its correlation with the
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European colonial enterprise. In this debate, Wallerstein sides with the commercialists in that he attributes the birth of capitalism to the stimulating potential of a quantitative increase in trade. Contrary to Wood and Brenner, Wallerstein fingers commercial activity as the primary actor in the development and proliferation of capitalism. Thus, the profit-motive is induced by trade and the market, which in turn induces accumulation and innovation. If trade and markets are seen as the key factors in societal transformation, then surely the discovery of the New World and the incorporation of the Old World into one unified world-system played an unprecedented potential rule in transforming Europe. In Wallersteins account the colonial accumulation of wealth in Britain, the Dutch Republics and France set in motion a process of general commercial expansion that gradually connected more and more micro-systems together, finally consolidating them all under the banner of one capitalist world-system. Wallerstein can argue this way because of his assertion that developing commerce can and will bring with it an ever more efficient organization of production through ever increasing regional specialization.30 Subsequently, the trade-induced world division of labour will, in turn, give rise to an international structure of unequally powerful nation-states, creating ideal dynamics for production and consumption.31 Notwithstanding Wallersteins discussion of the core-periphery distinction, it is helpful here to see that for him, the development of capitalism is the growth of the world division of labour. In this sense, free labour for example, is merely an aspect of the development of the world division of labour, which is determined by the technical requirements of the developments of the productive forces in given types of production and

30

Brenner, Robert. "The Origins of Capitalism Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism." New Left Review 1 (1977): p 30. 31 ibid

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specific regions.32 Similarly, proletarianization, the process by which the wage-labour proletariat is produced, with its connotations of class contention, is then not a capitalist necessity but an unfortunate outcome.33 Ultimately, then, for Wallerstein Capitalism and a world economy (that is, a single division of labour, but multiple polities and cultures) are obverse sides of the same coin.34 It is easy to see why theorists like Sweezy, Wallerstein and Frank have been accused of being Neo-Smithian, precisely because of their adherence to the classic commercialization model as outlined initially by Adam Smith. In his critique of this Neo-Smithian Marxism, Robert Brenner shows how some Marxists have effectively understood capitalisms unique tendency towards increasing labour-productivity as an inevitable outcome of commercial expansion. In Brenners account, Wallerstein, Sweezy and Smith all implicitly or explicitly equate capitalism with a trade-based division of labour. In his 1977 article, Brenner breaks down Wallersteins argument as essentially an elaborate defence of economic development as equivalent to a quantitative increase in trade. The systems growth in size through expansion, the move towards production efficiency through regional specialization and the transfer of surplus are all elements revolving around the notion of development as quantitative. This, as Brenner reiterates, is in line with Smiths fundamental propositionthat the rise of a trade-based division of labour will determine economic development through the growth of specialization and thereby the productivity of labour.35 What is worrying about this position is its neglect of the fundamental problem of the transformation of class relations. Ultimately, this leaves the rise of
ibid Wallerstein, Immanuel. World-Systems Analysis An Introduction (A John Hope Franklin Center Book). New York: Duke UP, 2004.p 35. 34 Wallerstein, Immanuel. "The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis." Comparative Studies in Society and History 16 (1974): p.391. 35 Brenner, Robert. "The Origins of Capitalism Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism." New Left Review 1 (1977): p 35.
33 32

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distinctively capitalist class relations of production as no longer the basis for capitalist development, but its result. From this perspective then, free wage-labour arises as Brenner calls it, as a technoeconomic adaptation within the producing unit.36 The class of free wage-labourers emerges as a by-product of individual actions as opposed to a radical transformation of social property relations. The seamless and effortless transition that Smith had envisioned is echoed throughout Wallersteins account of capitalist development: the transition to capitalism is seen to occur as a smooth unilineal processwhich is essentially no transition at all37 In his 1977 article Brenner writes the rise of trade is not at the origin of a dynamic of development because trade cannot determine the transformation of class relations of production. Indeed, precisely because it does not do so, the historical problem of the origins of capitalist economic development in Europe comes down to that of the process of self-transformation of class relations from serfdom to free wage labourthat is, of course, the class struggles by which this transformation took place.38 More accurately, wage-labour was produced through often violent methodologies employed by the emerging class of bourgeoisie. Marx writes capital [came] dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt39. Workers were "tortured by grotesquely terroristic laws into

Ibid. p 39. Ibid. 38 Ibid. p 38. 39 Marx, Karl. Capital a critique of political economy. London: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1981. p 926.
37

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accepting the discipline necessary for the system of wage-labour"40. This is clearly a far cry from the seamless picture that is often promoted by some Smithians. Furthermore, what ends up being a serious problem for Wallersteins narrative is its implications for both collective and individual agency. If societal transformation is always dependent on trade and commerce and we can be sure that commercial activity has existed since the birth of human societies, then there is no room for other transitional dynamics such as class-struggles, political activity or revolutions. This view thus ends up sounding deterministic, suggesting that the systems development has been the result of inevitable economic processes, and that there is not much anyone can do about it, but to ride out the various inequities of the system. Capitalism is then not a system created, but a system naturally grown and matured. However, if colonialism is to be seen (at least in its earlier forms) as more or less an extension of trade and commerce, as Dobb had suggested in opposition to Sweezy, then it cannot in itself be expected to define a particular mode of production. As we saw within the feudal arrangements, trade and commerce have to be regarded as an auxiliary entity in any given economic system. This does not mean that colonialism did not have a profound role in the materialization and eventual entrenchment of the capitalist world-system. Though it may appear that colonialism remained unchanged through Europes colonial era, its characteristic surprisingly transform as capitalism is thrown into the mix. In Marxs interpretation, European colonialism is a schizophrenic entity. Perhaps starting off as the instinctual inclination towards war and conquest that guided objectiveless tendencies towards forceful expansion without definite utilitarian limits41, as J.A. Schumpeter suggested, colonialism catalyzed a

40 41

Ibid. p. 899 Schumpeter, Joseph A. Imperialism and Social Classes. New York: A.M. Kelley, 1951.p 83.

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movement in Europe that in turn transformed its own function and purpose. In short, colonialisms role was unmistakably changed through its own endeavours. Marx was certainly able to recognize the importance of colonialism in first loosening and then helping to eliminate the already shaky feudal arrangements: the emerging capitalist system was powerful enough to not only undo the disappearing feudal system but to secure for itself the political influence that it required for its expansion both domestically and internationally. Here, we see that the zeal embodied in the colonial enterprise compounded with the socio-political instabilities back in Europe that eventually resulted in the triumph of the bourgeoisie over the modern representative state, securing for itself exclusive political sway.42 From a Marxist perspective, the transition from feudalism to capitalism would have been gradual if not nonexistent, were it not for Europes success in its colonies. Marx writes in his manifesto that Europes experience with colonialism brought with it the increase in the means of exchange and commodities generally, [that] gave [to] commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.43 Although their views are similar with regard to the quantity of trade, Marxists account for the increase in trade is not as an element of financial accumulation, but as an agent of social reorganization. The problem with the commercialist account is its presupposition of social property relations that would be able to convert wealth and capital (in the traditional sense) into productive forces of industry, manufacture and general improvement. Before the heaps of gold and various other precious metals that were beginning to accumulate in Europe could be converted into what we would today call capitalist production, there would need to exist already, the driving forces of capitalism: its imperatives of competition, increasing
42
43

Marx, Karl. and Frederick Engles. The Communist Manifesto. New York: International, 2001. p11. Ibid. p9.

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productivity, capital accumulation and the exploitation of wage labour would have to have been already established for the fruits of colonialism to be realized. These driving forces were nowhere present but in the English countryside in what will be referred to in the final chapter of this paper to as agrarian capitalism. This conception easily accounts for the large lag in British overseas colonization behind its other European rivals. By all accounts, in the 16th and 17th centuries, England was far behind in the colonial race and if we are to assume a linear progression, England should have stayed far behind; by contrast Spain and Portugal were clearly ahead of the game, amassing large quantities of wealth from their South American mines. Yet despite this huge advantage, the Iberian colonial experience did not develop in a capitalist direction. On the contrary, Spain expended its massive colonial wealth in essentially feudal pursuits; it winnings to fund wars as means of extra-economic appropriation as well as to enlarge the Hapsburg Empire in Europe. In a discussion on modern manufacture in the third volume of Capital, Marx too recognizes that the potential brought about by the bounty of colonization could only be realized only in places where the conditions for it had already been created.44 Thus, English colonialism could surpass its rivals once its social property arrangements provided an unmatched advantage in productivity and compulsion, allowing them to make quick use of the wealth (however little it may have been in comparison to their rivals) for purposes of development. Following this logic, then, there must indeed be a recognizable instance where, with the introduction of capitalism and its various imperatives, the colonial enterprise is transformed from one form into another. And this is the case exactly: Europes success with its pre-capitalist colonial experiments helped

44

Marx, Karl. Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy. Trans. T.B. Bottomore. New York: McGraw-Hill Paperback, 1964. p130.

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amplify the social arrangements in rural England that eventually materialized into a series of identifiable imperatives that in turn transformed the colonial enterprise once-and-for-all. Since it has already been established that it is not only the particular mode of production, but the social property relations back home in Europe that determine the nature of colonial practices, then it is logically imperative that if the domestic relations in Europe are extraeconomic then so too are its colonial relations. If the so-called mother country still relies on extra-economic methods as means of surplus extraction, its colonial ambitions are likely to take a similar form. In this sense, when confronted with a new territory/society, for example, the Spanish Empire would be inclined to squeeze out tribute, resources and subordination in the same manner as Spain had done so domestically: through war, coercion and or conquest. One can see from this that the lack of impetus for change in colonial practices if domestic relations remain unchanged. There is an obvious distinction to be made between the colonial practices employed by the Roman Empire, Genghis Khan and the Aztecs with that of modern colonialism. In Ania Loombas words, modern colonialism did more than extract tribute, goods and wealth from the countries that it conquered it restructured the economies of the latter, drawing them into a complex relationship with their own45 And once capitalist imperatives began to leak into the European colonial enterprise, it began to produce the economic imbalance that was necessary for the growth of European capitalism and industry. Thus, with the introduction of capitalism, direct colonial rule was no longer necessary for resource extraction because the economic (and social) relations of dependency and control ensured both captive labour as well as markets for European industry as well as goods.46

45 46

Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism (The New Critical Idiom). New York: Routledge, 2005.p 9. Ibid. p11.

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The abandonment of extra-economic mechanisms of submission in favour of economic ones is perfectly encapsulated in the attitude of England towards its neighbouring island, Ireland. In the sixteenth century as a defence against Irish rebellion there were various unsuccessful efforts by the English to establish military settlement in Ireland, grounded primarily on the feudal model of imperial domination. The Tudor monarchy simply sought to extend its rule over Ireland systematically, as it had done in the past. Yet it was not until later, when the English tried something new, that we start to get a sense of what capitalist imperialism looks like; if the Irish could not be absorbed into the English state, England would have to integrate it into its economic orbit, imposing its unique economic system that had now begun to be take shape thanks to its successes with agrarian capitalism. Thus, Wood describes Englands Irish strategy in the late sixteenth century as having undergone an instant transition from feudalism to capitalism.47 By transplanting and spreading their capitalist system, with all of its impulses towards market dependence, the English had ensured Irelands economic dependence on themselves. In this, the English in theory would be able to maintain influence over Ireland in the absence of violence or a presence of a military (although both remained). The discussion of Ireland exemplifies more than the simple shift in international diplomacy or the usefulness of economic coercion; it illustrates the beginnings of the expanding capitalist pressures on the other territories. Once capitalism, with all of its imperatives of productivity and competition, had been established in the English countryside, it would only be a matter of time before those same imperatives were exported, enforced or simply motivated all within the emerging world-economy to follow suit. Simply put, once a player had initiated this capitalist game of market dependence and market imperatives, all were forced to play. In terms

47

Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism A Longer View. New York: Verso, 2002. p 153.

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of motivation, Englands European neighbours had little choice but to try and develop similarly if they were to compete with Englands distinctively productive agricultural sector. Although Frances agricultural productivity was almost equal to England in the eighteenth century, it required much more labour to produce. Englands advantage here was that a large portion of its population were freed from food production, which allowed for the decline in rural population and provided a readily available workforce helping to fuel industrialization. Secondly, as Englands success with capitalism began to leak onto its colonial ventures, it not only took its market imperatives with it, but it began to surpass its neighbours in reach and domination, providing even more incentive for similar development.48 The central point here is that transformation had always been a matter of domestic and internal relations. The systems rapid expansion and proliferation did not result directly from the emerging world-system although it surely benefited from it. To return to Wallersteins project of locating the sources of development and underdevelopment in the relentless expansion of capitalism, then, it should be clear that although his pursuit is a noble one, it fails to specify the particular, historically developed class structures through which the character of capitalism was defined. This ends up being rather disappointing as Wallerstein fails to place the productivity of labour (as embodied by the shift in agrarian practices) as the essence and key to economic development. The point is not to refute the existence of a world-system; as far as this essay is concerned, both Franks and Wallersteins account of the legacy of European colonialism is spot on. What is concerning, however, is the level of agency that these theories attribute to commercial activity in having shaped capitalist development. Simply put, colonialism and capitalism can exist in isolation from one another.
Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Pristine Culture of Capitalism A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States. New York: Verso, 1992.p 99.
48

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This is somewhat contrary to Wallersteins position who consistently maintains that a capitalist system cannot exist within any framework except that of a world-economy.49Additionally Wallerstein points out that capitalists need a large market, requiring a multiplicity of states as to gain advantages in trade and production. Although this might be the case, this view either presupposes or neglects the processes necessary for the capitalist mode of production. Capitalist imperatives and production developed in isolation of the forces of trade and, once they were created, they were able to make quick use of the massive networks that had been already created throughout Europes pre-capitalist endeavours. The counter-argument from Paul Sweezy et al as consistently insisted that the feudal arrangements were indeed quite resistant and robust in the face of socially created pressures. Although feudalism could tolerate and in fact benefit from commercial activity, it had been the advances in trade that was able to dissolve old feudal bonds. This is because the forces of change would need to come from outside in order to present a new and unexpected pressure on the old feudal organization. The growth in localized urban trading centres and trans-continental shipping encouraged production for exchange as opposed to the feudal model of producing for use. 50 This perspective, which focuses on a shift to commodity production, as Sweezy himself noted, could not account for the rise of capitalism, as the Italian republics experience with trade did not produce capitalist production.51 Moreover, Sweezy, like other commercialization advocates, presents the commodity-producing peasantry as capitalists-in-waiting, ready to become a full-blown capitalists if only given the chance. Simply put, in the Sweezy model in

Wallerstein, Immanuel. World-Systems Analysis An Introduction (A John Hope Franklin Center Book). New York: Duke UP, 2004.p24. 50 Epstein, Stephen R. "Rodney Hilton, Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism." Past and Present 2 (2007): p269. 51 Ibid. p 250.

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particular, commercial activity is seen as a liberator of capitalist inclinations. This outside force represents nothing more than an obstacle removing agent that enables the true potential of capitalism that had been there all along. An important point raised by Sweezy throughout the debates concerns the way we generally perceive the idea of transition. It is a mistake, he maintains, to view transition as an instance when one social system is directly confronted by another, necessitating some sort of a fight for supremacy.52 Transitions in social arrangements are, more accurately, a much more fluid process with many of the forces and effects brewing and operating long before a shift takes place and tending to linger for a long time after it. It is for the same reason that Wallerstein is able to make a case for a contemporary transition from capitalism to socialism without any visible signs of change. Nevertheless, the Sweezy-Dobb debates allow us to hopefully move away from the generalization and simplifying tendencies of the commercialization model in presenting trade as the deus ex machina, affecting feudal organization from the outside-in. Social transformation comes dripping with blood and dirt, with the struggles of competing classes and although it may take a while for their effects to be visible, their role in the transformation of modes of production are central. As this section has argued, it was been the advances made on the local and domestic front that in turn affected the commercial worldsystem, but what were these advancements exactly? In other words, if we take the commercialization model to have gotten it backwards, what exactly changed in the relations of property and production that had such a colossal impact on trade and improvement? As the next chapter will show, a number of conditions and processes allowed for a series of advances in Englands agricultural sector that quickly revolutionized societies orientation
52

Ibid p 248; also discussed in R.H. Hilton, ed., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. London: Verso, 1976

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towards the market. What is often referred to as agrarian capitalism is offered here as a model that can account for how the market was placed on the centre stage of human interactions. The normalization of productivity, improvements, wage-labour, market dependence and private property can all be attributed to the market imperatives that were established by agrarian capitalism. What is important about this model is that it can explain the origins of capitalism in the absence of the forces of trade and commercial expansion. The model of course does not deny the existence of these forces, but illustrates their role to have been more of an accommodating and cooperative function.

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Chapter 3: The Agrarian Origins of Capitalist Production

The advocates of the agrarian origin of capitalism suppose that since the inception of agriculture, man has been able to provide for his material needs by working the land. For many, the production and reproduction of our food supply had symbolized our departure from nature, differentiating us from other animals that were still at the mercy of nature. Interestingly, inherent in the agricultural process has been its ability to produce more than can be utilized by the producing unit. Cultivation and the domestication of other mammals introduced the reality and the stored potential of surpluses. An individual was able to produce more food than he could consume himself, which induced in him an inclination towards storing and accumulation of excess food. Had these early farmers only produced for their own consumption, society would have changed little, as hunting and gathering would have provided an easier and faster alternative with more opportunities for leisure. This idea of surplus did not only allow for the production of basic subsistence for a larger population, but uncovered mans potential for producing a rich material culture. More than representing a monumental rupture in human societal development, it also allowed for the rapid increase in human interaction and cooperation creating an impetus for the settlement of nomadic bands and tribes, permitting the formation of towns and villages. Within these towns, the surpluses created through labour were beginning to revolutionize human relations of cooperation, creating a primitive division of labour.53 These early societies were able to split-up, social responsibilities, since not every member of a community was forced to hunt, gather or work the land. The creation of surplus thus brought with it a tendency towards distinctions of class and rank. Initially these distinctions were made

Marx, Karl. Capital a critique of political economy. London: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1981. p486-489.

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along very visible lines between those who physically worked the land (the direct producers) and those who were able to benefit or take advantage of the labour of others (the appropriators). This meant that for the first time in human history there evolved a distinguished class of people who could invest their time in different specialisations; giving birth to institutions (educational, political, religious, etc.), the high arts and productive specializations (woodworking, tailors, merchants etc.). And while these principal elements (of appropriators and producers) are often viewed as the building blocks of human social organizations, their relationship to one another is also the focal point for social volatility, transformation and change. Although the significance of this first agricultural revolution is seldom contested, what remains controversial are the grounds on which the appropriators were able to separate from the producing class. If the development of human communities has since then been built on the backs of the producers, then, as Marx points out, there had emerged then a class which [would have] to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which [would be] excluded from society and forced into the most resolute opposition to other classes54. From a historical materialist perspective, then, class antagonisms were not created in a vacuum, but had their foundations within the very essence of material production. For these same reasons, Marx concludes that all history hitherto to existing societies have been the history of class struggles. So fundamental is the relationship of the producers to the appropriators that Marx opens up his famous manifesto with these words: Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now
54

Marx, Karl. German Ideology. New York: International, 1972.p 94.

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hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.55 Having seen the importance of the manner in which the producers and appropriators are able to meet and negotiate the terms of production, we can begin to see their role in social transformations. Historically, regardless of the dominant mode of production, the relationship of producers and appropriators has always been linked in some manner to the market, and although various kinds of markets have existed in the past, there are dramatic differences within the capitalist marketplace that sets it apart from all the markets preceding it. The market has been a forum in which people have been able to exchange and sell their surpluses in many different ways for a variety of different purposes, yet up until the advent of the capitalist system, these markets have all been limited and dominated by whatever superstructure that happened to be in power at time. This is precisely why within the commercialist camp these superstructures (be it the state, political and legal constraints or religious superstitions) have often been seen to represent the ultimate obstacle to the pristine development of capitalism.56 As we shall see, there are distinct and unprecedented functions of the capitalist market system that make it so much more than a free market-place unhindered by ideological constraints. The particularities of the capitalist system can for the most part be attributed to its dramatic shift of emphasis on the market. Within the capitalist system, virtually everything is reduced to a commodity produced solely for its exchange on the market. From silk to apples, surplus and labour, all are transformed into a quantifiable entity that can be bought, sold and
Marx, Karl. and Frederick Engles. The Communist Manifesto. New York: International, 2001. p9. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Pristine Culture of Capitalism A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States. New York: Verso, 1992.p53.
56 55

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exchanged on the market. Here, the classical definition of the marketplace as the concrete and local institution where goods and services are bought and sold is further complicated to represent, in abstraction, an arena where choice and opportunities can be realized. Within this framework, a network of interdependencies is created that remains unchanged to this day; the shift to a capitalist marketplace meant the end of the direct dependence of the appropriators on the producers and vice versa as their dependence was transferred onto the market. Where the feudal lord had to physically get labour out of his serf, the bourgeois purchases his labour on the market; conversely, where the serf was able to provide for himself and others through his own production, he now had to sell his labour on the market in order to afford his subsistence, which was also up for sale on the market. Although the lord-serf relationship had been built around and reinforced by their joint relationship to the market, it had never taken an economic form. In other words, it was only within a capitalist marketplace that producers and appropriators were able to meet as distinct and separate entities on the market; within the feudal context, what was produced through the joint venture of both the lord and the serf would sometimes make its way to the market. With this economic transformation, the market takes on a new role as the sole forum and mediator of economic interactions. Theorists like Brenner, Wood and even Perry Anderson account for this shift towards a capitalist market system as having resulted directly out of the property relations that evolved between producers and appropriators. Only in capitalism is the dominant mode of appropriation based on the complete dispossession of direct producers, who (unlike chattel slaves) are legally free and whose surplus labour is appropriated by purely economic means.57 In contrast, the dominant form of property relation in the feudal period had been one of subsistence production

57

Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism A Longer View. New York: Verso, 2002. p 96.

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and extra-economic surplus extraction. In a 1982 essay, The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism, Brenner attributes the breakthrough in European development firstly to the breakdown of lordly surplus extraction (via extra-economic means) and secondly to the trend of undermining full peasant ownership of land the result of which was a novel social-property system that for the first time made it possible and necessary to reproduce, through economic action, the system over again in manner that was favourable to the continuing development of the productive forces.58 The transition from peasant-proprietors to tenant farmers is accounted for, by Brenner as the result of the limitations that had been imposed on the landlords through peasant resistances in the later mediaeval period. In an earlier essay, Brenner argues that the peasantry was no longer unfree, so that it could at will move, buy land, or lease it.59 This freedom of the peasantry did not translate into control of the land by the peasantry, as landlords were successful in gaining control, specifically by preventing the peasants from doing so.60 Furthermore, large blocks of farmland were beginning to be consolidated under the control of landlords partly because of the failures of the small peasant proprietorships that had already stagnated the feudal economies elsewhere in the continent. Large farms appear to have made possible the introduction of new techniquesnotably up-and-down husbandry and various systems of irrigationwhich transformed agricultural production. Those techniques appear to have been far more adaptable to large-scale production requiring large holdings, than to peasant agriculture.61 In England, these emerging agrarian capitalists had innovation (and improvement) as the sole method of increasing

58 59

Brenner, Robert. "The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism." Past and Present 97 (1982): 16-113.p 17. Brenner, Robert. "The Origins of Capitalism Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism." New Left Review 1 (1977): p 78. 60 Ibid 61 ibid p 75.

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agricultural return and thus, with the help of an emerging market where free labour could be bought and sold, were able to produce an impulse towards labour productivity that would come to be unmatched anywhere else in the world. What is more, this market-mediated relationship created an arena of competitive rents, where land would simply be leased to the highest bidder, creating an atmosphere of increased pressure on productivity, all the while permitting land to be consolidated into fewer hands. Englands move towards these changing property relations cannot be seen as having developed separately from the forces pushing it towards market imperatives. Yet the forces pushing towards market imperatives were made possible by a number of historical processes that had been in the works for quite some time. By the sixteenth century, England had already begun to stand in stark contrast to its continental neighbours; thanks to its unique geological advantage (as an island, naturally protected from invaders), England was able to go a long way towards unifying the island by eliminating the various parcellized sovereignties that it had inherited from feudalism. This momentum towards unification allowed for the rapid demilitarization of the centralized state, as it no longer had to live uneasily alongside competing military powers. Centralization compounded with demilitarization withheld all extra-economical leverage from the ruling aristocracy, who were no longer able to squeeze out additional surplus from their subjects. While the state served the ruling class as instrument of order and protector of property, the aristocracy had to rely on a different method of surplus extraction. This simple dynamic, multiplied by the fact that an already large portion of the land was being worked not by peasantproprietors but by tenant-farmers, allowed for the agrarian landholders to experiment with new ways of extracting more surplus out of their tenants.62 These alternatives, which by definition

62

Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism A Longer View. New York: Verso, 2002. p 100.

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had to be economically encouraged, were more a rational method of reducing costs by increasing labour productivity rather than an intentional transformation of social property relations. Nonetheless, this shift in attitudes marks the beginning of a new breed of economic discourse that would no longer be mediated by any form of brute physical force, ties of kinship or tradition, but was rather regulated by very precise market imperatives. In his articulation of primitive accumulation Marx examines the historical processes responsible for divorcing the producer from his traditional means of production. Through his interpretation, the so-called emancipation of the peasant from the dominion of the guilds, from their rules for apprentices and journeymen, and from the impediment of their labour regulation was more a sudden and forceful tearing of masses from their means of subsistence, only to be hurled as free and unattached proletarians on the labour market.63 Although Marxs so-called primitive accumulation appears to be inconsistent with Brenners account of how wage labour was created, it is important to recognize that primitive accumulation is regarded as a relatively long and arduous process that may be seen to have occurred well before the age of capitalism.64 The economic historian Michael Postan highlights how the scarcity of land had already pushed more people into looking for ways to supplement their traditional means of income. about one-half of the peasant population had holdings insufficient to maintain their families at the bare minimum of subsistence. This meant that in order to subsist the average smallholder had to supplement his income in other ways... [I]ndustrial and trading activities might sustain entire villages

63

Marx, Karl. Capital a critique of political economy. London: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1981.p 875. 64 In Marxs narrative, the creation of wage-labour appears to be one long process, while Brenner clarifies it to have resulted out of a continuous struggle of back-and-forth between the producers and appropriators, ultimately resulting with the ownership of land in the hands of the appropriators.

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of smallholders... Most of the opportunities for employment must, however, have lain in agriculture.... [I]n almost all the villages some villagers worked for others.65 Similarly, other forces like medieval usury, often simply dismissed as a parasitic intrusion into the economy, prodded the economy to advance in this direction. What should be taken from all this is that the processes leading to the transition into wage labour were in the works long before capitalist agriculture was even remotely recognizable. The processes that would produce the free labours66 that the capitalist system presupposed had been in the works for the greater part of the feudal period. In Wallersteins The Modern World System,67 this transition (let alone a transition of particular social property relations) is missing entirely, as in his view the systems of labour controls are the product of decisions made by the ruling class that were made possible by the expanding world market. This perspective raises a number of concerns: first, the ruling classes were simply not free to choose the manner in which the producing class could be exploited. If they were, as Wallerstein is surely aware, it would mean that at some point the ruling class must have actually decided to abolish serfdom and replace it with something along the lines of wage labour, which clearly never happened. Further absent from Wallersteins picture is the processes whereby free wage labour is created and labour power is made into a commodity; for it is only when labour has been separated from both the means of production and direct relations of domination (namely slavery and serfdom) are capital and labour power free to move towards

65

Postan, M. M. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire (The Cambridge Economic History of Europe). New York: Cambridge UP, 1966.p622-623.
67

Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World System. New York: Academic Press, 1989.

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capitalist market dependence and imperatives. Only under conditions of free wage labour will the individual producing units (combining labour power and the means of production) be forced to sell in order to buy, to buy in order to survive and reproduce, and ultimately to expand and innovate in order to maintain this position in relationship to other competing productive units.68 Although Wallerstein may not disagree with the productive capabilities of wage labour, he cannot account for its development out of transforming property relation by virtue of his (and Smiths) persistence on the division of labour as the basis of labour reformation. Thus, wage labour, as mentioned in the previous chapter, is seen to arise as a techno-economic adaption to the changing world economy as opposed being conceived out of class struggles. It seems helpful at this point to reinstate that it was not the merchants or manufactures who were driving the processes of capitalist development in this latter model; it was rather the changes made to the classic form of property relations in the English countryside that fuelled trade and industry. Merchants could and did function perfectly well within a pre-capitalist context; in fact, part of the success of agrarian capitalism can be attributed to the complex networks of trade that had been etched into Englands landscape as a result of the prospering merchant classes in the feudal period. If anything, the profit margins gained from the trade between autonomous city-states and fragmented markets were much higher for merchants than a unified marketplace. Nevertheless, the economic laws of motion began to gain momentum within the agricultural sector so much so that already by the early modern period, Britain was productive enough to sustain an unusually large number of people no longer engaged in agricultural production.69 In contrast to other European nations like France, where peasant

68

Brenner, Robert. "The Origins of Capitalism Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism." New Left Review 1 (1977): p 32. 69 Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism A Longer View. New York: Verso, 2002. p 132.

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proprietors still maintained control over a substantial area of the land, Englands propertyless mass was growing rapidly. And as land began to be concentrated into fewer hands, English land holders were able to put into practice the large body of improvement literature that had begun to circulate as a means of responding to the market imperatives of competition.70 The discussion of agrarian capitalism would not be complete without considering private property. Largely as a result of the transforming property relations discussed above, large landholders had more and more incentive to secure or close-off their investments. The enclosures of open fields and common land, which had traditionally been cultivated under regulations made by various village communities, were effectively fenced off from the public in order to distinguish their private ownership. The essence of these enclosures was to attack and eventually eliminate the customary or traditional rights that permitted people to gather wood or collect the remnants of a harvest. In this sense the community was effectively excluded from the regulations of production. This was obviously beneficial for these proto-capitalist landlords as not only did it allow for a tighter control over their livestock and crops, but it also made it easier to invest in technical improvements. Yet the formation of private property notwithstanding, it is the body of improvement literature that emerge out of this period that is truly interesting. Making land productive soon became the ideological mantra of new theorists and capitalists like John Locke, who was really a bit of both. The earth, as Locke says, is here to be made productive, which is why private property (that stems from labour) would have to trump common procession. Locke insists that

70

Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Trumpet of sedition political theory and the rise of capitalism, 1509-1688. Washington Square, N.Y: New York UP, 1997.p 131-134.

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the value inherent in the land is produced only through labour and improvement.71 Notwithstanding his specific calculations of value contributed by labour in contrast to nature itself, Lockes new interpretation of property and improvement is very telling of the changing attitudes of the time. In fact, Locks view on property is very much in tune to the early days of agrarian capitalism: his work in the Second Treatise reflects the highly concentrated and large landholdings that were becoming associated with this new and unique form of productive agriculture (productive not just in the sense of total output but output per unit work)72. The point is that a new capitalist definition of property was beginning to take shape asymmetrically in the interests of the landholding capitalist as opposed to the landless proletariat. This also illustrates the process by which the interests of profit and industry began to sneak their way into the political system, placing the principal of improvement for profitable exchange in front of other principles and claims to property. In A Trumpet of Sedition, Ellen Wood states that In the eighteenth century, when enclosure would accelerate rapidly with the active involvement of Parliament, reasons for improvement would be cited systematically as the basis of title to property and as grounds for extinguishing traditional rights.73 Locke was clearly all too comfortable with the extension of his theory on property as a justification of the colonial enterprise; if the unimproved land of the Americas represented nothing but wasted-land, then it would be up to the industrious people of Europe to give it value and worth.74 If agrarian capitalism made possible the conditions for private property, then the development of both can be seen to have put in motion the forces that would place productivity,

71 72

Locke, John, and Peter Laslett. Two treatises of government. 2nd ed. Cambridge UP, 1989. p291-297. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Trumpet of sedition political theory and the rise of capitalism, 1509-1688. Washington Square, N.Y: New York UP, 1997.p 133. 73 Ibid 134 74 Locke, John, and Peter Laslett. Two treatises of government. 2nd ed. Cambridge UP, 1989. p297.

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profit and improvement above the needs of the emerging proletariat. Ironically, agrarian capitalism and private property worked hand in hand to provide the means for the process of proletariatization, they also worked to remove the proletariats rights to ownership of land and production. While the global effects of capitalism are beyond the scope of this project, it is noting the similar paths that other regions have taken in attempts to develop in a capitalist direction. The experience of the producing sectors of every society was similar as they underwent a parallel transformation almost everywhere on the planet as more and more regions joined the capitalist world-economy through force or consent. In this way, capitalists were able to systematically impose on the emerging proletariat or the level of exploitation necessary for the creation of profit in a competitive marketplace. I raise this in order to indicate the broader significance of the changes that helped transform English agriculture. The imperatives of agrarian capitalism are a global phenomenon, and if we are to propose a future for the system, it would have to have that in mind. Although classic economic theories are somewhat easily refuted, we have to be aware of the tendency to overlook or rather downplay the role of human agency. As chapters one and two have shown, the increase in trade and commerce are not to blame for the particularities of the system. And since these particularities or imperatives have not been with us since our days as primates, nor have they come into existence out of thin-air, we have to be able to account for them in an objective and material way. Chapter three picked up from this point to show evidence of how a number of forces were set in motion during England agricultural transformation that were able to take advantage of both the expanses in commerce as well as the loosening feudal arrangements. With this knowledge in hand, we no longer are forced to accept the system for what it is; not only is

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the system not one thats fixed or immutable, but it is one that we have a personal stake in resisting, changing or reforming if we so choose.

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Concluding Thoughts

The productive potential of the modern capitalist system is difficult to overlook. The systems ability to normalize improvement, competition, efficiency and productivity has obviously yielded innumerable benefits in virtually every sector of the economy. Advances in science and technology including medicine and agriculture have raised both life expectancy and to some extent (although not uniformly) the standard of living almost everywhere. Yet, in spite of its benefits, the system is riddled with some very worrying contradictions that throw its advantages into question. Most of the problems that we associate with capitalism today are embedded in the very same market imperatives that were determined some three hundred years ago in the course of Englands agricultural transformation. What should be ever present in our minds is that the purpose of capitalist production is exchange-value, not use-value: profitable exchange, not human needs. This is the reason that the system can allow (and often prefers) food to rot on store shelves than to have it sold at a lower price; this is why the systems ability to feed large populations of people is said to be contradictory to its indifferent attitude towards people starving. This is the reason that Oxfam International estimates the total global aid given for the 2008 economic food crisis to at something around $100 billion, while the United States government alone was willing to bail out its financial institutions with US $700 billion in a single day.75 The point here is that within capitalist production, humanity is replaced by profits as the centre of economic activity. If left to the market, the unregulated equilibrium of supply and

75

"Donor response to food crisis inadequate, agencies say." IRIN: humanitarian news and analysis 16 Oct. 2008. <http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80954>.

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demand would have devastating effects, eliminating the arts and providing the bare limit for the working class to survive, all the while concentrating wealth ever upwards in the hands of those who hold the means of production. Meanwhile, the systems constant demand for new and growing markets makes it particularly prone to periods of stagnation and downturns, often necessitating extra-economic intervention and/or mechanisms of control, as demonstrated by the recent economic crisis. All of this, including the level of environmental destruction brought about by irresponsible land use, starts to illustrate why there exists on the one hand massive amounts of wealth for the few while so many are unable to provide for basic necessities of life. By critiquing the classic economic wisdom, this paper has shown that capitalism has been a system created despite the advances in trade. The market dependence and imperatives (of competition, profit maximization and market expansion) that we associate today with capitalism today are the very same imperatives that developed during Englands agricultural transformation. The creation of a world-system through increased trade, although an integral part of capitalist development, did not define or give rise to the system. In comparison to the Iberian or Dutch colonial experience, we can safely conclude that there has always been a plethora of avenues that the bounties of colonialism could have been squandered on. Nevertheless, the market forces created by Englands unique form of agrarian capitalism have remained unchanged since their inception. I raise this issue not because I want to reiterate a Marxist insistence on economic transformation, but because I want to convert the story of capitalisms origins to an issue of human agency. It should be clear that there is fundamentally nothing natural or inevitable about capitalism. In fact, the systems insistence on profit makes it very artificial and inhuman. If capitalism was in fact a system rooted in human nature, as its proponents often suggest, then it
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would have the human characteristics of compassion and solidarity at least somewhere in its inner-workings. I believe that the simple fact that capitalisms origins can be traced back to distinct historical processes can be liberating for human agency. It shows that economic activity in itself has been a human invention, always to some extent subject to its inventor. The economy in abstraction should always serve humanity, not the other way around. Consequently, if there is a system that we are unhappy with, we should have the option and the ability to ameliorate or replace it. The origin of capitalism shows us that we should not take the systems existence for granted. If we have allowed for the system to replace humanity with profit out of ignorance of its effects, then we need to do everything in our power to change it now that we do know of its effects. We need to place ourselves back on the centre stage of economic activity. The determinist arguments in defence of capitalism are not only flawed, but are deliberately presented to subdue the discourses of reformation; If we are to bring humanity back into discussion, we need to resist attempts to present capitalism as pristine, nonviolent and natural. Silence will always mean consent within this context as we have a personal stake in the operations of our economic system. If we learn only one thing from the origins of capitalism, then, it should be that: if there is going to be change in any system, it is not going to be seamless or without struggle.

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Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon P, 1957. Postan, M. M. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire (The Cambridge Economic History of Europe). New York: Cambridge UP, 1966. Schumpeter, Joseph A. Imperialism and Social Classes. New York: A.M. Kelley, 1951. See, Henri. Modern Capitalism: Its Origins and Evolution. Trans. Homer B. Vanderblue. New York: Adelphi Company, 1928. Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations: Books I-III. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970. Smith, Adam. Lectures on jurisprudence. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Clarendon P, Oxford UP, 1978. Wallerstein, Immanuel. "From Feudalism to Capitalism: Transition or Transitions?" Social Forces 55 (1976): 273-83. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World System. New York: Academic Press, 1989. Wallerstein, Immanuel. "The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis." Comparative Studies in Society and History 16 (1974): 387-415. Wallerstein, Immanuel. World-Systems Analysis An Introduction (A John Hope Franklin Center Book). New York: Duke UP, 2004. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism A Longer View. New York: Verso, 2002. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Pristine Culture of Capitalism A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States. New York: Verso, 1992. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Trumpet of sedition political theory and the rise of capitalism, 1509-1688. Washington Square, N.Y: New York UP, 1997.

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