Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Let me try to put into words a few thoughts - but let me begin by admitting that I shall fail at fully collecting the impact this book has had on my thinking over the past couple of weeks. But, first, a story.
I remember more than 10 years ago, when I was in grad school, taking a Masters in History with a focus on the history of labour and the unemployed, that I got into a classic facebook debate with one of my high school friends' older brothers. I had written something that railed against the very existence or structure of capitalism, something that is ultimately quite innocuous for somebody in my field of study to do. He didn't much like it.
I remember his core argument being something along the lines that there has never been a society where capitalism was not a driving concept or ideal informing human behaviour. It was natural, it was human, and it was somehow embedded into the very genetic code of our social relations.
I, of course, retorted. Capitalism is a historical reality. It has a beginning, that can be traced, and while that beginning reflects some continuity, it is actually the change that matters. What I continually tried to impress was that the defining feature of capitalism was a dramatic shift in the relations that existed between people; capitalism is about the relationship people have to the means of production and, in turn, the power they have to determine how the means of production are used. He disagreed. Having now read this book I can see where his idea comes from - for him, Capitalism is about the transfer of monies and the act of exchange. This is, indeed, something that has been done for a long time.
He was wrong back then. He's still wrong now. I wish that, back then, I had already read this book because it would have given me a bit more of the knowledge needed to explain the huge shifts in human relationships that were engendered by the development of capitalism. (Not that I think he would have listened or cared whatsoever, given the nature of my degree and knowledge compared to his - but that's a whole other story.)
What would this book have added to that conversation? And what will it add to future conversations?
The first is that capitalism is a system that started in rural communities rather than it growing urban communities, and that it was the dispossession of peasants (workers) from land that lead to the growth of urban communities and the creation of the proletariat. But the insight is deeper than this of course. It was the huge shift of peasants from being able to rely on custom and traditional rights to property and, through that property, to produce the needs of self-reproduction, that was the huge shift. Instead of customary rights to land and production, wage labour and rents were brought into place. It was up to the worker to garner enough through their wages to survive, not through their production.
That's a seismic change in relations.
The second is that capitalism was dependent on the notion of "improving" the productive value of land (or other means of production, as they emerged through industrialization). This is a major shift in thinking that is forced onto workers because of the shift in their relationship to production and onto capitalists because of the new economic motive for profit as a means of growing wealth - rather than coercive extra-economic means (like the use of the church, military, or legal methods). In England in the sixteenth century an entire new genre of literature developed outlining to people how to improve the production of their land; this didn't exist beforehand because the relationship between peasant and landlord was not reliant on the production of goods but on the extraction of wealth through coercion. Improving land value through increasing production so that it could support the acquisition of more wealth which could then be reinvested into other means of extracting wealth in what would become an ever-expanding continuous cycle that supported the "growth" of capitalism.
Third, capitalism expanded rapidly because the inherent motives built into the economic belief required it to move from where it started to where it continues to go through that very same notion of reinvestment in the pursuit of wealth. It is because of this system that capitalism developed in England, grew across the south, and then across the country, then ultimately across the empire. It also, in the process, placed new competitive pressures on other markets that forced dramatic restructuring of market regions into national markets, and feudalistic structures into various nation states. The changes didn't happen because capitalism just-makes-sense but because capitalism is dependent on expansion in order to succeed; finding new markets, finding new labour, finding new lands and resources, and finding ways to dispossess local populations from all of these in the pursuit of profit.
All of this happens in southern England, which is quite specific and unique - and Wood does an exceptional job of indicating how and why capitalism developed in this corner of a developing nation rather than in others despite the supposition that it was going to develop everywhere, naturally, once it was set free. In doing so, she makes it clear that capitalism is a set of ideas that couldn't have grown elsewhere because the conditions didn't exist politically or economically or socially; but she also devotes a great intellectual energy to outlining that even in a place like Southern England, where capitalism began in the fields tilled and cared for by generations of subsistence farmers, the conception of life prior to capitalism was not pre-capitalist but actively non-capitalist.
It's a profound book with a profound and meaningful narrative, and it reminded me of a think I once heard from an another exceptional early modern historian, Natalie Zemon Davis. Something along the lines of "we study history not because we want to justify the world we live in, but because it allows us to understand that the world doesn't have to look like ours."
Which leads me to the last bit. Capitalism began because it dispossessed people from their land and, in doing so, removed them from controlling the means by which they were able to survive. In its stead they were expected to work for wages, which were subjected to the market, so that they could purchase the right to a home and the essential human needs for survival - mainly, food. It brought about economic coercion of the sort that turned the very means of subsistence into the core driving value of a new economic order.
Perhaps one of the most effective ways to dismantle capitalism, then, is to focus again on the core means of our survival and return them to a right rather than a privilege.
Housing for all! Good quality, nutritious food for all! With great honour and respect given to the many advocates who have worked for centuries along these lines, perhaps this is where the collective struggle against capitalism must always devote its focus and discipline. Until it is achieved, and then guarded in perpetuity.
I remember more than 10 years ago, when I was in grad school, taking a Masters in History with a focus on the history of labour and the unemployed, that I got into a classic facebook debate with one of my high school friends' older brothers. I had written something that railed against the very existence or structure of capitalism, something that is ultimately quite innocuous for somebody in my field of study to do. He didn't much like it.
I remember his core argument being something along the lines that there has never been a society where capitalism was not a driving concept or ideal informing human behaviour. It was natural, it was human, and it was somehow embedded into the very genetic code of our social relations.
I, of course, retorted. Capitalism is a historical reality. It has a beginning, that can be traced, and while that beginning reflects some continuity, it is actually the change that matters. What I continually tried to impress was that the defining feature of capitalism was a dramatic shift in the relations that existed between people; capitalism is about the relationship people have to the means of production and, in turn, the power they have to determine how the means of production are used. He disagreed. Having now read this book I can see where his idea comes from - for him, Capitalism is about the transfer of monies and the act of exchange. This is, indeed, something that has been done for a long time.
He was wrong back then. He's still wrong now. I wish that, back then, I had already read this book because it would have given me a bit more of the knowledge needed to explain the huge shifts in human relationships that were engendered by the development of capitalism. (Not that I think he would have listened or cared whatsoever, given the nature of my degree and knowledge compared to his - but that's a whole other story.)
What would this book have added to that conversation? And what will it add to future conversations?
The first is that capitalism is a system that started in rural communities rather than it growing urban communities, and that it was the dispossession of peasants (workers) from land that lead to the growth of urban communities and the creation of the proletariat. But the insight is deeper than this of course. It was the huge shift of peasants from being able to rely on custom and traditional rights to property and, through that property, to produce the needs of self-reproduction, that was the huge shift. Instead of customary rights to land and production, wage labour and rents were brought into place. It was up to the worker to garner enough through their wages to survive, not through their production.
That's a seismic change in relations.
The second is that capitalism was dependent on the notion of "improving" the productive value of land (or other means of production, as they emerged through industrialization). This is a major shift in thinking that is forced onto workers because of the shift in their relationship to production and onto capitalists because of the new economic motive for profit as a means of growing wealth - rather than coercive extra-economic means (like the use of the church, military, or legal methods). In England in the sixteenth century an entire new genre of literature developed outlining to people how to improve the production of their land; this didn't exist beforehand because the relationship between peasant and landlord was not reliant on the production of goods but on the extraction of wealth through coercion. Improving land value through increasing production so that it could support the acquisition of more wealth which could then be reinvested into other means of extracting wealth in what would become an ever-expanding continuous cycle that supported the "growth" of capitalism.
Third, capitalism expanded rapidly because the inherent motives built into the economic belief required it to move from where it started to where it continues to go through that very same notion of reinvestment in the pursuit of wealth. It is because of this system that capitalism developed in England, grew across the south, and then across the country, then ultimately across the empire. It also, in the process, placed new competitive pressures on other markets that forced dramatic restructuring of market regions into national markets, and feudalistic structures into various nation states. The changes didn't happen because capitalism just-makes-sense but because capitalism is dependent on expansion in order to succeed; finding new markets, finding new labour, finding new lands and resources, and finding ways to dispossess local populations from all of these in the pursuit of profit.
All of this happens in southern England, which is quite specific and unique - and Wood does an exceptional job of indicating how and why capitalism developed in this corner of a developing nation rather than in others despite the supposition that it was going to develop everywhere, naturally, once it was set free. In doing so, she makes it clear that capitalism is a set of ideas that couldn't have grown elsewhere because the conditions didn't exist politically or economically or socially; but she also devotes a great intellectual energy to outlining that even in a place like Southern England, where capitalism began in the fields tilled and cared for by generations of subsistence farmers, the conception of life prior to capitalism was not pre-capitalist but actively non-capitalist.
It's a profound book with a profound and meaningful narrative, and it reminded me of a think I once heard from an another exceptional early modern historian, Natalie Zemon Davis. Something along the lines of "we study history not because we want to justify the world we live in, but because it allows us to understand that the world doesn't have to look like ours."
Which leads me to the last bit. Capitalism began because it dispossessed people from their land and, in doing so, removed them from controlling the means by which they were able to survive. In its stead they were expected to work for wages, which were subjected to the market, so that they could purchase the right to a home and the essential human needs for survival - mainly, food. It brought about economic coercion of the sort that turned the very means of subsistence into the core driving value of a new economic order.
Perhaps one of the most effective ways to dismantle capitalism, then, is to focus again on the core means of our survival and return them to a right rather than a privilege.
Housing for all! Good quality, nutritious food for all! With great honour and respect given to the many advocates who have worked for centuries along these lines, perhaps this is where the collective struggle against capitalism must always devote its focus and discipline. Until it is achieved, and then guarded in perpetuity.
Elegant & persuasive critique of all theories (include Marxist) that assume that capitalism is the natural evolution of any market to which all societies tend once obstacles are removed, or that it emerges as a consequence of demographic and/or technological changes. Markets & trade are not proto-capitalist, because they do not operate for the purpose of maximizing profit, competition, and compulsion, but simply on the much older principle of buying cheap in one market (say, Samarkand) and carrying goods to sell dear in another (say, Constantinople). Capitalism is"a system in which goods and services, down to the most basic necessities of life, are produced for profitable exchange, where even human labor power is a commodity for sale in the market, and where, because all economic actors are dependent on the market, the requirements of competition and profit maximization are the fundamental rules of life."It first emerges in one place only, the English countryside, NOT all of Europe and not in the cities, because of peculiar conditions in England: exceptionally wide land holdings by lords, municipalities & other corporate entities with autonomous powers, who could rely on their economic power (to demand rents) and forego use of military power to extract surplus. Reliance on rents that varied according to market conditions, including the productivity of the land, made these landholders interested above all in productivity, thus on organizational & technical improvements, including enclosures. The dispossessed ended up in the cities, especially London, which grew to become the first mass market for cheap consumer goods. English capitalism benefited enormously from its overseas empire, but it grew in the first instance in response to its domestic, mainly London, market, which became so powerful it obliged other countries to modify their economies to serve it.
Honestly I recommend the works of Robert Brenner supplemented by Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams instead.
It’s been too long just not picking it up—I liked it, but I’d just want to start over if I try it again.
fast-paced
A very satisfying analysis, particularly for its insistence on distinguishing modernity from bourgeois society from urban society from commercialism from capitalism (190). Sections to return to: on Locke (111-115) and the Nation State (176-181).
Really important and valuable explanation of how capitalism wasn't a natural and necessary culmination earlier commercial economic practice everywhere but instead a historical consequence of specific practices in England at a specific time, leading to developments in England that then spread elsewhere.
Could have had a bit more detail even within this length and a bit less repetition.
Mostly unrelated to the detail or repetition, it wasn't really engaging or absorbing to read and was something of a challenge to get through.
Could have had a bit more detail even within this length and a bit less repetition.
Mostly unrelated to the detail or repetition, it wasn't really engaging or absorbing to read and was something of a challenge to get through.
challenging
informative
slow-paced