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Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe
Abstract
Few historical issues have occasioned such discussion since at least the time of Marx as the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Western Europe. The Brenner Debate, which reprints from Past and Present various article in 1976, is a scholarly presentation of a variety of points of view, covering a very wide range in time, place and type of approach. Weighty theoretical responses to Brenner's first formulation followed from the late Sir Michael Postan, John Hatcher, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Guy Bois; more particular contributions came from Patricia Croot, David Parker, Arnost Klìma and Heide Wunder on England, France, Bohemia and Germany; and reflective pieces from R. H. Hilton and the late J. P. Cooper. Completing the volume, and giving it an overall coherence, are Brenner's own comprehensive response to those who had taken part in the debate, and also R. H. Hilton's introduction that aims to bring together the major themes in the collection of essays. The debate has already aroused widespread interest among historians and scholars in allied fields as well as among ordinary readers, and may reasonably be regarded as one of the most important historical debates of prevailing years.
... Subsequently, the so-called Brenner debate (Hilton 1995a(Hilton , 1995b occurred in the 1970s, in which the centrality of the discussion revolves around Brenner's contribution (Brenner 1995a(Brenner , 1995b, who identifies the emergence of capitalism not with cities and industry, but with agriculture, arguing for the thesis of a rural capitalism as a starting point, and postulating that the primary cause of the crisis of feudalism was the specific configuration of the European class struggle. ...
... As seen in this paper, the theses raised in the transition debates have various worthy elements, among which stand out the dynamics of peasant superexploitation (Dobb 2004a(Dobb , 2004b(Dobb , 2004c and the centrality of class struggle in the process (Brenner 1995a(Brenner , 1995b. Considering this, the major issue to be addressed is how an element external to these processes interacts with the internal dynamics of feudal society. ...
... Although here we must temper Wood's (2002) and Brenner's (1995aBrenner's ( , 1995b thesis with a later contribution from Bailey (2014) as he points out that tenants had a higher degree of juridical safety than anticipated by the Brenner camp. ...
This work aims to explore climate change as a decisive element for the transition from feudalism toward capitalism and considers the Marxist transition debate as a framework. In order to avoid the deterministic trap, climate must be considered as a condition framing the historical possibilities in a dialectical relationship with human historical agents. Thus, this paper explores the interactions between medieval English society, focusing on land use and class relation, and the conditions imposed by nature, particularly the change in rainfall and the transformation of ecological conditions around the North Sea Basin, especially on England’s east coast. Through the course of this research, we found out that the climate change that happened in the 14th century is one important condition for the rise of capitalism, as it creates certain pressures on both peasant and manorial economies that exacerbate their contradictions and sets a course for profound societal change.
... A significant aspect of PM's contribution is its historical perspective on the emergence of capitalism. It challenges the widely held belief, prevalent not only among liberals but also among the so-called neo-Smithian Marxists, that capitalism is inherently present in some latent form, and merely awaiting liberation from feudal or other limitations (Brenner 1985;Wood 1996;2002). Instead, following Maurice Dobb's pioneering work in Studies in the Development of Capitalism, Brenner (1985) shifted attention to the role of "socialproperty relations" in shaping historical development and crisis patterns. ...
... It challenges the widely held belief, prevalent not only among liberals but also among the so-called neo-Smithian Marxists, that capitalism is inherently present in some latent form, and merely awaiting liberation from feudal or other limitations (Brenner 1985;Wood 1996;2002). Instead, following Maurice Dobb's pioneering work in Studies in the Development of Capitalism, Brenner (1985) shifted attention to the role of "socialproperty relations" in shaping historical development and crisis patterns. These crises, which pertain to the breakdown of surplus-extraction process, intensify class struggles, and the unpredictable outcomes of these struggles determine whether old forms of production persist, or new social-property relations emerge. ...
... One of the major insights offered by PM in the transition debate is its assertion that the transitions toward capitalism cannot be comprehended merely as the gradual expansion of "economic" factors-since the existence of commerce, and private property predates capitalism. Instead, they are better understood as dynamic and context-specific processes of structuring human interactions and the institutions responsible for creating the historically specific consequences of "market dependence" (Brenner 1985;Wood 2002;Düzgün 2022: 32). The emergence of capitalism, as such, resulted from 'unintended consequences' of class struggles in the English countryside, where non-capitalist landlords and peasants sought to reproduce their existing class position, beginning in the fourteenth century and culminating in the mid-sixteenth century (Brenner 1985;Wood 2002). ...
When and how do agents consciously reproduce or unconsciously transform social structures? This inquiry is pivotal for advancing a theory of socio-historical development, particularly in addressing a key debate within International Historical Sociology (IHS) surrounding modern revolutions. This debate revolves around the tension between the “consequentialist” interpretation of bourgeois revolutions and the “revisionist” critiques, notably from the “historicist” wing of Political Marxism (PM). This article contends that the tension arises from an inadequate conceptualization of the agent-structure relationship. Drawing on Roy Bhaskar’s transformational model of social activity (TMSA) and critical realist philosophy of science, the article proposes a conceptual framework reconciling PM’s focus on class struggle to understand the historical specificity of capitalism with the role bourgeois revolutions historically and structurally played for the development of capitalism. Integrating Bhaskar’s framework with historical materialism-inspired debates on bourgeois revolutions, the paper suggests that agents’ unconscious actions can transform social structures amid social disintegration (“classic bourgeois revolutions”). Conversely, agents consciously seek to preserve and reproduce social structures, as seen in “passive revolutions”. This occurs when social structures, marked by inequality and hierarchies, are viewed as historical constructs rather than natural phenomena, particularly in the context of uneven and combined development of capitalism. This analysis contributes to ongoing IHS debates, enriches our comprehension of modern revolutions, and extends TMSA by empirically delineating circumstances wherein agents consciously uphold or unwittingly trigger the transformation of social structures.
... 20 17-Aug-24 12:21:24 17-Aug-24 12:21:24 the transitions observed in the world order? The conceptual framework that I use is derived from Robert Brenner's broader notion of 'strategies of social reproduction' (Brenner 1985a(Brenner , 1985b. Unlike Brenner, however, I reject a structuralist notion of 'imposed rules for reproduction' that invariably apply, constraining their actions (Brenner 1985a;cf. ...
... The conceptual framework that I use is derived from Robert Brenner's broader notion of 'strategies of social reproduction' (Brenner 1985a(Brenner , 1985b. Unlike Brenner, however, I reject a structuralist notion of 'imposed rules for reproduction' that invariably apply, constraining their actions (Brenner 1985a;cf. Teschke and Lacher 2007). 1 Nor do I limit reproductive strategies to actions of agents in relation to definite social property relations they find themselves in (see Hoffmann and Cemgil 2016;Teschke and Cemgil 2014). ...
While there has been a huge expansion of the literature on Turkish political economy and foreign policy in the last decade or so, fewer studies have explored Turkey’s engagement with the changing global political economy since 2008 in a holistic manner. Against the backdrop of the debates on the ‘rise of the Global South’ and the crisis and decline of the US-led Liberal International Order, this book interrogates Turkey’s ambitions to increase its regional and global economic, political, and military ‘footprint’ and the limitations thereof. The volume explores Turkey’s economic and political relations with diverse regions and countries, ranging from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa, post-Brexit Britain to Iran, as well as rising powers India and China. Drawing upon various critical IPE/IR approaches, the book offers a critical perspective, challenging conventional accounts which tend to draw upon and reproduce rigid dichotomies.
... " The Brenner debate can be regarded as a second stage of a more encompassing one regarding the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Brenner's initial intervention (Brenner 1987a), the responses to it, and his follow-up article (Brenner 1987b) revolved around the problem of how a system of feudal property relations was transformed into a capitalist one. In addressing the question of the origins of capitalism, Brenner opposed established interpretations of the transition. ...
... " The Brenner debate can be regarded as a second stage of a more encompassing one regarding the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Brenner's initial intervention (Brenner 1987a), the responses to it, and his follow-up article (Brenner 1987b) revolved around the problem of how a system of feudal property relations was transformed into a capitalist one. In addressing the question of the origins of capitalism, Brenner opposed established interpretations of the transition. ...
In order to cast light on the limits and merits of Wolf's recourse to the concept of mode of production, I set up a dialogue between Europe and the people without history and the roughly contemporary intervention known as the “Brenner debate.” Wolf provides a mode of production solution and Brenner provides a class struggle solution to envisioning historical process. To explore the analytical strength of bringing Brenner to bear upon Wolf, an analysis of entangled agro-industrial crises in the Spanish province of Huelva is presented. A Wolfian framework, augmented by Brenner's focus on class struggle, reveals how the appropriation of nature and the exploitation of labor are conjoined and reinstates agricultural wage labor in its central position in the reproduction of the regional agricultural model.
... According to Brenner R. (1985), the Black Death pandemic depopulated rural areas noticeably. It must be reminded that in the later Middle Ages, the vast majority of the population lived in rural areas. ...
... Although the very likely decrease in food production occurred, the enormous drop in population led to a relative overproduction of agricultural products in the years following the epidemic (Zietz B. & Dunkelberg H., 2004). The proportion between the population and the available food improved with positive consequences in short-run and in long-run (Brenner R., 1985). The relationship between labour and land improved as well. ...
The article aims to identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the volume and structure of agricultural production in Poland. The literature on pandemics in the past shows that plague influenced the volume and the structure of agriculture output. The consequences varied between the pandemics and in the frame of the same pandemic between countries. What's more, the length of the analysis period matters. The short-term effects were generally damaging however, the evaluation perspective matters. The assessment of long outcomes is complex. The positive, profound long-run effects were identified. The past pandemics impacted the economy and agriculture through the decrease in the availability of labour because of massive deaths. In the pandemic COVID-19, this channel of transmission occurred as well, but in the form of shortages of labour forces due to governments’ restrictions on people's movement. The analyses found that in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland, agriculture production did not decrease. It stemmed from the time gap between the production decisions and getting output. A modest reduction occurred in the second year of plaque. The analyses of the structure and dynamics of the sown area show that farmers restrain themselves from the changes in plant production. Larger adjustments took place in the sector of animal products than in plant products. The most remarkable changes took place in branches of animal production depending on export. Because of the plummet in egg prices, egg production decreased in 2020 and 2021. The fall in meat prices in 2020 resulted in a drop in the meat production in 2021. Despite the unfavourable changes in milk prices, milk production was stable.
... Isso não implica necessariamente que um tenha surgido do outro, ou mesmo que tenha havido alguma conexão histórica. Não estou necessariamente discordando, por exemplo, do argumento histórico de que o capitalismo surgiu pela primeira vez dentro do setor agrícola inglês nos séculos XVI e XVII, e não do comércio de longa distância (Brenner, 1976(Brenner, , 1979Dobb, 1947;Madeira, 2002). Ou, talvez, eu devesse ser mais específico. ...
A teoria marxista em grande parte abandonou a noção (seriamente imperfeita) de “modo de produção”, mas isso só incentivou a tendência de abandonar muito do que, nela, havia de radical e de naturalizar as categorias capitalistas. Este artigo argumenta que uma noção mais bem concebida de um modo de produção – a que reconheça a primazia da produção humana e, portanto, uma noção mais sofisticada de materialismo – ainda pode ter algo a nos mostrar: notadamente, que o capitalismo, ou pelo menos o capitalismo industrial, tem muito mais em comum com a escravidão e historicamente é mais intimamente ligado a ela do que a maioria de nós já imaginou.
... 13 For a classic treatment of how factor endowments can help to shape culture and institutions, see Tocqueville 1835. For interesting discussions of the influences of factor endowments and political forces, see Brenner, 1985;Engerman & Sokoloff, 1997North, 1981North, , 1990North et al., 2000. 14 A major concern of the property rights literature is with private agents being secure from expropriation by the state. ...
In this essay, we outline some reasons why one should be cautious about grounding a theory of growth on institutions. We emphasize how very different institutional structures have often been found to be reasonable substitutes for each other, both in dissimilar, as well as similar, contexts. The historical record, therefore, does not seem to support the notion that any particular institution, narrowly defined, is indispensable for growth. Moreover, we discuss how the evidence that there are systematic patterns to the ways institutions evolve undercuts the idea that exogenous change in institutions is what powers growth. Institutions matter, but our thinking about how they matter should recognize that they are profoundly influenced by the political and economic environment, and that if any aspect of institutions is crucial for growth, it is that institutions change over time as circumstances change.
... Bu çerçevede İngiltere'de kapitalizmin gelişiminde ticari modeli (Neo-Smithçi) Doğu Avrupa'da gelişmelerle, demografik modeli (Neo-Maltusçu) ise Fransa'daki gelişmelerle karşılaştırarak reddederken, her üç durumda da belirleyici olanın sınıf mücadelesi olduğunu vurguluyor. 67 Bu perspektifi daha sonra Katalonya, Hollanda ve Çin'i de içine alacak şekilde genişletiyor. 68 Ama evrensel gelişme dinamiklerini karşılaştırmalı yönteme dayalı açıklama çabası, burjuva devrimlerinin kapitalizme geçiş aşamasında herhangi bir etkisi olmadığını ortaya koyuyor. ...
Alp Yücel Kaya, son senelerde katıldığı farklı toplantılarda, Marx’ın, burjuvazinin aristokrasiyi alaşağı ettiği anlatısına dayalı “burjuva devrimi teorisi”ni liberal tarihçilerden aldığını, bu teorinin 20. yüzyılda Marksistlerce kurumsallaştırıldığını, Marx ve Marksistlerin liberal bir “burjuva devrimi teorisi” ile “yalan” üzerinden siyaset ürettiklerini ileri süren Doğan Çetinkaya’yı ve daha genel olarak bu hatta ilerleyen tarihçiliği eleştiriyor. Kaya, Marx’ın, burjuva devrimi kavramını liberal tarihçilerden aldığı görüşüne karşılık Marx’ın burjuva tarihçilerle ilişkisinin burjuva iktisatçılarla ilişkisinden farklı olmadığını, tarihsel materyalizm yaklaşımının burjuva tarihçilerin eleştirisi üzerinden yükseldiğini vurguluyor. Ayrıca Marx’la gündeme gelen burjuva devrimi kavramını basit bir şekilde iki sınıfın (burjuvazi-aristokrasi) mücadelesine indirgemenin Marx’ı ele alırken at gözlüğü takmaktan farksız olduğunu, Marx’ın Fransız Devrimi bağlamında emekçi baldırı ve kolu çıplakların (sans culottes, bras-nus), Kudurmuşlar’ın (Enragés) mücadelelerini pekâlâ dikkate aldığının altını çiziyor. Çetinkaya’nın bahsettiği basitleştirilmiş ve şekilsel burjuva devrimi kavramının 19. yüzyıl sonunda Plehanov tarafından Fransız Devrimi bağlamında kurgulanmış bir kavram ve Menşeviklerin doğrusal tarih okuması olduğunu ortaya koyuyor. Sonrasında Çetinkaya gibi burjuva devrimi kavramını reddeden Politik Marksizm ve onun öncü figürü Robert Brenner’in yaklaşımını sorguluyor. Kaya, son olarak, Marx’ın Fransız Devrimi üzerine okumalar yaptığı burjuva tarihçilerin eserleri dışındaki kilit kaynakları da ortaya koyarak tarihsel materyalizme katkısını değerlendiriyor. Bu eleştirel tartışma sonrası, Çetinkaya ve benzer hattı izleyen tarihçilerin şeylerin görünüş biçimleri ile özlerini dolaysız olarak çakıştırdıkları, böylelikle de burjuva devrimi kavramını ve tarihsel materyalizmi tamamen çöpe attıkları, büyük altüst oluşları tarihselleştirmeyi reddettikleri, dolayısıyla burjuva tarihçilerle görünüşleri farklı olsa da özlerinin dolaysız çakıştığı sonucuna varıyor.
... En esta zona y tiempo determinados, la confrontación entre campesinos y aristócratas dio como resultado un nuevo tipo de relación entre poseedores y productores rurales naciendo el alquiler competitivo de tierras de cultivo y librado de la servidumbre rural anterior. Fue este cambio social el que configuró el primer capitalismo agrario a partir del cual se desarrolló posteriormente el capitalismo industrial (Brenner, 1976;1989;wood, 2021). ...
Emancipación, tecnología y democracia han sido tres de las variables más presentes en cada una de las ramas de los marxismos durante los siglos XIX-XXI. Cada una de estas familias ofreció una propuesta más o menos específica de cómo combinarlas con el fin de construir una sociedad sin clases: el socialismo. Este capítulo pretende recorrer algunos de los debates que han cruzado a los distintos marxismos y que han producido distintas versiones de la relación entre estos tres factores.
... The deserted cities offered immediate housing opportunities, encouraging people to leave the village and live in the city. This possibility caused further depopulation in the rural regions (Brenner R., 1985). In Norway, due to the decline in the However, it should be noted that certain branches of agriculture, especially those based on hired labour, could have been more affected by its decline. ...
The paper aims to identify the economic effects of the pandemics on agriculture and rural areas' development in the past. Recognition of different aspects of the relationship between agriculture and the pandemic is a significant issue because it influences food security. The analysis considered three important pandemics from the past: Black Death, Spanish flu and AIDS. The literature review on the economic consequences of these pandemics was the research method in the study. From the analysed three pandemics, the most extensive and most positive results for the economy in the short and long run took place after Black Death, which was the deadliest. The economic consequences of the other two pandemics were the relatively short term and rather adverse. The reduction of human capital was a negative effect of these pandemics on an economy of a long-term nature. The response of agriculture to the pandemics depended on the size of the labour shortages and the role of agriculture in the economy. The reaction differed between countries. Aggregate agricultural production did not decline in absolute or per capita terms in many countries. However, in Africa, pandemics led to famine and malnutrition. The drop in the population increased the labour/capital and labour/land ratios. The labour shortages triggered adjustment processes in the form of wage increases and encouraged the introduction of innovations. During the pandemic, rural areas depopulated, and it took quite a long time to recover to the level before the pandemic.
... Capitalist social relations originated in England in the 15th century, through the emergence of a market for tenancy. 25,26 In spite of its agrarian origins, the integration of food systems within global capitalism was not instantaneous. Yet, given its very nature (ie, generalised market dependence), capitalism must control food production. ...
Food systems contribute to multiple crises while failing to deliver healthy, nutritious food for all. A substantial amount of research suggests that the root cause of this issue lies in the complete integration of food systems within global capitalism and the consequent subordination of fairness and sustainability to profit accumulation. We draw on critical political economy to explore how the integration of food systems within global capitalism and their subordination to profit occur. Subsequently, we illustrate how this subordination erodes the autonomy of food producers, with strong environmental and social consequences for consumers and society at large. Lastly, we discuss how agroecology could transform food systems and enhance producers' autonomy, while mitigating environmental and social dysfunction. We stress how the transformative power of agroecology lies in its double nature: concrete (technical) and social (political). By acting in both dimensions, agroecology can help reorient food systems away from profit accumulation and towards better meeting community needs, in line with the tenets of food sovereignty.
... Isso não implica necessariamente que um tenha surgido do outro, ou mesmo que tenha havido alguma conexão histórica. Não estou necessariamente discordando, por exemplo, do argumento histórico de que o capitalismo surgiu pela primeira vez dentro do setor agrícola inglês nos séculos XVI e XVII, e não do comércio de longa distância (Brenner, 1976(Brenner, , 1979Dobb, 1947;Madeira, 2002). Ou, talvez, eu devesse ser mais específico. ...
A teoria marxista em grande parte abandonou a noção (seriamente imperfeita) de “modo de produção”, mas isso só incentivou a tendência de abandonar muito do que, nela, havia de radical e de naturalizar as categorias capitalistas. Este artigo argumenta que uma noção mais bem concebida de um modo de produção – a que reconheça a primazia da produção humana e, portanto, uma noção mais sofisticada de materialismo – ainda pode ter algo a nos mostrar: notadamente, que o capitalismo, ou pelo menos o capitalismo industrial, tem muito mais em comum com a escravidão e historicamente é mais intimamente ligado a ela do que a maioria de nós já imaginou.
... The rapid spread, the world scope of the disease, the number of fatal cases, and unknown long-term outcomes led the World Health Organization to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on the 30 January 2020 and a pandemic on the 11 March 2020 [1]. Similar to the pandemics experienced by humankind in the past (the Black Death, the Spanish flu, AIDS) [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], the COVID-19 pandemic triggered complex economic, psychological, and social phenomena [11]. The fear of unknown serious consequences sparked an immediate response from governments worldwide. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic, due to unprecedented countermeasures aimed at limiting social contact, affected many spheres of life, including the forms and scope of social activity. This paper aims to identify the importance of the size and economic type of village, as well as the existence of rural organizations before the pandemic to identify the changes in different forms of social activity among rural area residents during the first and second year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland. This research was based on phone interviews (CATI) carried out in December 2022 with village administrators. It was concluded that the village size, economic profile, and the activities of various types of social organizations had very limited influence on changes in social contact during the pandemic. The economic type of the village, both low and high levels of agrarisation, showed a significant relationship with change of only one form of social activity: joint work on a farm. The activities of organizations popular in rural areas such as Volunteer Firefighters’ Brigades or Rural Housewives’ Clubs played an important role in the changes (decrease) in meetings at home and after mass in church.
... When the primary disadvantage of production is the average labor e↵ort and primary advantage the money income the production a↵ords the producer, the movement of producers will tend to equalize the ratio of income to labor e↵ort across lines of production. Because producers do not coordinate these decisions and there is no social planner organizing the division of labor, there will be a considerable ele- 1 The problems of Neo-Smithinan historiography is well debated in the economic history literature for example, [Brenner, 1987[Brenner, , 2008Hilton, 1982;Wood, 2002]. ment of chance in finding any particular producer in any particular line of production at any point in time. ...
Adam Smith's inquiry into the emergence and stability of the self-organization of the division of labor in commodity exchange is considered using statistical equilibrium methods from statistical physics. We develop a statistical equilibrium model of the distribution of independent direct producers in a hub-and-spoke framework that predicts both the center of gravity of producers across lines of production as well as the endogenous fluctuations between lines of production that arise from Smith's concept of "perfect liberty". The ergodic distribution of producers implies a long-run balancing of "advantages to disadvantages" across lines of employment and gravitation of market prices around Smith's natural prices.
... Likewise, having a share of, investing in, and being recognized by political authority was the main way to maintain access to the sources of profit and subsistence. 'Accumulation', therefore, immediately and necessarily took political and geopolitical forms (Brenner, 1985a;Teschke, 2003). It is only when capitalism established a politically shielded 'economic' sphere, in which land and labor were systematically commodified, that relations of exploitation could be reduced to the point of production and circulation. ...
... Likewise, having a share of, investing in, and being recognized by political authority was the main way to maintain access to the sources of profit and subsistence. 'Accumulation', therefore, immediately and necessarily took political and geopolitical forms (Brenner, 1985a;Teschke, 2003). It is only when capitalism established a politically shielded 'economic' sphere, in which land and labor were systematically commodified, that relations of exploitation could be reduced to the point of production and circulation. ...
CJIR is a "provocatively original" book, as one of my interlocutors put it. In this rejoinder, I explain why and address my critics in a symposium set to be published in Critical Sociology.
... 21 There is a comparable pluralism at work in Brenner's account of how strong peasant property and the absolutist state developed in early modern France 'in mutual dependence upon one another', which suggests that absolutism was more than simply the 'expression' of social change, as Brenner elsewhere claims in more orthodox Marxist fashion, but was itself an active agent in bringing such change about. 22 Such pluralism is not confined to the works of Brenner but pervades much of recent Marxist historiography. 23 It can, for instance, be seen in Corrigan and Sayer's explanation of why modern capitalism first triumphed in England in terms of 'the singularity of English state formation and state forms' and in Genovese's attempt to square the circle by claiming that the social superstructure is 'generated' by the base but that this superstructure also develops according to a logic of its own and, in turn, reacts back upon the base. ...
... En esta zona y tiempo determinados, la confrontación entre campesinos y aristócratas dio como resultado un nuevo tipo de relación entre poseedores y productores rurales naciendo el alquiler competitivo de tierras de cultivo y librado de la servidumbre rural anterior. Fue este cambio social el que configuró el primer capitalismo agrario a partir del cual se desarrolló posteriormente el capitalismo industrial (Brenner, 1976;1989;wood, 2021). ...
Emancipación, tecnología y democracia han sido tres de las variables más presentes en cada una de las ramas de los marxismos durante los siglos XIX-XXI. Cada una de estas familias ofreció una propuesta más o menos específica de cómo combinarlas con el fin de construir una sociedad sin clases: el socialismo. Este capítulo pretende recorrer algunos de los debates que han cruzado a los distintos marxismos y que han producido distintas versiones de la relación entre estos tres factores.
... Instead, once we pursue further Polanyi's emphasis on the institutional foundations and qualitative distinctiveness of capitalism, we can infer that the initial emergence of capitalism can be conceived only as a "contingent" affair. As mentioned above, Polanyi himself did not provide a narrative of the question of origins, but several contemporary studies, which are more explicitly engaged with the "when" and "where" of the origin of capitalism, argue along similar lines, seeing the initial emergence of capitalism as an "unintended" consequence of social and geopolitical struggles in early modern England (e.g., Brenner 1985). They emphasize that (geo)political actors in and outside England acted to reproduce themselves as they were, and while doing so, this led to a contingent process of changing the rules of accessing land, subjecting peasant tenants to competition for market-determined leases in England. ...
Postcolonial theory has been at the forefront of attempts to remedy the problem of Eurocentrism. This article argues that postcolonial theory has not progressed far enough in successfully treating the problem of Eurocentrism, for it has not sufficiently abided by its own methodological underpinnings, i.e., it has not satisfactorily developed its own critique of the “presentist” conceptions of history. More precisely, postcolonial theory has not shown how to make a complete departure from the methodologically presentist conceptions of capitalism, which, in turn, limits our ability to overcome hierarchical readings of global modernity. To problematize and fill this gap, I take an unconventional tack, turning to a seldomly cited figure in debates on Eurocentrism: Karl Polanyi. I contend that although Polanyi places the origins of capitalist modernity in Europe, his historical sociology provides an alternative and more definitive solution for presentism and Eurocentrism. Polanyi’s rejection of the “economistic” and “dualistic” understandings of human life, his insistence on the commonality and diversity of human degradation in the face of capitalist modernity, and his historically specific conception of the “counter-movement” enable a decidedly non-presentist, non-triumphalist, and non-hierarchical narrative of the genesis and development of the modern present.
... | 87 Notes 1. Th is essay draws extensively on my entry in Atzieni et al. (forthcoming). 2. Something of an exception is represented by Brenner (1985) for whom England's transition to agrarian capitalism, and its increased productivity, was able to break the limits of the Malthusian population cycle for the fi rst time in history. 3. A challenge analogous to that undertaken by Durkheim (1951) in his classic study of suicide in western Europe, which deployed demographic data of the time. ...
Is the impetus toward “surplus population” in Marx's analysis an effect of capital's law of accumulation or a “function” of it? How might a Marxist analysis of “surplus population” aid in theorizing demographic change under the capitalist mode of production? And to what extent are individuals who lack a “proper job” superfluous to capital accumulation? This article engages these questions through a survey of Marxist and marxisant attempts to theorize the exclusion of certain populations from capitalist employment. The way in which these questions are answered—the way, that is, in which “excluded” populations are understood to relate to processes of capital accumulation—has implications for thinking through appropriate political responses.
... This study draws on the seminal body of work by Brenner (1977;1985a;1985b; and Wood (1981;, which has been opened up to the fields of IR and IPE by linking geopolitical practices and foreign policy strategies to particular strategies of accumulation (Teschke, 2003;Knafo, 2013;Knafo and Teschke, 2020). While Brenner and Wood did not problematise and conceptualise foreign policy as strategy in their scholarship, this additional step was taken within PM by Teschke, who called for the incorporation of foreign policy, diplomacy and international politics into the radical historicist method (Teschke, 2020). ...
Recent UCD-inspired International Political Economy (IPE) approaches have tried to explain short-term economic and political events by expanding the theory of UCD towards an enhanced operational toolkit. This recent ‘policy turn’, I argue, has progressed empirically without having clarified prior analytical and methodological steps, both regarding the general premises of UCD, as well as in relation to foreign policy analysis, and the field of international politics. This article unpacks important blind spots of UCD’s emerging IPE framework by emphasising the crucial role of the supranational institutional level in foreign policy formation. By historicising the run-up to ratification of the 1986 Single European Act (SEA), I show that the SEA emerged as an interactive compromise, based on diverging state interests and, yet strongly managed by the overarching agency of the Commission of the EEC. While the multiplicity of advanced capitalisms, or the ‘unevenness and combination’ of diverging national European interests, cannot explain this outcome, I demonstrate that the SEA’s ratification process was decisively driven by dynamics emerging from within the European sphere, created by tensions between Commissioner Jacques Delors and President François Mitterrand. Unable to capture competing strategies on the national vs. supranational level, UCD-IPE’s current framework fails to grasp the process of foreign policy formation. By redrawing the contours of the SEA with a radical historicist methodology, this study stands as a contribution to the field of the Historical Sociology of International Politics, exploring how structural processes are politico-diplomatically managed and resolved within the wider field of international politics.
... B. Coward (1988) propuso por el contrario, una continuidad de la situación social, al establecer que los cambios sociales no eran definidos por los cambios políticos. R. Brenner (1985) desde el marxismo ha puesto el énfasis en los cambios sociales producidos por el conflicto entre campesinos y terratenientes desde la Edad Media como lo central en la transición. Entre otros debates 136 que se han desarrollado acerca del fenómeno de la Guerra Civil se puede ver el que 134 La figura de la reina creció a partir de la muerte del duque de Buckingham -el favorito de Jacobo I y de Carlos-momento en el cual comenzó a participar de las discusiones políticas y secretas del reino así como de la dispensación de favores en la corte. ...
Historia, memoria y autobiografía son ciertamente tres registros de las acciones humanas en el tiempo que tienen el mismo punto genético, el pasado -o si se prefiere una particular reconstrucción de este- pero que operan y se fundamentan de manera distinta. La tercera, la autobiografía, confluye entre ambos registros.
... Frankrijk daarentegen telde vele kleine zelfstandige boeren, die voor de diverse machten via belastingen een belangrijke bron van inkomsten vormden, en tegelijkertijd als een soort van "classe d'appui" fungeerden. Een fenomeen zoals het "Enclosure movement" in Engeland, dat door het afbakenen van grote stukken grond ten voordele van de landeigenaars grote massa's rurale paupers naar de industrie deed toestromen, was in Frankrijk dan ook ondenkbaar (Brenner, 1976). Bovendien kampte het land i.t.t. ...
Gelet op de groeiende belangstelling voor de Historische Sociologie, wil dit artikel het werk van één van haar belangrijkste Protagonisten, namelijk Immanuel Wallerstein, wat nader onderzoeken. Radicaal brekend met analyses over staatsvormingsprocessen vanuit een strikt nationaal perspectief, vertrekt deze auteur als het ware aan de andere kant van het spectrum, namelijk vanuit de Wereldsysteem benadering. Alhoewel dit resulteert in een aantal interessante beschrijvingen, blijft de verklarende waarde van een dergelijke makro-sociologische analyse zeer gering. Met betrekking tot het debat over de produktiewijze volgt Wallerstein bovendien een welbepaalde methode, die in navolging van Weber klassen uitsluitend analyseert in termen van hun marktmacht.
The increased interest in law and capitalism has not translated into an engagement in legal scholarship with the transition-to-capitalism debate. This article contributes a critique of commercialisation approaches to the history of capitalism and law from a Political Marxist perspective. It argues that combining jurisdiction and legal form provides a more flexible conceptual architecture to account for early-modern juridical practices. Conceptually, this enables an encounter between the structural and subject-centred commodity-form theory of law ( cftl ) and the more granular, agentic, and class-centred Political Marxist approach. Empirically, exploring two key institutions – property and sovereignty – provides an opportunity to focus on their jurisdictional dimensions driven by specific class struggles and agencies. These reflect, through the concept of jurisdiction, the ruptures and discontinuities of the transition, while form analysis accounts for the more continuous and structural processes of key institutions shaping the apparent linearity of law.
Economic historians have tried to better understand how and why land was redistributed in rural communities, although our empirical insights have been limited by a lack of serial evidence for land distribution within the same locality across a long period. This article exploits the unusual survival of Veldboeken (field books), which allow a careful annual reconstruction of land distribution within an unremarkable seventeenth‐century village in the south of the modern‐day Netherlands. We show that, despite high levels of dynamism in the local land markets, including high and changing levels of leasehold, varying and flexible tenancies, and frequent transfers of land between parties, the overall aggregate distribution of land did not change very much over time. Employing a systematic lifecycle analysis of active land‐market participants, we advance a broader concept of pre‐industrial ‘decumulation’ – where landowners and land users used adaptive mechanisms within the land market to not just consolidate land but also work out ways of getting rid of it and achieve optimal (and often smaller) farms and estates. Accordingly, we do not find any social logic or natural tendency towards accumulation, consolidation, and greater inequality.
This chapter proposes a framework explaining the evolution of property rights in land, assuming two unequal groups of actors: elites possessing means of violence and nonelite land cultivators. It then shows that all intermediary groups – those acting between the chief violence holders (i.e., rulers) and cultivators – are in effect (greater or lesser rulers and cultivators). Using this framework, this chapter explains most of the developments in the evolution of land rights in 19th century colonial Bengal. The proposed theoretical framework explains how different, hierarchically arrayed claims over land and the resulting allocation of rights was a function of asymmetries in power and information between three groups: rulers, direct cultivators, and intermediaries
without their own coercive means. It explains inter alia why private property in land was not likely to emerge in this configuration, and that the (non-private) property rights of the other two groups wouldn’t attain stability as long as rulers perceived an information asymmetry. In such a situation, land rights would attain neither “private,” nor “public” character.
O texto pretende discutir brevemente a relação – de continuidade, complementaridade ou ruptura – existente entre a obra de Althusser antes e depois do desenvolvimento do materialismo aleatório ou materialismo do encontro. Para tanto, tomamos dois exemplos que sugerem as duas primeiras posições para, em seguida, argumentar em favor da perspectiva de ruptura entre uma e outra fase.
The paper aims to provide a succinct overview of the current state of research, an outlining of the most innovative perspectives and some references to major relevant sources concerning Mediterranean agriculture in central and late Middle Ages. In this regard, the paper gives an account of the main features – whether common or divergent – of the various agricultural systems and forms of land possession and redistribution coexisting and developing across the Mediterranean between the eleventh and the sixteenth century. In this period the agrarian economy experienced a phase of general growth until the beginning of the fourteenth century and then of crisis and transformation between the fourteenth and the fifteenth century, accelerated by the Great Plague of 1347-48. The paper, first, describes the main forms of agricultural systems – classified as intensive or extensive – together with the main forms of land use, their production and productivity and the energy, techniques and technologies used. Secondly, the paper focuses on the main forms of possession, labour organization, surplus extraction and redistribution established in the Latin, Byzantine and Islamic Mediterranean in the central and late Middle Ages.
The transition to capitalism has been one of the most perennial questions in the field of historical sociology. A distinct brand of historical materialism known as Political Marxism (PM) has offered critical insights into the “transition debate,” which have yet to be systematically applied to the case of Turkey. Utilizing a theoretical framework informed by PM, this article problematizes the conventional narratives of the “transition” in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (1850–1950). It contends that no capitalism developed in Turkey until the 1950s; that is, the conditions conventionally thought to be indicators of capitalist development—such as property rights, wage labor, and accumulation of industrial and mercantile wealth—did not result in a (peripheral) capitalism in Turkey as usually assumed. By revisiting the “transition debate,” therefore, this article seeks to re-periodize the development of capitalism in Turkey, which in turn prompts a fundamental rethinking of both the past and present of Turkish modernity.
The third chapter deals with a question that is usually considered philosophical; however, it is crucial for everyday life and the social determinations involving economics and politics. Among most schools of thought, the study of the being—ontology—has been widely regarded as a branch of metaphysics. Both the critique of political economy and the study of the social being have revealed that existence must not be considered from a metaphysical standpoint—thus rigid, abstract, eternal—but as a movement, a process, a constant transformation. Following this method, knowledge production must be understood as a product of two interchangeable movements. The first unveils the historical emergence of knowledge; the second exposes the existing contemporary conditions for its production and reproduction.
This final chapter establishes a point of contact with the book’s findings connecting multiple dimensions, thus creating a single thread. The developed notion of totality does not have the pretension to exhaust the topic but simply to forego any claim imposing one-dimensionality into intellectual property as a sufficient condition for its understanding. While intellectual property theory has operated on the realm of metaphysics; in reality, knowledge is not something abstract, independent and metaphysical but a crucial dimension of material life and simultaneously a vital condition for its transformation. While metaphysical fetishism acritically endows validity to private appropriation of knowledge, the high stakes of knowledge production impose the need for an understanding beyond this simplistic worldview.
The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx provides an entry point for those new to Marxism. At the same time, its chapters, written by leading Marxist scholars, advance Marxist theory and research. Its coverage is more comprehensive than previous volumes on Marx in terms of both foundational concepts and empirical research on contemporary social problems. It also provides equal space to sociologists, economists, and political scientists, with substantial contributions from philosophers, historians and geographers. The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx consists of seven sections. The first section, Foundations, includes chapters that demonstrate that the core elements of Marx’s political economy of capitalism continue to be defended, elaborated and applied to empirical social science including historical materialism, class, capital, labor, value, crisis, ideology, and alienation. Additional sections include Labor, Class, and Social Divisions; Capitalist States and Spaces; Accumulation, Crisis and Class struggle in the Core Countries; Accumulation, Crisis and Class Struggle in the Peripheral and Semi-Peripheral Countries; and Alternatives to Capitalism.
The text is a reflection on the Industrial Revolution, its essence, chronology and its relation to other theoretical concepts (such as industrialization, proto-industrialization, modernization, centre and periphery, economic underdevelopment). It traces the discussions and polemics between Czech and Slovak economic historians (Purš/ Špiesz), and very briefly also the differences from Hungarian historiography, as well as the conflicts with exiled or politically marginalised economic historians in Czechoslovakia (Paulinyi, Myška, Klíma). It was these latter historians who were much more open to Western European theoretical discourse and even tried to enter it and succeeded. As regards the plethora of bearers of new ideas, the paper devotes more attention to cliometricians and the different perceptions of their role in Central Europe. It concludes with an assessment of the current state of Central European narratives in the area of modern economic history and the extent of their theoretical generalization.
This paper explores the Marxist concept of primitive accumulation and its relationship to capitalist development. Primitive accumulation occurs as a historical process before the complete emergence of capitalism as the dominant mode of production. Primitive accumulation is distinguished from other forms of exploitation employed by capitalist societies to spread capitalism into non-capitalist regions. An exploration of different interpretations of primitive accumulation within Marxist theory highlights the transition from primary accumulation to capitalist accumulation in specific contexts. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the multifaceted nature of primitive accumulation and its significance in the development of capitalism. It argues that many uses of primitive accumulation in the present context are erroneous.
Absolutism in England came to an end in the revolutionary decades between 1640 and 1690, which led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in which the monarch rules as head of state with the consent of the people acting through Parliament. This transformative upheaval led to a new era of economic and social consolidation during the eighteenth century. It was an era which saw the rise of agrarian, commercial and financial capitalism and the establishment of parliamentary rule, albeit under a Parliament that principally served the interests of the landed classes.
The century following the revolutionary settlement marks the apogee of aristocratic power and wealth in England. Their supremacy was founded upon an ideology built around aristocratic values and leadership, based on the model of Republican Rome. Legitimisation of aristocratic rule was sought through universalisation, framing their hegemony as the natural order of society through the ages. Aristocratic supremacy rested upon their economic as much as their political power. They presided over an agrarian economy that was becoming capitalist in its mode of production, in response to a revolution in agricultural practices that had begun in the sixteenth century.
Leading aristocrats enjoyed enormous incomes, sustaining prodigious expenditures and profligate lifestyles. Their social lives required them to maintain both their ancestral country seat and a fine house in London. They could spend up to nine months of the year in the metropolis during the London season, which coincided with the Parliamentary term. But they were in the capital for more than political debate; London was a city of pleasure as well as politics and commerce, providing a stage upon which the whole theatre of aristocratic life could be acted out. During the Georgian era the West End of London was developed to accommodate this aristocratic lifestyle. An urban landscape of supreme elegance was created, formed of mansions, terraces and squares that were the epitome of leisured wealth and exquisite taste.
Under Christopher Wren and his followers, Baroque had been the dominant architectural style in the first phase of hegemonic building in London following the revolutionary era. However, the ruling aristocratic elite considered it a foreign style best suited to the extravagances of Catholicism and the grandiloquence of absolutist monarchy. They favoured the more restrained Palladianism of Inigo Jones as a distinctively national form of classicism that would give better expression to their ideals of liberty and civic virtue. This was the style in which the West End was initially developed, in particular the aristocratic heartland of Mayfair laid out on the Scarborough, Grosvenor, Burlington and Berkeley Estates. As the Georgian era proceeded, Palladianism gave way to the more archaeologically correct Neoclassical, as deployed by the master of eclecticism Robert Adam, and then to the more extravagant Regency style used to expand the West End northwards to Regent’s Park, under John Nash, and westwards to Park Lane and Belgravia.
An economic and social crisis gripped the whole of western Europe during the fourteenth century. The combination of rising population and declining agricultural yields created the conditions for the Great Famine of 1315-17 followed by the Black Death in 1348, estimated to have killed as much as one half of the English population. These disasters created severe labour shortages, shifting the balance of economic power from landowners to peasantry, freeing them from their feudal ties.
England’s old feudal order disintegrated in the savage civil Wars of the Roses during the fifteenth century. The victorious Tudor dynasty which emerged from the conflict embarked on the path of absolutism, a trend that was occurring across Europe. Absolutist monarchies sought to consolidate power within a centralised state, with the ruling monarch the ultimate embodiment of that power. The imperative of absolutism was to preserve the power and status of the aristocracy in a post-medieval society that was becoming increasingly bourgeois, led by the merchant class in the towns and the landed gentry in the countryside. Henry VIII was the English king who most closely resembled an absolutist monarch, and by leading the Reformation of the English church he reigning supreme over both his temporal and spiritual realms.
Absolutist monarchies projected their hegemonic power through epic programmes of monumental building. The Renaissance movement originating in Italy provided intellectual and cultural support for their endeavours by revisiting the cultural legacy of the classical world. In particular, Renaissance architecture offered a new classically-inspired language in which to express the meanings of hegemonic buildings. While Henry VIII presented himself as a Renaissance prince, Tudor architecture was a curious amalgam of classical and medieval motifs in the persistent spirit of English exceptionalism. In his lifetime Henry accumulated over fifty palaces and mansions in this distinctive indigenous stye, most notably Hampton Court, his principal country retreat, and Whitehall Palace, his new seat of government.
Henry’s daughter Elizabeth prudently redefined the relationship between absolutist monarchy and hegemonic building. She shifted the responsibility for building great houses from the monarchy to the new Tudor aristocracy; her courtiers paid for the building and maintenance of these houses, which the queen would graciously occupy as she made her annual progress around the country. The magnates competed for royal favour by building the most lavish houses, favouring the Strand waterfront as the most desirable location for their London townhouses. Their hegemonic building reached a climax under Elizabeth’s successor James I. While magnates favoured the flamboyant Jacobean style which had evolved from the more sober Elizabethan, the king himself sought to embrace the Italian Renaissance by commissioning Inigo Jones, the country’s first true classical architect, to design two new palace buildings: the Queen’s House at Greenwich and the Banqueting House on Whitehall.
Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) takes as its starting point the recognition that household activity in the capitalist mode of production constitutes far more than the production of use values. The activities that take place within households are understood to be part of the entire process of reproduction of society, i.e. social reproduction. The proponents of SRT have stimulated much valuable empirical research on these activities. However, there are major problems in the SRT framework within which these activities are placed. Although presented in the form of a contribution to Marxist theory, SRT contradicts the most basic precepts of this theory. SRT diverges fundamentally from Marxist theory in its use of the term “social reproduction,” and in the related distinctions between “reproductive” and “productive” labor, and between “paid” and “unpaid” labor.
Following the advent of precision agriculture in the context of an emerging informatic ideal in farming, digital media technologies of virtually every kind are now increasingly employed in agrarian contexts, making entanglements of media and agriculture explicit and critical scholarship needed. Such developments have significant political, ethical, and ecological consequences media scholars are uniquely positioned to engage across multiple axes. Yet dedicated work in media studies on agriculture is limited. Accordingly, this article advances an argument for a media studies of agriculture that attends to both contemporary and historical insinuations of these two culture industries, employing (1) the agriculturally rooted media concept of cultural techniques and (2) brief histories of the media-agricultural concept of broadcasting and its relation to imperatives for precision “targeting” as a means for framing and exploring such connections toward future work in this area.
In this original intellectual history, Anna di Robilant traces the history of one of the most influential legal, political, and intellectual projects of modernity: the appropriation of Roman property law by liberal nineteenth-century jurists to fit the purposes of modern Europe. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources, many of which have never been translated into English, di Robilant outlines how a broad network of European jurists reinvented the classical Roman concept of property to support the process of modernisation. By placing this intellectual project within its historical context, she shows how changing class relations, economic policies and developing ideologies converged to produce the basis of modern property law. Bringing these developments to the twentieth century, this book demonstrates how this largely fabricated version of Roman property law shaped and continues to shape debates concerning economic growth, sustainability, and democratic participation.
Providing a new narrative of how local authority and social structures adapted in response to the decline of lordship and the process of state formation, Spike Gibbs uses manorial officeholding – where officials were chosen from among tenants to help run the lord's manorial estate – as a prism through which to examine political and social change in the late medieval and early modern English village. Drawing on micro-studies of previously untapped archival records, the book spans the medieval/early modern divide to examine changes between 1300 and 1650. In doing so, Gibbs demonstrates the vitality of manorial structures across the medieval and early modern era, the active and willing participation of tenants in these frameworks, and the way this created inequalities within communities. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
This chapter investigates the connection between officeholding and serfdom in light of new interpretations which have suggested that serfdom, rather than being a significant liability that the unfree fought hard to remove, was instead characterised by routine obligations and disappeared quickly after the Black Death. Through comparing lists of officers with records of landholding and personal status, it finds that both free and customary landholders served in office. It also demonstrates that serving in office was rarely resisted as an obligation and that while officials did help enforce some aspects of serfdom, they were no longer doing this by the mid-sixteenth century, and even before this only enforced limited aspects of personal unfreedom which likely did not disadvantage tenants in a meaningful way. These findings highlight that the division between unfree and free landholding was breaking down in the late Middle Ages, but also, more significantly, show that officials were not put-upon unfree servants. Communities of tenants were not forced to serve in office but recognised the utility of manorial structures for meeting their own objectives.
Objective/Context:
The purpose of this article is first to contextualize the concept of the “Global South.” Then, we offer an overview of classical and new historiographies of capitalism(s) of the “Global South.” We focus on works that examine the period between roughly the 10th and 19th centuries, and further explain how we understand and periodize capitalism. Lastly, we introduce the contributions to this special issue.
Methodology:
This review is based on a holistic and non-Eurocentric Marxian approach, emphasizing the importance of both internal and external factors, global entanglements and uneven development when studying regional dynamics. We also underline the relevance of both connections and comparisons in understanding and analyzing the genesis and rise of global capitalism(s). In other words, we highlight multifaceted forces at work that may be conceived of in terms of a global dialectical conjuncture.
Originality:
This is one of the few existing articles that pulls together and briefly outlines the different existing trends in writing the histories of capitalism(s) in the “Global South” before the advent of the 20th century. We discuss developments in China, India, the “Islamicate” world, Latin America, the relationship between modern plantation slavery and capitalism as well the “Great Divergence” debate. In doing so, we identify a “global turn” in recent historiographies of capitalism(s).
Conclusions:
We suggest that the prevalent binary narratives -either embracing or rejecting the (pre-)capitalist nature of societies, commercial practices and production sites in the “Global South”-do not do justice to the complexity of historical dynamics. Furthermore, many studies lack nuances and do not adequately consider multilinear processes, entanglements between the local and global and shifting multipolar centers of development. More often than not, academics also neglect spatio-temporal specificities, transitional periods between -or the hybrid coexistence of- different modes of production, that is, developments which should neither be reduced to predominantly capitalist nor pre-capitalist relations, processes and structures. We also argue that a return to the concept of totality helps to transcend the oversimplified assumptions and analyses of dominant historical accounts.
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