class 6 Flashcards
review Pomeranz thesis on the great divergence
- Eurasian similarity until as late as 1750
- Europe’s internal factors of development not sufficient to explain GD by 1800 (either insufficient on their own or not unique to Europe)
- decisive factor = Europe’s overseas empires and new system of core-peripheral complementarity
- empire enabled the British Industrial Revolution and Europe’s escape from the Malthusian trap (e.g. created new markets)
last sentence of assigned reading
'’at our current state of knowledge, it is evident that, around 1800, capitalism in a form going beyond merchant capitalism and with systemic force was a European phenomenon, yet fully expressed only in northwester Europe, however much it had been simultaneously facilitated and codetermined by global linkages
- Kocka (2016)
(different sort of capitalism)
Kocka doesn’t trade them as entirely separate: they require and build on each other
- capitalism in general
- plantation capitalism
- merchant capitalism
- finance capitalism
- etc.
!! definition capitalism !!
Kocka
Definition capitalism (Kocka):
- capitalism is not commercial society, nor market economy
- merchant capitalism (c15-c18) -> industrial (c19)
Three characteristics:
1. decentralization: individual and collective actors have property rights enabling them to make economic decisions in a semi-autonomous and decentralized way
2. commodification: markets serve as main mechanisms of allocation and coordination; commodification of land, labor, and capital
3. accumulation: capital is invested in expectation of future gains (profit); sources of capital include credit, savings and income, uncertainty and risk, imperative of growth and expansion
= inheritive character of expansion, accumulation and growth
(commodification)
putting a specific (monetary) value on something
commodification = commensurability
Ingham definition capitalism
- monetary system and bank credit
- market exchange (competitive)
- private enterprise production of commodities (matches with Kocka’s decentralization)
two main conceptions of capitalism’s origins
logic of circulation = matches with what we’ve encountered so far in this course
- division of labor
- trade, commerce, increased circulation
- regional price differentials
- extra-economic means of profit (controlling trade routes, expanding trade networks etc.)
*these elements aren’t necessarily new with capitalism
logic of production = capitalism as a new form of organizing society, something without precedent
- social system based on novel property relations, producers separeted from means of production and compelled to sell their labor-power
- market is not merely an opportunity, but an imperative to which owners and non-owners (workers) are subjected
- owners compelled to increase labor productivity
- greater separation impersonal economic forces from personal political forces (eco. and political power apart of each other)
- internal development more important than external empire
!!main difference = logic of production doesn’t look at external factors
logic of circulation
= way to understand capitalism
- division of labor
- trade, commerce, increased circulation
- regional price differentials
- extra-economic means of profit (controlling trade routes, expanding trade networks etc.)
*Kocka + California school neigt to this logic
logic of production
- social system based on novel property relations, producers separeted from means of prodution and compelled to sell their labor-power
- market is not merely an opportunity, but an imperative to which owners and non-owners (workers) are subjected
- owners compelled to increase labor productivity
- greater separation impersonal economic forces from personal political forces (eco. and political power apart of each other)
- internal development more important than external empire
general claims of the circulationists
- merchant capitalism is the earliest stage of capitalism + its origins lie outside of Europe = critique of eurocentrism
- ca 1500-1800: peak era of merchant capitalism, aka mercantile capitalism or commercial capitalim
- ca. 1800+ industrial capitalism
mercantilism
early modern theory that trade generates wealth:
- pro positive trade balance
- pro state protectionism
circulationists linking together trends
- development of powerful territorial states in the core
- European expansion : core-periphery, unfree labor
- Rise of mercahnt capitalism & finance capitalism : banks, stock exchanges, joint-stock companies and corporations
all of these influence each other
e.g. rise of state debt -> reforms kingdoms taxation -> central banks + centralization of the state
connection logic of circulation and the great divergence
GD begins with the rise of merchant capitalism and finance capitalism in Europe in the context of overseas empires
- traditional view = C15-C18
- revisionist view (e.g. Pomeranz): ~1800
Industrial Revolution in production occurred as a result of this prior revolution in circulation
the origins of capitalism - logic of production
capitalism reorganized the social structure: creating new classes
- if it doesn’t reorganize the sphere of production, including social relations of production, then it’s not really capitalism
- merchant capitalism C15-C18 not capitalism proper: it was non-capitalist world commerce
- internal development of Europes most advanced regions crucial for understanding origins capitalism
capitalism began either with agrarian capitalism in C15-C16 or with industrial capitalism in C19
*industrialization c.1850 only in certain areas of Europe: where there were resources
groups within logic of production
- classical political economists
- classical marxists
- political marxists (agrarian capitalism)
classical political economists
- Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations
- Adrew Ure - factory system, thought human labor would dissapear
focus on division of labor (e.g. Smith’s pin factory description)
division of labor -> bigger production
economists wanted to advocate this division of labor + open trade (as free as possible)
= celebration of industrial capitalism
classical marxism
critiqued elements/effects
- mass poverty, morally intolerable
- too many goods, declining prices -> more profitable to destroy goods than to transport for sale = crisis of overproduction (new with industrial capitalism)
*famine often caused by overproduction or industrial techniques - exponential growth population + many people dying
- transformation natural environment
Engels:
‘ father had a capital -> he has knowledge, describes slums as a manmade problem (industrial age forces working class to be packed together far away from farms (sources of food) leading them to have to buy them
Marx: criticized established religion and bourgeoisie
- subversive logic
- relied on Engels’ money
classical marxist theory of revolution
= class struggle as motorforce of history
!!classical vision = no skipping of steps
ancient mode of production
revolutionary revision
feudal mode of production
revolutionary revision
capitalist mode of production
revolutionary transition (socialism)
communist mode of production
what is class society
Marx vs others
Marxist view = not groups of people in a population, but an economic/structural category of the prevailing mode of production
- capital vs labor division runs through each of us (everyone has some level of capital in comparison with labour): you are a capitalist and a worker
- class distinctions go through individuals
Sociological/common view = working class vs middle class vs capitalist class
'’original accumulation’’
Marx =
historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production
it appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-history of capital
the expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil is the basis of the whole process
only in England has it the classic form
= about faith English Peasants
political marxism
= emphasize the importance of agrarian capitalism in England (NOT: industrialization) as the origins of capitalism in general
- reject the commercialization model focused on merchants, trade and finance (has been along for too long: to general)
- early modern situation ‘non-capitalist commerce’
- associate capitalism with a systematic need to lower costs of production in order to prevail in price competition
- contend that this systematic imperative developed in English agricultrue before industrialization
capitalism as market dependency
-Wood (political marxism)
Capitalism system with:
- profitable exchange
- where all economic actors are dependent on the market
- producers depend on the market for access to the means of production
- not integrated market (one market spread across = competition)
- fragmented market, prevents/limits competition (e.g. Atlantic triangular trade, Holland)
= distinct system of market dependence
Holland
- circulationists vs productionists
Circulationists:
Holland most advanced merchant capitalist economy, so we must explain its ‘‘failed transition’’ to industrial capitalism
productionists:
Holland did not fail to transition to industrial capitalism, because it was not really capitalist in the first place
bottomline/England
land divided: areas owned by no-one, by lord of the manor, by peasants, by church (glebe)
then
capitalism started in England: from a reorganization of English agriculture, esp. C14-15, extending into C18
- peasants/yeomen were dispossessed of common lands (enclosures), forced to sell their shit as tenant farmers (owned product, but had to pay rent) or be agrarian laborers
- English landowners were ‘demilitarized’ earlier than feudal lords elsewhere in Europe, focused on extractive force: pushed for higher labor productivity (started using market mechanisms to extract resources and labor)
- agrarian capitalism produced a large proletarian workforce that gradually moved into cities (would labor in factories)
*there was resistance to this process: missed revolution Gerrard Wistanley, True Levellers/diggers (common property), English Civil War (1642-1651) lead to parliamentary rule -> private property rights expanded
…Hill
