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Globalising the History of Capitalism - Coggle Diagram
Globalising the History of Capitalism
traditional accounts
Marx: capitalist mode of production
industrial; factory
wage labour
bourgeoisie vs proletariat
linear progression and 'stadial theory of development': developed through the internal contradictions of feudalism, and will turn into socialism through the internal contradictions within capitalism
emerged in early modern/modern Europe
capitalism proper once majority of society dependent on market to survive, i.e. sell their labour for a wage (real subsumption to capital), rather than being forced to work by coercive means (formal subsumption to capital)
capitalism happens once there are qualitative changes in production, not circulation; merchant capitalism existed before but this was parasitic, not fundamentally changing people's relationship to the means of production (i.e. class relations)
'primitive accumulation' was a precursor to capitalism, but not necessarily part of capitalism itself; this included: 1) the enclosures of common land that created class of people now having to work for a wage to survive (proletariat); 2) colonialism and slavery providing initial capital needed for industrialisation in Europe
Political Marxism
Robert Brenner: capitalism emerged through qualitative changes in the means of production, but specifically relating to the political conditions of late medieval/early modern England; France also had feudalism but capitalism emerged there much later
led to the 'Brenner debate'; critique: this exceptionalises England and is a 'diffusionist' account that sees capitalism emerging through hermetically-sealed internal developments, before spreading out to the rest of the world
Ellen Meiskins-Wood: developed Brenner's argument to advocate for the 'agrarian origins of capitalism'
saw capitalism as having emerged through land tenancy arrangements in late medieval/early modern England, whereby most peasants rented land and were incentivised to make agriculture more productive to increase profits - those that did well became agrarian capitalists, and those that didn't lost their access to land and were forced to work for a wage to survive; creation of a rural proletariat
Adam Smith: capitalism emerged through incremental increases in capital accrued from circulation, not production; commercial/merchant capitalism came first, eventially encouraging manufacturing
however, he acknowledged how productivity could be increased through changes in the production process e.g. the division of labour
did industrial capitalism even begin in Europe?
Toby Green: premodern African societies had sophisticated market societies and mass commodity production e.g. Kano cloth; there was already private property in 18th Angola
Lorenzo Bondioli: Geniza archive shows that medieval Egypt had wage labour, factories etc
Anne Gerritsen: Ming China was capitalist as already had wage labour
Yazdani and Menon, Capitalisms: towards a global history: many ideas of political economy had antecedent ideas in Asia and the Middle East e.g. influence of Confucianism on French physiocrats; Al Ghazali developed idea of 'division of labour'; Ibn Khaldun developed ideas similar to labour theory of value, associated usually with Ricardo and Marx
alternative and newer approaches, beyond waged labour industrial model
Feminist Marxism: 'social reproduction theory' holds that unpaid labour (mainly performed by women) was required to nurture and sustain working class, even though it wasn't counted as work
associated with Silvia Federici, Maria Mies, Lise Vogel, and the 'Wages for Housework' campaign
Global Labour History: various forms of unfree labour were part of capitalism e.g. slavery, debt peonage, indentured labour
Jairus Banaji: these forms of labour were used by merchants in a longer history of commercial capitalism; merchants were able to influence production without controlling the means of production by giving out loans, compelling independent producers to produce cash crops and more food than they needed to pay back debts
capitalism flexible in using different forms of labour across geographical contexts
New History of Capitalism: plantation slavery was part of capitalism, not a precursor
associated with Sven Beckert, Walter Johnson, Caitlin Rosenthal
initially focused on plantations in the US South, but later expanded into global framework e.g. Beckert's Capitalism: A Global History
capitalism began in the countryside, not the factory; the plantation even set the model for organising and disciplining labour in the factory
capitalism relied on the state from the beginning e.g. securing private property through forced dispossession and property law; building infrastructure
critiques of diffusionist model
Braudel: we can see commercial capitalism across the world over a longue duree, especially in Asia; primacy of circulation over production
Dependency theory and world systems theory: circulation (e.g. overseas trade) was more important than production in the rise of capitalism
Walter Rodney (dependency theory): capitalism was able to emerge in Europe through extraction of resources and labour from Africa, making African societies dependent on European manufacturing
Immanuel Wallerstein, world systems theory: capitalism emerged through global division of labour, whereby the core (Europe) incorporated non-capitalist zones of the world, extracting raw materials to be processed in Europe before finished products being exported back out
but this still potentially diffusionist as it sees capitalism emerging in Europe through the power of merchants, before incorporating 'non-capitalist' parts of the world
Beckert,
Capitalism: A Global History
: capitalism was born global; makes it futile to search for singular point of origin
although merchants across the world were operating in islands of capital, it was European merchants who eventually gained upper hand in revolutionising production, especially through the plantation system and intervention in agrarian societies across the world