History of capitalism
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Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production, and their operation for profit. Other characteristics include free trade, capital accumulation, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. Its emergence, evolution, and spread are the subjects of extensive research and debate. Debates sometimes focus on how to bring substantive historical data to bear on key questions.[1] Key parameters of debate include: the extent to which capitalism is natural, versus the extent to which it arises from specific historical circumstances; whether its origins lie in towns and trade or in rural property relations; the role of class conflict; the role of the state; the extent to which capitalism is a distinctively European innovation; its relationship with European imperialism; whether technological change is a driver or merely a secondary byproduct of capitalism; and whether or not it is the most beneficial way to organize human societies.[2]
Agrarian capitalism
Crisis of the 14th century
According to some historians,
The
In effect, feudalism began to lay some of the foundations necessary for the development of mercantilism, a precursor of capitalism. Feudalism lasted from the medieval period through the 16th century. Feudal manors were almost entirely self-sufficient, and therefore limited the role of the market. This stifled any incipient tendency towards capitalism. However, the relatively sudden emergence of new technologies and discoveries, particularly in agriculture[6] and exploration, facilitated the growth of capitalism. The most important development at the end of feudalism[citation needed] was the emergence of what Robert Degan calls "the dichotomy between wage earners and capitalist merchants".[7] The competitive nature meant there are always winners and losers, and this became clear as feudalism evolved into mercantilism, an economic system characterized by the private or corporate ownership of capital goods, investments determined by private decisions, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods determined mainly by competition in a free market.[citation needed]
Enclosure
England in the 16th century was already a centralized state, in which much of the feudal order of
An important aspect of this process of change was the
. Once enclosed, these uses of the land became restricted to the owner, and it ceased to be land for commons. The process of enclosure began to be a widespread feature of the English agricultural landscape during the 16th century. By the 19th century, unenclosed commons had become largely restricted to rough pasture in mountainous areas and to relatively small parts of the lowlands.Other scholars
Merchant capitalism and mercantilism
Precedents
While trade has existed since early in human history, it was not capitalism.[16] The earliest recorded activity of long-distance profit-seeking merchants can be traced to the Old Assyrian merchants active in Mesopotamia the 2nd millennium BCE.[17] The Roman Empire developed more advanced forms of commerce, and similarly widespread networks existed in Islamic nations. However, capitalism took shape in Europe in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.
An early emergence of commerce occurred on monastic estates in Italy and France and in the independent city republics of Italy during the late Middle Ages. Innovations in banking, insurance, accountancy, and various production and commercial practices linked closely to a 'spirit' of frugality, reinvestment, and city life, promoted attitudes that sociologists have tended to associate only with northern Europe, Protestantism, and a much later age. The city republics maintained their political independence from Empire and Church, traded with North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and introduced Eastern practices. They were also considerably different from the absolutist monarchies of Spain and France, and were strongly attached to civic liberty.[18][19][20]
Emergence
Modern capitalism resembles some elements of
England began a large-scale and integrative approach to mercantilism during the
These efforts organized national resources sufficiently in the defense of England against the far larger and more powerful
Doctrines
Under mercantilism, European merchants, backed by state controls, subsidies, and monopolies, made most of their profits from buying and selling goods. In the words of Francis Bacon, the purpose of mercantilism was "the opening and well-balancing of trade; the cherishing of manufacturers; the banishing of idleness; the repressing of waste and excess by sumptuary laws; the improvement and husbanding of the soil; the regulation of prices..."[26] Similar practices of economic regimentation had begun earlier in medieval towns. However, under mercantilism, given the contemporaneous rise of absolutism, the state superseded the local guilds as the regulator of the economy.
Among the major tenets of mercantilist theory was
Proponents of mercantilism emphasized state power and overseas conquest as the principal aim of economic policy. If a state could not supply its own raw materials, according to the mercantilists, it should acquire colonies from which they could be extracted. Colonies constituted not only sources of raw materials but also markets for finished products. Because it was not in the interests of the state to allow competition, to help the mercantilists, colonies should be prevented from engaging in manufacturing and trading with foreign powers.
Mercantilism was a system of trade for profit, although commodities were still largely produced by non-capitalist production methods.[27] Noting the various pre-capitalist features of mercantilism, Karl Polanyi argued that "mercantilism, with all its tendency toward commercialization, never attacked the safeguards which protected [the] two basic elements of production – labor and land – from becoming the elements of commerce." Thus mercantilist regulation was more akin to feudalism than capitalism. According to Polanyi, "not until 1834 was a competitive labor market established in England, hence industrial capitalism as a social system cannot be said to have existed before that date."[28]
Chartered trading companies
The
The British East India Company (1600) and the Dutch East India Company (1602) launched an era of large state chartered trading companies.[29][30] These companies were characterized by their monopoly on trade, granted by letters patent provided by the state. Recognized as chartered joint-stock companies by the state, these companies enjoyed lawmaking, military, and treaty-making privileges.[31] Characterized by its colonial and expansionary powers by states, powerful nation-states sought to accumulate precious metals, and military conflicts arose.[29] During this era, merchants, who had previously traded on their own, invested capital in the East India Companies and other colonies, seeking a return on investment.
Industrial capitalism
The mid-18th century gave rise to industrial capitalism, made possible by (1) the accumulation of vast amounts of capital under the merchant phase of capitalism and its investment in machinery, and (2) the fact that the enclosures meant that Britain had a large population of people with no access to subsistence agriculture, who needed to buy basic commodities via the market, ensuring a mass consumer market.
During the resulting
There is an activate debate on the role of the Atlantic slavery in the emergence of industrial capitalism.[33] Eric Williams (1944) argued on Capitalism and Slavery about the crucial role of plantation slavery in the growth of industrial capitalism, since both happened in similar time periods. Harvey (2019) wrote that "A flagship of the industrial revolution, the Lancashire mills and their 465,000 textile workers, was entirely reliant [in the 1860s] on the labour of three million cotton slaves in the American Deep South."[34]
Industrial Revolution
The productivity gains of capitalist production began a sustained and unprecedented increase at the turn of the 19th century, in a process commonly referred to as the
In
Finance
The growth of Britain's industry stimulated a concomitant growth in its system of
The end of the
Older innovations became routine parts of financial life during the 19th century. The
Growing international trade increased the number of banks, especially in London. These new "merchant banks" facilitated trade growth, profiting from England's emerging dominance in seaborne shipping. Two immigrant families,
The operation of banks also shifted. At the beginning of the century, banking was still an elite preoccupation of a handful of very wealthy families. Within a few decades, however, a new sort of banking had emerged, owned by anonymous
Free trade and globalization
At the height of the
In 1817,
- When an inefficient producer sends the merchandise it produces best to a country able to produce it more efficiently, both countries benefit.
By the mid 19th century, Britain was firmly wedded to the notion of free trade, and the first era of globalization began.[21] In the 1840s, the Corn Laws and the Navigation Acts were repealed, ushering in a new age of free trade. In line with the teachings of the classical political economists, led by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, Britain embraced liberalism, encouraging competition and the development of a market economy.
The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea, the various products of the whole earth, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep. Militarism and imperialism of racial and cultural rivalries were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper. What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man was that age which came to an end in August 1914.
The global financial system was mainly tied to the
The eruption
20th century
Several major challenges to capitalism appeared in the early part of the 20th century. The
Keynesianism and free markets
The economic recovery of the world's leading capitalist economies in the period following the end of the Great Depression and the
The state also expanded in the US; in 1929, total government expenditures amounted to less than one-tenth of
A broad array of new analytical tools in the
The long post-war boom ended in the 1970s, amid the economic crises experienced following the
The
Globalization
Although overseas trade has been associated with the development of capitalism for over five hundred years, some thinkers argue that a number of trends associated with
After the abandonment of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, and the strict state control of foreign exchange rates, the total value of transactions in foreign exchange was estimated to be at least twenty times greater than that of all foreign movements of goods and services (EB). The internationalisation of finance, which some see as beyond the reach of state control, combined with the growing ease with which large corporations have been able to relocate their operations to low-wage states, has posed the question of the 'eclipse' of state sovereignty, arising from the growing 'globalization' of capital.[44]
While economists generally agree about the size of global
According to the scholars Gary Gerstle and Fritz Bartel, with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of neoliberal financialized capitalism as the dominant system, capitalism has become a truly global order in a way not seen since 1914.[63][64] Economist Radhika Desai, while concurring that 1914 was the peak of the capitalist system, argues that the neoliberal reforms that were intended to restore capitalism to its primacy have instead bequeathed to the world increased inequalities, divided societies, economic crises and misery and a lack of meaningful politics, along with sluggish growth which demonstrates that, according to Desai, the system is "losing ground in terms of economic weight and world influence" with "the balance of international power . . . tilting markedly away from capitalism."[65] Gerstle argues that in the twilight of the neoliberal period "political disorder and dysfunction reign" and posits that the most important question for the United States and the world is what comes next.[63]
21st century
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, mixed economies with capitalist elements had become the pervasive economic systems worldwide. The collapse of the
In many emerging markets, the influence of banking and financial capital have come to increasingly shape national developmental strategies, leading some to argue we are in a new phase of financial capitalism.[66]
State intervention in global capital markets following the
Future
According to
Role of women
Women's historians have debated the impact of capitalism on the status of women.[71][72] Alice Clark argued that, when capitalism arrived in 17th-century England, it negatively impacted the status of women, who lost much of their economic importance. Clark argued that, in 16th-century England, women were engaged in many aspects of industry and agriculture. The home was a central unit of production, and women played a vital role in running farms and in some trades and landed estates. Their useful economic roles gave them a sort of equality with their husbands. However, Clark argued, as capitalism expanded in the 17th century, there was more and more division of labor, with the husband taking paid labor jobs outside the home, and the wife reduced to unpaid household work. Middle-class women were confined to an idle domestic existence, supervising servants; lower-class women were forced to take poorly paid jobs. Capitalism, therefore, had a negative effect on women.[73] By contrast, Ivy Pinchbeck argued that capitalism created the conditions for women's emancipation.[74] Tilly and Scott have emphasized the continuity and the status of women, finding three stages in European history. In the preindustrial era, production was mostly for home use, and women produced many household needs. The second stage was the "family wage economy" of early industrialization. During this stage, the entire family depended on the collective wages of its members, including husband, wife, and older children. The third, or modern, stage is the "family consumer economy", in which the family is the site of consumption, and women are employed in large numbers in retail and clerical jobs to support rising standards of consumption.[75]
See also
- Brenner debate
- Capitalism and Islam
- Capitalist mode of production
- Enclosure and British Agricultural Revolution
- Fernand Braudel
- Financial crisis of 2007–2008
- History of capitalist theory
- History of globalization
- History of private equity and venture capital
- Primitive accumulation of capital
- Protestant work ethic
- Simple commodity production
References
- JSTOR 2654574.
- The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View(London: Verso, 2002).
- OCLC 984907212.
- ^ Brenner, Robert, 1977, "The Origins of Capitalist Development: a Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism", in New Left Review 104: 36–37, 46
- ^ Dobb, Maurice 1947 Studies in the Development of Capitalism. New York: International Publishers Co., Inc. 42–46, 48 ff.
- ^ James Fulcher, Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 19
- ^
Degen, Robert A. (2011-12-31). The Triumph of Capitalism. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers (published 2011). p. 12. ISBN 9781412809856. Retrieved 2016-01-13.
By the early 1400s, power came to be shared in an arrangement giving representation to various segments of the social order, but the dichotomy between wage earners and capitalist merchants remained.
- ^ Ellen Meikisins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View, 2nd edn (London: Verso, 2002), p. 99.
- place names.
- ^ Thompson, E. P. (1991). The Making of the English Working Class. Penguin. p. 217.
- ^ A comparison of the English historical enclosures with the (much later) German 19th century Landflucht. Engels, Friedrich (1882). "Die Mark". Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft. Hottingen (Zurich).
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich. Werke (1973 reprint of 196t 1st ed.). Berlin: Karl Dietz. - ISBN 978-1786090034.
- ^ W. A. Armstrong
- Batsford. p. 104.
- ^ Armstrong, W A (1981). The Influence of Demographic Factors on the Position of the Agricultural Labourer in England and Wales, c.1750–1914". in "Agricultural History Review.". Vol. 29. British Agricultural History Society. p. 79. Archived from the original on 2019-08-01. Retrieved 2014-01-02.
{{cite book}}
:|work=
ignored (help) - ^ Ellen Meiksins Wood (2002), The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 73–94.
- ^ Warburton, David, Macroeconomics from the beginning: The General Theory, Ancient Markets, and the Rate of Interest. Paris: Recherches et Publications, 2003. p. 49
- ^ Stark, Rodney. Victory of Reason, (Random House New York, 2005)
- ^ Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money, (Penguin, 2008)
- ^ Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol I: The Renaissance; vol II: The Age of Reformation. Cambridge University Press, 1978)
- ^ a b c d Burnham, Peter Capitalism, the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics, 2003 Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ^ a b Encyclopædia Britannica (2006)
- ^ John J. McCusker, Mercantilism and the Economic History of the Early Modern Atlantic World (Cambridge UP, 2001)
- ^ Now attributed to Sir Thomas Smith; quoted in Braudel (1979), p. 204.
- ISBN 9781409419143.
- ^ Quoted in Sir George Clark, The Seventeenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 24.
- ^
Scott, John; Marshall, Gordon (2005). "capitalism". Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-860986-5.
- ^ Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. Beacon Press, Boston. 1944. p. 87
- ^ a b Jairus Banaji (2007), "Islam, the Mediterranean and the rise of capitalism", Journal Historical Materialism 15#1 pp. 47–74, Brill Publishers.
- ^ Economic system :: Market systems. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006.
- ^ "chartered company". Archived from the original on 2009-01-09.
- ^ Ellen Meiksins Wood (2002), The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 142–46.
- ^ Inikori, Joseph E.. Atlantic Slavery and the Rise of the Capitalist Global Economy. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/709818
- ^ Harvey, Mark (4 October 2019). "Slavery, coerced labour, and the development of industrial capitalism in Britain". History Workshop. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
- ISBN 3-7045-0092-5. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2012-03-01. Retrieved 2014-01-02.
- ^ "PBS.org". PBS.org. 1929-10-24. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
- Douglas A. Irwin. "Is Globalization Today Really Different than Globalization a Hundred Years Ago?". NBER Working Paper No.7195. June 1999.
- ISBN 978-0-374-20364-1.
- ^ Stanley Engerman; Seymour Drescher; Robert Paquette (2001). Slavery (Oxford Readers). Oxford University Press.
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Austerity is not new, nor is it a product of the so-called Neoliberal Era that began in the 1970s. Outside, perhaps, of the less than three booming decades that followed World War II, austerity has been the mainstay of capitalism. It has been true throughout history that where capitalism exists, crisis follows. Where austerity has proven wildly effective is in insulating capitalist hierarchies from harm during these moments of would-be social change.
- ^ Doug Henwood is an economist who has argued that the heyday of globalisation was during the mid-nineteenth century. For example, he writes in What Is Globalization Anyway?:
Not only is the novelty of "globalization" exaggerated, so is its extent. Capital flows were freer, and foreign holdings by British investors far larger, 100 years ago than anything we see today. Images of multinational corporations shuttling raw materials and parts around the world, as if the whole globe were an assembly line, are grossly overblown, accounting for only about a tenth of U.S. trade.[1]
(See also Henwood, Doug (October 1, 2003). After the New Economy. New Press.
ISBN 1-56584-770-9.) - ^ For an assessment of this question, see Peter Evans, "The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of Globalization", World Politics, 50, 1 (October 1997): 62–87.
- Milanovic, Branko (2006-08-01). Global Income Inequality: What It Is And Why It Matters?(PDF) (Technical report). DESA Working Paper. Vol. 26. pp. 7–9.
- ^ Brooks, David (2004-11-27). "Good News about Poverty". Retrieved 2008-02-26.
- ^ Fengbo Zhang: Speech at "Future China Global Forum 2010": China Rising with the Reform and Open Policy Archived 2013-10-09 at the Wayback Machine.
- ISBN 0-300-07627-4.
- ^ This is the most dangerous time for our planet. Stephen Hawking via The Guardian. 1 December 2016.
- ^ Neoliberalism: Oversold? – IMF Finance & Development June 2016 • Volume 53 • Number 2
- ^ IMF: The last generation of economic policies may have been a complete failure. Business Insider. May 2016.
- ^ ISBN 0415311357, p. 101
- ISBN 0415673445, pp. 1–2.
- ^ Jason Hickel (February 13, 2019). An Open Letter to Steven Pinker (and Bill Gates). Jacobin. Retrieved February 14, 2019.
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- ^ Jaffe, Greg (April 20, 2019). "Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
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While the balance of class power remains heavily tilted in favour of capital in its homelands, the balance of international power is tilting markedly away from capitalism, driving all outside the charmed circle of the United States, Europe, Japan and the settler colonies bit by bit, with advances and reverses, steadily away from the major capitalist countries and probably, from capitalism. This process began with the Russian Revolution and, after the reverses of the 1990s, resumed in the new century as an alliance of countries seeking to assert their economic and security sovereignty—including Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and Iran—began forming with China as its economic centre. The pandemic and the war have accelerated these processes.
- ^ Marois, Thomas (2012) States, Banks and Crisis: Emerging Finance Capitalism in Mexico and Turkey. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
- ^ "President Bush Meets with Bicameral and Bipartisan Members of Congress to Discuss Economy", Whitehouse.gov, September 25, 2008.
- ^ "House votes down bail-out package". 29 September 2008 – via news.bbc.co.uk.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-288018-7
- PMID 32561753.
The second, more radical, group disagrees and argues that the needed socio-ecological transformation will necessarily entail a shift beyond capitalism and/or current centralised states. Although comprising considerable heterogeneity, it can be divided into eco-socialist approaches, viewing the democratic state as an important means to achieve the socio-ecological transformation and eco-anarchist approaches, aiming instead at participatory democracy without a state, thus minimising hierarchies. Many degrowth approaches combine elements of the two, but often see a stronger role for state action than eco-anarchists.
- ^ Eleanor Amico, ed. Reader's guide to women's studies (1998) pp. 102–04.
- JSTOR 178999.
- ^ Alice Clark, Working life of women in the seventeenth century (1919).
- ^ Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers in the Industrial Revolution (1930).
- ^ Louise Tilly and Joan Wallach Scott, Women, work, and family (1987).
Further reading
- Appleby, Joyce. The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (2011)
- Business History Review, Special issue on Italy and the Origins of Capitalism, Business History Review, Volume 94 - Issue 1 - Spring 2020.
- Braudel, Fernand (1979), "The Wheels of Commerce", Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century
- Cheta, Omar Youssef. "The economy by other means: The historiography of capitalism in the modern Middle East", History Compass (April 2018) 16#4
- Comninel, George C. "English feudalism and the origins of capitalism" Journal of Peasant Studies, 27#4 (2000), pp. 1–53
- Maurice Dobb and Paul Sweezy's famous debate on transition from feudalism to capitalism. Hilton, Rodney H. 1976. ed. The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism.
- blog on the Dobb-Sweezy debate Leftspot.com
- Duplessis, Robert S. Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (1997).
- Friedman, Walter A. "Recent trends in business history research: Capitalism, democracy, and innovation". Enterprise & Society 18.4 (2017): 748–771.
- Giddens, Anthony. Capitalism and modern social theory: An analysis of the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber (1971).
- Hilt, Eric. "Economic History, Historical Analysis, and the 'New History of Capitalism'". Journal of Economic History (June 2017) 77#2 pp 511–536. online
- Kocka, Jürgen. Capitalism: A Short History (2016) excerpt
- McCarraher, Eugene. The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (2022) excerpt
- Marx, Karl (1867) Das Kapital
- Morton, Adam David. "The Age of Absolutism: capitalism, the modern states-system and international relations" Review of International Studies (2005), 31 : 495–517 Cambridge University Press
- Neal, Larry, and Jeffrey G. Williamson, eds. The Cambridge History of Capitalism (2 Vol 2016)
- Olmstead, Alan L., and Paul W. Rhode. "Cotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalism". Explorations in Economic History 67 (2018): 1–17. online Archived 2021-03-08 at the Wayback Machine
- O'Sullivan, Mary. "The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Capitalism". Enterprise & Society 19.4 (2018): 751–802. online
- ISBN 978-0-462-09968-2
- ISBN 978-0-8223-2491-1
- Prak, Maarten; Zanden, Jan Luiten van (2022). Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000–1800. Princeton University Press.
- Schuessler, Jennifer. "In History Departments, It's Up With Capitalism" April 6, 2013 The New York Times
- Schumpeter, Joseph A. Can capitalism survive? (1978)
- James Denham-Steuart [1767] An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy vol 1, vol2, vol 3
- (2002).
- Zmolek, Mike (2000). "The case for Agrarian capitalism: A response to albritton" Journal of Peasant Studies, Volume 27, Issue 4 July 2000, pp. 138–59
- Zmolek M. (2001) DEBATE – Further Thoughts on Agrarian Capitalism: A Reply to Albritton The Journal of Peasant Studies, Volume 29, Number 1, October 2001, pp. 129–54 (26)
- Debating Agrarian Capitalism: A Rejoinder to Albritton
- Research in Political Economy, Volume 22
- The Roots of Merchant Capitalism
- World Socialist Movement. "What Is Capitalism?" World Socialism. 13, August 2007.
- Thomas K. McCraw, "The Current Crisis and the Essence of Capitalism", The Montreal Review (August, 2011)
- Zofia Łapniewska, "History of Capitalism", Museum des Kapitalismus, Berlin 2014.