I agree that anti-eurocentrism sometimes reads like a nationalist/ethnocentric
reaction > that, but for constraints put
> on the rest of the world by colonialism & imperialism, capitalism
> would have arisen & developed elsewhere.
But I disagree with Wood that 'both Eurocentric and
anti-Eurocentric accounts assume that human beings, given a chance
(= absence of constraints) were *destined* to develop a capitalist mode of
production'. But perhaps I am just worried about the word
"destined", and should not deny that Wood does have a point when
she insists that
those accounts which emphasise the role of the market and/or
rationality tend to see these as the *active* variables; variables
which are somehow pushing towards capitalism, and that, therefore,
the way to explain why capitalism developed here but
not there is to look for those factors (environmental, political,
cultural) which blocked the natural disposition of these active
variables to create capitalism:
> If the emergence of a mature capitalist economy
> required any explanation, it was to identify the barriers that have
> stood in the way of its natural development, and the process by which
> those barriers were lifted" (16).
But Wood goes too far in denying altogether the argument that markets
which operate in a favorable environment will spread, and that as
they spread it becomes easier and easier to create full capitalist
relations of production. Let's agree with her own 'fundamentalist' definition
of capitalism, as a specific mode in which money is used to
purchase labour power and means of production to produce goods to
sell for a profit, a process which can be represented schematically
as M-C....P....C'-M', where P stands for production. Now, it has to
be admitted that this circuit is already implied in the circulation
form of merchant capital, M-C-M'. Capitalism is thus *logically* implicit
in this money-form. I dont think there is another factor which has
this intimate logical relation to capitalism. So I cannot agree with
Wood (Brenner and Comninel) that capitalism is a totally unique
phenomenon which is in no way connected to the growth of markets but
which simply developed out of the peculiar nature of English
feudalism. We have to look at the market as the "active" variable, and
the degree to which markets were allowed to operate freely or not.
I would add that this variable cannot be studied independently of
some concept of rationality, for humans are rational beings who
understand the economic choices they make.
> We may begin by noting that capitalism did not arise in an
> ill-defined abstraction called "Europe"; it originated in England,
> *nowhere else*: "Feudalism in Europe, even in Western Europe, was
> internally diverse, and it produced several different outcomes, only
> one of which was capitalism" (Wood 67).
I find strange that Wood does not seem to care one bit about all the
evidence that has been gathered against Brenner's thesis.
