Roots of capitalism

[Dodo]

Just wondering. What do you guys is the root for development of capitalism?
Why has capitalism developed, or why has it not for a long time in other parts of the world?
What "caused" capitalism?
What concepts do you see central, how do you do the "dialectics of it"?
I have opened similar threads before but now I am clearly asking, wtihout stating anything, what the central abstracted concept you think is what made capitalism?
Is capitalism a "natural" outcome therefore?

[Slavic]

Industrialization is the root of capitalism. It transformed the social order of feudal society. Merchants were able to purchase these new industrial inventions and create industries which relied on mass simple labor as opposed to complex craftsmen. Craftsmen were made obsolete and turned into wage-laborers. Agricultural inventions produced wage-laborers from the pea sentry.

Industrialization first took place in Europe, hence why it did not develop "for a long time in other parts of the world."

[bropasaran]

Enclosure movement.

As to why it came about, what where the resons for it's emergence, I find it preposterously delusional to suggest one has insight in it.

[tuwix]

Just wondering. What do you guys is the root for development of capitalism?
Why has capitalism developed, or why has it not for a long time in other parts of the world?
What "caused" capitalism?
What concepts do you see central, how do you do the "dialectics of it"?
I have opened similar threads before but now I am clearly asking, wtihout stating anything, what the central abstracted concept you think is what made capitalism?
Is capitalism a "natural" outcome therefore?

IMHO money is root of capitalism. Money as an universal payment measure. In both Americas before Europeans sometimes feudalism happened but there was absolutely no money there. Therefore, capitalism didn't have place there until conquerors came.

[NoXiOuScRaSh]

I think Capitalism has always been around, as long as there is the belief that there is a right held by individuals or small groups to owning and controlling private properties there will always be someone in a ruling position dictating who within that group gets to own what and in the quantities that they should be allowed to own these things. I am sure even cave men had an alpha male who decided who got to eat the best part of the animal they clubbed on the head.

That's why people have a hard time with the futuristic ideas of communism because at the very core of our genetic memory we all have an instinct to take things we want whether by physical force or by manipulative control over the collective. Essentially Greed has been an important part of our species' heritage it's what makes breaking those bonds of control within society so difficult.

[Dodo]

I am not trying to mess with you guys here, just asking questions and digging to see if any new ideas comes up.


Industrialization is the root of capitalism. It transformed the social order of feudal society. Merchants were able to purchase these new industrial inventions and create industries which relied on mass simple labor as opposed to complex craftsmen. Craftsmen were made obsolete and turned into wage-laborers. Agricultural inventions produced wage-laborers from the pea sentry.

Industrialization first took place in Europe, hence why it did not develop "for a long time in other parts of the world."

But why did industrialization happen? And why in Europe?
And why in 18-19th century?
Why didn't industrialization happen around Roman Empire? Or in China?
Why is the rest of the world having difficulty industrializing even today if it as simple as "employing new technologies".
Wage laborers existed looong before capitalism.


Enclosure movement.

As to why it came about, what where the resons for it's emergence, I find it preposterously delusional to suggest one has insight in it.


What do you think are the roots of enclosures? What motivated, what were the underlying reasons etc?
And what exactly have enclosures transformed?
EDIT: sorry for the wrong questions, renewed question below.


IMHO money is root of capitalism. Money as an universal payment measure. In both Americas before Europeans sometimes feudalism happened but there was absolutely no money there. Therefore, capitalism didn't have place there until conquerors came.

But money existed in Europe, Africa and Asia since BC. What happened in between all that time which prevented capitalism? Money and mercant trade is as old as classed human history almost, there had been many commercial revolutions in history as well but none of them had the effect it did in 18-19th century.

Why didn't Eastern Europe industrialize whereas West took off then?


I think Capitalism has always been around, as long as there is the belief that there is a right held by individuals or small groups to owning and controlling private properties there will always be someone in a ruling position dictating who within that group gets to own what and in the quantities that they should be allowed to own these things. I am sure even cave men had an alpha male who decided who got to eat the best part of the animal they clubbed on the head.

Capitalism is not about someone ruling you. It is a larger set of relations engrained in society. Ruling class can exist in multiple set of social relations.
Property is hardly a unique quality of capitalism.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Just wondering. What do you guys is the root for development of capitalism?
Why has capitalism developed, or why has it not for a long time in other parts of the world?
What "caused" capitalism?
What concepts do you see central, how do you do the "dialectics of it"?
I have opened similar threads before but now I am clearly asking, wtihout stating anything, what the central abstracted concept you think is what made capitalism?
Is capitalism a "natural" outcome therefore?

Good question. I don't have THE answer :lol:

It is "natural" but IMO not in a deterministic way (it's not like any society would automatically develop this way eventually). It's one of a narrow range of possibilities that could have developed in certain historical circumstances. I've read that before it developed in Europe, a bourgois class had also become powerful in China and sort of contended for rulership in a limited way at one point.

[Dodo]

There are a large amount of theories on emergence of capitalism and they are fighting pretty fiercely. Even within Marxism, there are multiple contradicting views.

I am going to write on Ottoman "modernization" so I have to get my mind set within a month.

What you say jimmie, is now closer to what I am dealing with. Capitalism's deterministic outcome is a "western" modernization determinisim in a way.
They tend to be clsoer to Smithian economics and rationalization.
For a long time I thought of capitalism as empowerment of bourgeouisie and their take over from aristocrat in the rigid "historical materialist" thinking....which now is being smashed as I read others. I mean I am reading Brenner who is smashing this classical Marxist stance and then apparently there is this guy Jairus Banaji who smashes Brenner and our conception of "capitalism" as rise of "wage labor", or commodification of labor power.

[tallguy]

The roots of capitalism are the ruthless greed of the few and the blind fear of the many. The latter being often a consequence of the former. Everything else, whilst being of interest in its own right, is historical details.

[Dodo]

Enclosure movement.

As to why it came about, what where the resons for it's emergence, I find it preposterously delusional to suggest one has insight in it.

Oi, I just realized the silliness of the questions I asked to you when I realized what you actually said. Why do you think we cannot analyze as to why it came to be though?

[Skyhilist]

Capitalism developed because it was progressive for its time. At least that is what Marx thought. He stated, however, that capitalism had outlived its utility and progressiveness and therefore had to be replaced.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Capitalism developed because it was progressive for its time. At least that is what Marx thought. He stated, however, that capitalism had outlived its utility and progressiveness and therefore had to be replaced.

I've always understood "progress" in this sense to mean it could outperform the previously dominant method of organizing society and how society reproduces itself. It is no longer progressive because rather than providing an alternative to the problems of the dominant feudal system, as the dominant system it's biggest obstacle to further development are aspects inherent to capitalism. In marxist terms this would be like: the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There are a large amount of theories on emergence of capitalism and they are fighting pretty fiercely. Even within Marxism, there are multiple contradicting views.

I am going to write on Ottoman "modernization" so I have to get my mind set within a month.

What you say jimmie, is now closer to what I am dealing with. Capitalism's deterministic outcome is a "western" modernization determinisim in a way.
They tend to be clsoer to Smithian economics and rationalization.
For a long time I thought of capitalism as empowerment of bourgeouisie and their take over from aristocrat in the rigid "historical materialist" thinking....which now is being smashed as I read others. I mean I am reading Brenner who is smashing this classical Marxist stance and then apparently there is this guy Jairus Banaji who smashes Brenner and our conception of "capitalism" as rise of "wage labor", or commodification of labor power.

Yeah I've been reading some stuff by Banaji lately. It's interesting - a little above my pay grade at times. Unfortunately my historical knowlege is biased towards the US, parts of Latin America, and Western Europe basically and so I'm not as familiar as I'd like to be with some of the eastern European history discussed. But it's a convincing case for at least a re-examination of some assumptions about how Marxists think about history and what how modes of production and forms of exploitation relate or don't to eachother. I certaintly wouldn't feel qualified to say who is more accurate or useful in this debate.

Comrade impossible would hate it though I think. :lol:

[RedMaterialist]

Just wondering. What do you guys is the root for development of capitalism?
Why has capitalism developed, or why has it not for a long time in other parts of the world?
What "caused" capitalism?
What concepts do you see central, how do you do the "dialectics of it"?
I have opened similar threads before but now I am clearly asking, wtihout stating anything, what the central abstracted concept you think is what made capitalism?
Is capitalism a "natural" outcome therefore?

I thought Marx had pretty much explained it:

1. Destruction of Roman Empire by the Germanic tribes.

2. The tribes then split the former empire into, more or less, feudal estates worked by serfs, mostly former slaves. The former artisans grouped into small towns. The feudal landlords periodically attacked and robbed the towns and the small merchant caravans operating between the towns.

3. To protect themselves the artisans and merchants in the towns organized themselves into an armed defense against the landlords. This conscious organization began the first development of the burgher class, later the bourgeoisie.

4. At the same time serfs were escaping from the estates into the towns providing cheap labor for the bourgeois small manufacturers. Wage payment for labor might have begun at this time, thus profit from the labor of an underclass, the developing proletariat. This intensified the division of labor and the competition between workers for wages.

5. Discovery of gold and silver in the Americas added a huge source of cheap capital for commerce and for the development of manufacture.

6. Landowners realized they could make higher profits by converting their land to pasture for sheep, cattle, etc. Thus, the clearances further driving even cheaper labor to the manufacturing towns.

7. The manufacturers, forced by competition, to produce more cheaply, began to replace workers with machines. A hundred weavers could be replaced by one mechanical loom. One machine producing Adam Smith's famous pins could replace hundreds of workers. More importantly, in my view, was that the manufacturers and inventors could see hundreds, sometimes thousands of workers doing simple, repetitive, mechanical, operations for hours on end. It would have been relatively easy to see how these simple human movements could have been converted into the movements of a machine.

8. Steam power was the perfect source to power the machines. Thus, the Industrial Revolution.

This is very simplified, but I think it sets forth the basic materialistic history of capital as explained by Marx.

[Dodo]

Thats what I thought as well, until I read this:
http://newleftreview.org/I/104/robert-brenner-the-origins-of-capitalist-development-a-critique-of-neo-smithian-marxism


This appraoch is essentially a smithian reading of economic development taken up by P.Sweezy, A.G Frank and Wallerstein. That is, non-qualitative and quantitative. As in, it explains the emergence of capitalism through expansion of trade, quantitavely. And the expansion of trade leads to "division of labor" and specialization and eventually wage-labor arises due to rationalization.
In that sense, capitalism is viewed as a natural outcome of history, an inevitable product of rise of bourgeouisie since it was always "there" to begin with.


I am still reading the Brenner position and his "class relations transformation" emphasis in that article now. I'll make a thread about it later I guess.

[RedMaterialist]

Thats what I thought as well, until I read this:
http://newleftreview.org/I/104/robert-brenner-the-origins-of-capitalist-development-a-critique-of-neo-smithian-marxism


This appraoch is essentially a smithian reading of economic development taken up by P.Sweezy, A.G Frank and Wallerstein. That is, non-qualitative and quantitative. As in, it explains the emergence of capitalism through expansion of trade, quantitavely. And the expansion of trade leads to "division of labor" and specialization and eventually wage-labor arises due to rationalization.
In that sense, capitalism is viewed as a natural outcome of history, an inevitable product of rise of bourgeouisie since it was always "there" to begin with.


I am still reading the Brenner position and his "class relations transformation" emphasis in that article now. I'll make a thread about it later I guess.

Just briefly looking at Brenner (all those jstor and other journals should be free online, I think) he says that the small peasant landholder in pre-industrial Europe had no desire to leave their farms and join the capitalist economy. Well, that is true, which is why the landlords used the barbarity of the clearances to get them off the land. By the end of the 18th century the small peasant landholder had disappeared as a class.

[Dodo]

Not in France they did not.
----
What Brenner says is that there is no rationality for neither the Lord to be involved in capitalism nor serf of be involved in labor market without the "class relations" going through a change. He explains the transformation of productive forces(or at least the oppurtunity for its transformation) through labor relations.
What he says is that essentially, labor has to seperated from their subsistance(land) as serfs and rely solely on their labor-power to survive.
Only under these circumstances can capitalism arise with rising wage-labor. Not through expansion of trade. Bourgouisie lived well enough before capitalism under feudal relations. Capitalism came about as a result of changing labor relations, class struggle which created the wage-labor.

I'd be very happy to stimulate a reading on origins of capitalism...there seems to be a lot less "thought" on this forum then I expected there to be :(
I need this exchange of ideas.

[blake 3:17]

Ellen Meiskin Woods is a strong arguer against the inevitability of capitalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Capitalism

I've tried to follow her arguments since this article came out: http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/993

There's some interesting stuff on origins of capitalism which I don't think Woods discusses around art and book production in the Renaissance period.

And a whole lot of us (like me) should go and read Capital Volume 1 and skip whatever super weird stuff we don't get. Sometimes we get stuck on the hardest most abstract problems when they're best understood through relatively accessible concrete means.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I just want to clear up some complete inaccuracies in this thread.

Industrialisation is a symptom, not a cause, of capitalism. Industrialisation happened in Britain c.1760-1830, and later in European nations (many only at the very end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th century). The roots of capitalism go further back.

Money is not a cause of capitalism. Money, in some form, pre-dates industrial revolution and capitalist-worker social relations by a long time. Money takes different forms; in essence, by talking about 'money', we are talking about a medium of exchange, although most people when thinking of money think of coins and bank notes.

Marx probably says this best in "Reflections on Money" (1851):

"First of all it Is a historical fact, which no one can deny, that in all hitherto existing social formations which were based on separation and contradiction between castes, tribes, social estates, classes, etc., money was an essential component of this organisation, and the monetary system was always symptomatic of the heyday or decline of this organisation. It is therefore not our task to prove that the monetary system is based on class contradictions, it is up to the simpletons to prove that, in spite of all previous historical experience, the monetary system can make sense even where there are no cl-ass contradictions, and that this particular element present in all social formations up to now will be able to survive in a situation that negates all hitherto existing social formations. To confront complete simpletons with such a task would be too simple. They deal with everything in monosyllables and this constitutes their specific talent. The monetary, system and the entire present system are in their opinion as straightforward and as stupid as they themselves are."

Money, in some form, has existed in all sorts of formations of generalised social relations. To say that it is specifically a cause of capitalism is just historically inaccurate, and I don't think we need to waste further time examining this at this point.

There was huge debate amongst Marxists (Sweezy, Baran et al. on the one hand, and Dobb [and later Brenner] et al. on the other) post-1945 about the origins of capitalism and the decline of feudalism. Broadly speaking, two themes emerged:

1) that rises in trade and exchange were responsible for capitalism; that the rise of new towns and cities exogenously created demand for new goods for which the old feudal Lords could neither produce themselves, nor control fully the means of production required to produce such goods;

2) that the sub-division of the old peasant class into wealthy, middle, and poor sections was a pre-cursor for the new capitalist social relations; that the wealthier peasants not only had a living standard similar to that of a minor noble, but had [pre-dating capital] land, wealth and actually employed the poorer sections of the peasant class who [pre-dating the worker under capitalism] had no wealth, was landless, and had to sell their labour power in exchange for a subsistence wage.

I believe the evidence for the second of these theories is strong and that, in terms of effective causation, one can even see running causation from the second to the first theory; without the effective division of the peasant class, would it have been possible that a working class of landless, roaming ex-peasants selling their newly freed labour power in new towns would have been created?

[Dodo]

It seems like the Sweezy position is closer to seeing industrialization as a cause of capitalism, Brenner position is closer to seeing industrialization as result of capitalism.

Anyhow, are you aware of the more recent material on this? E.M Wood is going on with her stuff.
I know of J.Banaji.
I know A.Callinicos wrote some stuff in the 90s.
Wallerstein and Brenner still lives though, are they still exchanging in a debate since both still stick to their position?

[goalkeeper]

Robert S. Duplessis' Transitions to Capitalism is worth looking at. People have mentioned the grand debate between Paul Sweezy and Maurice Dobb which is defiantly worth checking out - the essays of the debate were compiled into a book by Rodney Hilton. Also, there is a book called The British Marxist Historians by Harvey Kaye which has a decent overview of the debate.

In terms of recent stuff, a new book by someone called Henry Heller by the name of
The Birth of Capitalism: A 21st Century Perspective came out a couple of years ago but I have not read it yet so can't say whether its any good or not.

[RyeN]

Fear is the root of Capitalism! Its all part of our evolutionary path, but since the development of Homo Sapiens something changed and we have been blocked off from Non physical reality to such an extent that the majority of our population walks around terrified viewing the universe from the perspective that physical reality is all there is. This lack of perception creates great fear inside us, and we have sought outside ourselves for power to fee secure in physical reality, this fear and out seeking for contentment creates greed, which gears us for competition and not cooperation. It will be next to impossible to have a utopian society until people more that a 3rd of our population is able to experience non physical reality as well as the physical. The goal, like in buddhism being a balance between fear and love the negative and positive forces that create duality in this dimension.

[tallguy]

Fear is the root of Capitalism! Its all part of our evolutionary path, but since the development of Homo Sapiens something changed and we have been blocked off from Non physical reality to such an extent that the majority of our population walks around terrified viewing the universe from the perspective that physical reality is all there is. This lack of perception creates great fear inside us, and we have sought outside ourselves for power to fee secure in physical reality, this fear and out seeking for contentment creates greed, which gears us for competition and not cooperation. It will be next to impossible to have a utopian society until people more that a 3rd of our population is able to experience non physical reality as well as the physical. The goal, like in buddhism being a balance between fear and love the negative and positive forces that create duality in this dimension.
Eyup, it's Russell Brand....:laugh:

Only joking mate. Anyway, I quite like Russell Brand despite thinking he is a hopeless romantic. There are a lot worse faults than that.

[goalkeeper]

Wallerstein and Brenner still lives though, are they still exchanging in a debate since both still stick to their position?

AFAIK, the debate has pretty much subsided. Brenner is seems more focused these days on contemporary American economics.

A recent book by Ellen Meiksen Wood called The Origins of Capitalism is a strong restatement and defence of Brenner's thesis though. Also Callinicos' Imperialism and Global Political Economy from ~2010 includes an overview of the debate, with his own intervention. Since my last post also I looked at Henry Heller's book. It has a (poor, imo) critique of Brenner, in favour of vague references to the need for a more 'dialectical' approach.

[ralfy]

Also, "The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism" at Monthly Review.

[Diogenese]

There is a BBC documentary that's worth a watch on the subject, it goes through the history of money up to present. It's called The Ascent of Money, you can watch on youtube.