Monthly Review Press, 138 pp.
Review by Jim Cabral
Distinguished scholar and Monthly
Review co-editor Ellen Meiksins Wood has written an important book, The
Origin of Capitalism, that does much to improve our understanding of precisely
that. Displaying an impressive command of both conventional and Marxist economic
historiography, Wood challenges standard portrayals of capitalism’s origin—in
particular, those alleging its emergence from “natural” human impulses
to maximize profit or increase labor productivity—and rather presents
it as historically distinguishable and socially created. This was no ephemeral
metamorphosis of “the free market” arising either from the Enlightenment’s
“rationalism” or the lofty aspirations of bourgeois French revolutionaries
who followed. It was, as Wood so convincingly relates, a much more concrete
process dated to the early modern period in agrarian England, where governmental
restructuring and a revolution in social property relations uniquely combined
to set the stage for the institutionalization of private property, wage labor,
and market competition. Notably, Wood’s implicit message—if capitalism
was thus socially established, it is also socially transcendable—serves
as a timely plea for intellectual sanity in an era marked by the purported
inevitability of capitalism and the “end of history.”
In her introduction to The Origin of Capitalism, Wood stresses that
capitalism is a historically recent phenomenon, one that “has existed
for…barely a fraction of humanity’s existence on earth… few
would say it existed in earnest before the sixteenth or seventeenth century…”
This contrasts with more orthodox renditions of capitalism’s origins,
which often treat it as “the natural realization of ever-present tendencies.”
Such tendencies—a “profit-making rationality” and a “continuous,
almost natural, progress of technological improvement in the productivity
of labor”—are often assumed by scholars to be innately human qualities,
so that the seeds of capitalism are at least implicitly understood as existing,
for all intensive purposes, since the beginning of time. The result, Wood
avers, is that in “most accounts of capitalism and its origin, there
really is no origin. Capitalism always seems to be there, somewhere, and it
only needs to be released from its chains…to be allowed to grow and mature.”
In this conventional view, according to Wood, all that is left to explain
are the obstacles—political, cultural, or ideological—to capitalist
development: “These constraints confine the free flow of economic actors,
the free expression of economic rationality. The ‘economic’ in these
formulations is identified with exchange or markets, and it is here that we
can detect the assumption that the seeds of capitalism are contained in the
most simple acts of exchange, in any form of trade or market activity.”But what, Wood asks, essentially is “market activity?” She
takes issue with standard equations of markets with “opportunity”
and “freedom” and counters that “the distinctive and dominant
characteristic of the capitalist market is…compulsion.” “This
is true in two senses: first, that material life and social reproduction in
capitalism are universally mediated by the market, so that all individuals
must in one way or another enter into market relations in order to gain access
to the means of life; and second, that the dictates of the capitalist market—its
imperatives of competition, accumulation, profit maximization, and labor productivity—regulate
not only all economic transactions but social relations in general.”Wood proceeds to devote Part One of The Origin of Capitalism to a more
detailed critique of the historiography, both conventional and Marxist, on
capitalism’s genesis. On the conventional side, the “commercialization
model” (advanced by Belgian historian Henri Pirenne and later refined
by Max Weber, Fernand Braudel, et al.), the “demographic model”
(variants of which are articulated by so-called “revisionist” historians
Conrad Russell and John Morrill), and recent historical sociology (e.g., the
work of Michael Mann) come under her scrutiny. Whatever their differences,
these schools of thought all suffer, says Wood, from the basic “commercialization
model” pitfall of attributing capitalism’s rise to “absences”:
a lack of obstacles to assumedly pre-existing economic (i.e., capitalist)
aspirations just waiting to be liberated. Here, as throughout, Wood’s
command of the various economic histories is sure, and she is similarly impressive
in rather accessibly distilling a broad array of highly academic writing.At some length, Wood singles out The Great Transformation, written
in 1944 by economic historian and anthropologist Karl Polanyi, as a notable
exception to the above histories. Rather than presenting economic history
as the progressive (if occasionally thwarted) evolution of innately human,
capitalist-market aspirations, Polyani distinguishes between societies with
markets, on the one hand, and “market society”—capitalism—on
the other. Wood lauds Polyani’s emphasis on pre-capitalist societies
employing “other ways [kinship obligations, and the dictates of religious
and/or political authorities, for example] of organizing economic life than
through mechanisms of market exchange,” and his insight that exchange
as such—barter, for example—does not constitute a “market economy,”
or capitalism. Pre- capitalist forms of exchange were essentially non-competitive
economic transactions “embedded within social relations,” as distinct
from competitive, “self-regulating” capitalist markets “driven
by the price mechanism,” where “society itself becomes an ‘adjunct’
of the market.” Wood makes a plausible case for the importance of Polyani’s
“delineati[ng]…the rupture between ‘market society’ and the
non-market societies which preceded it, even those with markets—not only
the differences between their economic logics, but the social dislocations
which that transformation brought about.”In the book’s second chapter, Wood deftly critiques some of the Marxist
debates about capitalism’s origins—in particular, the transition
from feudalism to capitalism—focusing on arguments put forth by Maurice
Dobb, R.H. Hilton, Paul Sweezy, and Perry Anderson. While the illuminating
qualities of these accounts are not lost on Wood, she nevertheless finds in
each (as with the commercialization model) a discernable, underlying assumption
that capitalism is already there, just waiting to be released: a question-begging
assumption of the very thing that needs to be explained. For example, in the
case of Dobb and Hilton, who locate the emergence of capitalism in the class
struggles won by relatively autonomous serfs engaged in petty commodity production,
what is it that prompts the serfs to produce, ultimately, like capitalists?
In Sweezy’s argument, which finds capitalism’s origin in trade networks
external to feudalism, what prompts the early merchants to metamorphose into
capitalists? Anderson, who sees capitalism’s origin corresponding to
an “upward displacement” of feudal political power to an “absolute
state” unconcerned with the sundry economic activities of burghers residing
in the earliest towns, similarly fails to explain how burghers become capitalists.
Wood convincingly shows that, despite their Marxist ideological orientation,
all these accounts ultimately share the commercialization model’s assumption
of a pre-existing capitalist impulse, which germinates as soon as fetters
are removed.
In the next chapter of The Origin of Capitalism, Wood continues to
display her impressive command of economic historiography in commending the
work of historians Robert Brenner and E.P. Thompson. Brenner and Thompson
present fledgling capitalist markets not as “opportunities” to be
seized but rather more accurately as imperatives—essentially, to increase
productivity and profit—imposed upon social groups. Wood lauds Brenner
for recognizing the geographic and historic specificity of capitalism’s
origin, situating it as he does in the English countryside in the early modern
period. Equally important, says Wood, is that Brenner presents this agrarian
capitalism as a political economy originating in a radical transformation
of social (landlord-peasant) property relations—including the payment
of rents and a marked increase in landlessness—occurring in tandem with
the new market coercions which themselves emerged in “a context of England’s
uniquely centralized and unitary state.”Wood later shows Thompson taking a similar tack in emphasizing the changing
social relations—particularly the intensification of work and work discipline—that
set the stage for the development of industrial capitalism in the late 1700s
and early 1800s. In Wood’s view, Thompson’s work is no less enlightening
in relating how “free market” ideology (as articulated by Adam Smith
in The Wealth of Nations) and the coercive powers of the state (applied
often to beat back protests against high prices and unfair market practices)
served to legitimize social relations under nascent industrial capitalism.Adeptly incorporating and amending the most pertinent contributions of the
above theories, Wood goes on to present her own account of the origin of capitalism
in Part Two of her book. Like Brenner, she stresses the unique character of
social property relations in agrarian England by the 16th century: the decline
of “politically constituted” property in the countryside in the
wake of upwardly displaced, centralized state power; the corresponding diminution
of political leverage available to aristocratic landowners for appropriating
surplus labor from peasants; the consequent market-dependence of landowners
now faced with the imperative of designing and enforcing “purely”
economic methods of surplus extraction; and the resulting increase in the
imposition of rents on peasants, who, to afford such leases, had an obvious
interest in increasing their productivity—not so much to seize market
“opportunities” as to secure access to land as a means of subsistence.
Wood thus comprehensively shows how economic necessity coerced both landlord
and peasant to redefine their relationship to property and to each other,
changing the very nature of class struggle and setting in motion a totally
new, capitalist economic logic.That English landlords’ direct extra-economic power declined throughout
the 16th century should not be interpreted to mean that agrarian capitalism
emerged in some kind of political vacuum, or that aristocratic landlords were
politically weak. Indeed, Wood reminds that the state continued to be quite
sympathetic to landlords throughout this period, acting on their behalf often
by abrogating traditional land use rights for peasants, defining property
in such cases as something whose rights accrued exclusively to private owners.
This narrow view of property was epitomized by the enclosure movement, a landlords’
political-judicial tour de force characterized by Wood as “the most vivid
expression of the relentless process [the birth of capitalism] that was changing
not only the English countryside but the world…”Wood presents a compelling argument that agrarian capitalism in England at
the very least provided the conditions of possibility for the subsequent emergence
of industrial capitalism in the late 1700s-early 1800s. As to whether agrarian
capitalism made industrial capitalism in England a necessary outcome, she
concludes: “…there was a strong historical impulse in that direction.
An integrated market providing cheap necessities of life for a growing mass
of consumers and responding to already well-established competitive pressures
constituted a new and specific “logic of process,” the outcome of
which was industrial capitalism. That market, and the social property relations
in which it was rooted, provided not only the means but the need to produce
consumer goods on a new scale, and to produce them cost-effectively, in ways
determined by the imperatives of competition, accumulation, and profit maximization,
together with requirements for improving labor productivity.”The market Wood describes here was national (and only peripherally international),
dynamic, and self-sustaining. In this account, more and more cheap foodstuffs
and related basic necessities were competitively produced by a shrinking agricultural
population for a simultaneously expanding mass of largely London-based consumers
no longer engaged in agricultural production themselves. Certainly, some of
the disfranchised and otherwise landless rural population whose displacement
facilitated this agricultural productivity flocked to London and came to constitute
part of the new consumer base. Moreover, they also added to the low-wage labor
force that would later toil in England’s first large-scale factories.
So cogent is this scenario Wood presents that it indeed becomes hard to imagine
industrial capitalism emerging apart from it.
It is not lost on Wood that international trade (including slavery) and English
imperialism contributed to the development of industrial capitalism in that
country, and many conventional accounts of capitalism’s origins claim
that these rather represent the primary engines of England’s “industrial
revolution.” However, if this is the case, what of Holland, Spain, or
France, each with similarly extensive investments abroad at the same time?
Why not a contemporaneous emergence of industrial capitalism in those countries?
Partly, asserts Wood, because international trade, even in late 1700s, was
still essentially a “carrying” trade limited chiefly to luxury items
consumed by the proportionately small elite classes of those respective countries
(including England). Such trade can hardly be considered to have had the dynamism
to drive such a massive social transformation as industrialization. However,
in Wood’s view, far more important was that other European national economies
continued operating according to pre-capitalist social arrangements—involving
various forms of “politically constituted” property—long after
England had undergone its unique revolution in agrarian property relations
described above. Wood’s basic proposition regarding the birth of industrial
capitalism in England would seem hard to refute: that the wealth created by
England’s increasingly productive agrarian capitalism, the accompanying
creation of a landless mass forced to sell their labor for a wage, and the
exceptional market-dependence and integration of England’s national economy
all combined to provide fertile breeding ground for the birth of industrial
capitalism there, and not in other Western European nations.In the final chapter of The Origin of Capitalism, Wood ably critiques
a tendency of many cultural historians to “naturalize” capitalism
in a manner similar to that of some economists mentioned earlier. Just as
the latter dubiously explain capitalism’s origin by presupposing a natural
capitalist impulse, cultural scholars commonly conflate “modernity”—typically
dated to the ideological universalism and intellectual “rationalism”
of the Enlightenment, as well as the French Revolution—with the simultaneous
rise of a presumably long-suppressed, capitalist economic rationality. In
such cases, the loftier social aspirations of Enlightenment-modernist thought
are misinterpreted as capitalist aspirations, which are in turn unquestionably
ascribed to bourgeois revolutionaries in France—far removed, geographically,
economically, and culturally, from the revolution in social property relations
concurrently transforming the English countryside.As Wood suggests, the bourgeois French revolutionaries—even as they invoked
the ideal of universal emancipation in railing against the “aristocratic
particular- ism” of the French nobility and the church—could hardly
be considered a group of budding entrepreneurs. (Wood earlier makes the salient
point that bourgeois, or burgher, literally means nothing more than “town
dweller.”) Wood credibly presents these “professionals, office-holders,
and intellectuals” as primarily concerned with lowering their taxes and
improving their access to lucrative positions in the state bureaucracy monopolized
by the aristocracy. It is by glossing over these details that many cultural
historians can simplistically equate the emergence of capitalism—at once
“liberating” and economically “rational”—with the
emancipatory spirit of the French Revolution and the rationalism of the Enlightenment
that preceded it. This peculiar synergy is misleadingly portrayed as a kind
of template for the intellectual and cultural strains of modernism that only
too naturally followed.Also in the final chapter, Wood persuasively maintains that fashionable expressions
of “post-modernism”—the rejection of both comprehensive world-views
and “universalistic political projects,” and perceptions of rebellion
limited merely to “very particular struggles against very diverse and
particular oppressions,” for example—similarly gloss over the historical
specificity of capitalism. Often, the detached, disaffected, wry postmodernist
pretentiously reacts against dubious modernist assumptions—and so validates
those very assumptions. Wood compellingly argues that this is because, in
challenging modernism, postmodern intellectual conventions frequently represent
mere “inversion[s] of ‘modernity’” that still rest on
the latter’s flawed view of history, “…a view of history that
cuts across the great divide between capitalist and non-capitalist societies
as if they were universal laws of history and lumps together various different
historical developments, capitalist and non-capitalist…So post-modernity
follows a modernity in which bourgeois is identical with capitalist and Enlightenment
rationalism is indistinguishable from the economic rationality of capitalism…[and]
entail[s] assumptions…that capitalism is already present in bourgeois
rationality, just waiting for the moment of release…The specificity of
capitalism is again lost in the continuities of history, and the capitalist
system is naturalized in the inevitable progress of the eternally rising bourgeoisie.”
If, as Wood asserts, capitalism is not some natural phenomenon whose evolution
depends merely on the absence of “fetters”; and if, however dynamic
and productive, it is inexorably rooted in inequality, dislocation, and exploitation,
it would then scarcely seem credible to promote as the only desirable social
system. Nevertheless, this outlook continues to inform the discourse promulgated
by the world’s most influential policy makers and the corporate media.
Wood’s The Origin of Capitalism puts a resounding chink in this
rhetorical armor—and in the tradition of the best radical analyses is
itself a political statement. As transnational corporations enjoy near universal
state sanction to invade ever more remote corners of the globe, Wood’s
economic history—penetrating yet concise, erudite yet accessible—provides
an enlightening point of departure for anyone interested in considering democratic
alternatives to this “new world order.” Z
Jim Cabral teaches political economy at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont.