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The future of capitalism series requires a new look at the fundamental questions and phenomena of world history. This work contributes to the effort by rethinking the debate about the transition from feudalism to capitalism in a way that sheds new light on capitalism's contribution to world development, its current crisis and future prospects. Therefore, this book takes issue with what I consider to be the excessively economic approach of Robert Brenner and his followers, who ironically go by the name of political Marxists.
Given my knowledge of the early modern period both in Europe and the rest of the world and my growing understanding of the Marxist view of history, I found it appropriate to undertake the demanding task of carefully relating the relationship between concrete facts of history. and Marxist theory in a way that does both justice. I also thank my wife, Joanne Inglis, for assistance in the editorial preparation of the manuscript.
Problems and methods
As we show, the revolutionary transformation of the country was a key step in the transition to capitalism. Rather, it proved key to the further development of the capitalist mode of production in the early modern period. The emergence of overseas markets and colonialism were based on state support.
What stood out in the context of this political decentralization was the relative strength of the producer classes. In this light, Eurasia as a whole shared a common development of the productive forces in the pre-capitalist period.
In the longer term, farmers' income and wages improved and serfdom declined.64. In the ensuing crisis, the survival of quantity producers was called into question. In the heyday of feudalism, labor rents or in kind provided for the maintenance of the landowners.
Class struggle remains at the focal point of their view of the decline of feudalism. Opportunity presented itself in the late medieval crisis with the disintegration of the constraints of feudalism.
Italy, germany, france
In the wide plains of the Po Valley – the most productive land in Italy – capitalist agriculture dominated. Throughout the rest of the peninsula, but especially in the center, the estate was the most widespread form of property. But over time the presence of the old ruling groups and remnants of feudalism there weakened.
Despite the wars of the first part of the sixteenth century, Italy participated fully in the positive Western European economy of that period. No effective alliance emerged between elements of the nobility and the bourgeoisie of the English kind. In the case of the eighteenth-century revolution in a politically united France, the whole country was divided into two clearly opposed camps.
In Germany, on the other hand, the late-medieval class struggle of the peasant producers against feudalism did not reach its peak until the sixteenth century. Having weathered the crisis, the feudal system reconsolidated in modern times on the basis of the princely states of a divided Germany. She agreed with Brenner that the origins of capitalism lie exclusively in the social relations of production of rural England.
In southern France, capitalism, which had developed in the first half of the 16th century, faltered. On the other hand, it was very different in the richer grain lands of the north. On the other hand, earlier aspirations for a national market for agricultural products weakened towards the end of the 16th century.
He insisted that the essence of capitalism lies not in exchange, which does not create new wealth, but in changes in the social relations of production at the heart of the system. Wallerstein insists on the essential role of the underdevelopment of the periphery for the development of the core through the transfer of surpluses. Brenner's arguments, imbued with a deep understanding of both Marxism and the historical process, decisively reaffirm the primacy of the development of capitalist relations of production over the origins of capitalism.
In particular, it points to the development of agricultural capitalism as crucial to the initiation and consolidation of the new mode of production in England and elsewhere. But the bulk of these gains came in the eighteenth century, during the period of the so-called agricultural revolution. In the course of the sixteenth century, the circulation of metal coins in Europe increased eight to ten times.
Gregory Clark, a neoclassical economic historian, complains that determining the rental value of farmland in the first part of the. In any case, it does not help to speak, like Brenner, of the free play of labor on the market from the sixteenth century onwards. In the struggles of the late Middle Ages, the latter managed to hold onto most of the arable land.
On the other hand, his rejection of the importance of absolute surplus value and primitive accumulation, especially in the periphery, is unfortunate. On the other hand, I believe that Brenner's view of the history of capitalism is narrow and economic. He pays little or no attention to the role of the state as an intrinsic feature of capitalism.
According to them, in the first half of the sixteenth century the interests of the merchant capitalists were strongly linked to the Habsburg monarchy. After the iconoclasm, these revolutionary elements turned against each other, which led to the decline of the movement in the southern Netherlands. Instead, an ecological crisis caused a transformation of the peasant economy towards capitalism.
It was based on the development of the productive forces under the command of a developing bourgeoisie. In the course of the sixteenth century there was an increasing social differentiation of this group. In the decade before the outbreak of revolution, the influence of the Physiocrats waned.
According to Byres, the Japanese case is another example of the imposition of capitalism from above. Mercantilists of the seventeenth century sought to increase the amount of money circulating in the state. Dobb is sensitive to the fact that the class base of the two groups differed.
Unlike the above authors, Arrighi focuses on the mature mercantilism of the 18th century. In the Communist Manifesto and Grundrisse, for example, we find glorious liturgies in appreciation of the power of capitalism. Marx's view of the integral role and importance of overseas conquest and colonialism in the history of capitalism remains intact.
This is what Byres explores in his treatment of the economic development of capitalism from below in the United States. But Byres emphasizes that this trend was rivaled by the development of the slave plantation.
It not only created the proletariat – the revolutionary class of the future – it ushered in the transformation of the whole of society. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the extraction of relative surplus value became essential. Revisionism in the sense of questioning Marx's view of the Industrial Revolution has characterized the ongoing debates about the Industrial Revolution.
In this light, it has cast doubt on the Marxist notion of the transformation of the working class. As a result, the Marxist view of the Industrial Revolution has more than held its own against ongoing revisionist challenges. On the other hand, I would argue that an understanding of Marx's view of the origins of the industrial revolution remains indispensable to an understanding of it.
But against the revisionist view, which tends to ignore the overseas market and the history of colonialism, he reiterates the importance of the world market to the industrial revolution. Marx focused particular attention on the development of manufacture, in its original sense of hand products, during the long run-up to the industrial revolution. The economic advantage of the craft workshop lay in the division of labor within the company.
Rural and domestic crafts did not simply disappear in the face of the development of manufacturing beginning in the sixteenth century. On the other hand, the centralization of knowledge allowed a scientific reorganization of the entire production process. The Industrial Revolution can be seen as the result of technical progress made during the period of production.
