Jim B. writes:
>(1) You're absolutely right that "factories in the field" are just as
>capitalist as factories in the city. But I repeat: Brennerr is talking
>about pre-industrial times, the 15th and 16th centiuries, not industrial
>capitalism, and not about factories in the field.
I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not defending Brenner _per se_.
I am not a Brennerite. (I do know him pretty well and I used to belong to a
political group with him, Workers' Power. But I am not now and have never
been a Brennerite.) I find that I learned a lot from him, but I also
learned a lot from Samir Amin (as I've noted in previous missives, which
Jim B. seems to have ignored). Thus, I feel no obligation to go back and
re-read Brenner's articles in order to defend him. Nor am I interested
enough in reading criticisms of Brenner because that requires the diversion
lots of time from research, personal life, and/or sleep to deal with the
details of those criticisms.
BTW, as it should have been pretty clear from my contributions to this
"debate," I have been very willing to accept Jim B.'s facts as true.
Rather, I am arguing about interpretation of these facts.
There are four levels of the theoretical discussion below: [A] lumpers vs.
splitters; [B] the emphasis on technology vs. that on social relations of
production; [C] the single-factor theory of the rise of capitalism vs. my
"exploding dynamite" theory (which isn't really "mine"); and [D] Marx's
definition of capitalism vs. other definitions, and the issue of the need
for clear definitions for clear thinking and discussion.
>This is importanbt -- and
>the reason I'm making this intervention -- because one of the fundamental
>errors that Brenner makes is to impute the tecvhnological innovativeness of
>real industrial capitalism, which must always revolutionize the methods of
>production, to the English tenant farmers of the 15th century. He says, in
>essence: when big tenant farmers in the 15th century began to employ
>landless laborers (and pay rent to the landllords, as though they were
>modern factory-owners paying land rent to the owners of the underlying
>land), these 15th-century tenant farmers began to accumulate and began to
>revolutionize technology (like modern faactory-owners). But some people
>including me have demonstrated that there was no revolutionizing of the
>methods of agricultural production in that period or maybe for the next
>three centuries.
[issue A.] This is the kind of thing that gets us to the age-old
controversy between the lumpers and the splitters (which seems older than
the fight between the big-enders and little-enders that Swift [1726]
found). In the empirical study of history are there any obvious "breaks" (a
sudden revolution in the extent of technological change, in this case) as
the splitters want there to be? The lumpers say no: look at the evidence!
(This dispute can be seen in lots & lots of debates, including that
concerning the French 1789 revolution: there are many who see it as merely
a political blip on a general trend.)
Instead of getting into the details of the evidence on Brenner's work
(which involves a lot of expensive time), I would go with Lazonick (whose
Summer 1974 REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS article I've already
cited and is somehow being ignored) who discusses the data concerning
out-migration from the areas that had been enclosed. (BTW, you don't have
to read Lazonick's article. Just take my word for what he said.)
In Lazonick's article, lumpers like Chambers are quoted as saying: look,
there was no change in out-migration due to enclosure, therefore Marx's
story of the AgRev is totally bogus. Lazonick replies: the fact is that
there was a change in _social relations_ that set the stage for _later_
out-migration. I think this conclusion also applies to Brenner: there was a
change in social relations -- which is what Marx meant by an AgRev -- which
set the stage for a _later_ acceleration of tech. change in he countryside.
(Note here that I am defending Marx (since Lazonick was doing so), not
Brenner. I am also not defending Bairoch, who has a different definition of
the AgRev than Marx (or Brenner, I believe), even though he has a lot of
interesting things to say.)
In other words, both the lumpers and the splitters can be right. The former
can right about quantitative evidence, while the latter can be right about
qualitative issues, like changes in the relations of production. (As some
hairy old dead white male noted, history involves _both_ qualitative and
quantitative changes.)
Of course, we can't go too far with either: the lumpers want to tell us
that the world social system hasn't changed since the last ice age, while
he splitters want to find discrete stages in all processes. (BTW, some of
A.G. Frank's recent work veers toward the picture of the lumpers I just
painted.)
Further, the issue of changes in "methods of agricultural production" is
irrelevant to a critique of Marx (which is who you seem to be criticizing
by way of criticizing Brenner). But I'll develop this point below [issue B].
>Maurice Dobb knew that the sprouts of capitalism in that early period were
>growing in a basically feudal society, were moving towards capitalism, but
>real capitalism did not come to dominate English society until the 17th
>century. (See his _Studies_ and the Hilton volume.)
[issue D] Marx tells us at the beginning of ch. 27 of vol. I of CAPITAL
that serfdom had largely disappeared from England by the last part of the
14th century. Looks to me like there's a definitional issue here. Is Dobb
saying that there is a kind of feudalism that lacks serfdom? or what?
(Since Dobb's definition of feudalism basically equated it with serfdom,
this is strange.)
OOPS! That point gets us into issues of defining big terms like capitalism
and feudalism and the like, something that seems necessary to clear
thinking to me, but you seem to want to avoid.
If definitions are not clear, the debate between the lumpers and the
splitters will go on forever, like the eternal dualistic battle between
Good and Evil in Zoroastrian thought.
You don't have to define your terms if you don't want to, but I will define
_my_ terms.
>Brenner goes off into
>fantasy land when he imagines that some tenant farmers of the 15th and
>16tth century magically began to revolutionize technology, etc., and truly
>invented a capitalist society.
[issue B]
(a) As has been pointed out several times on pen-l (though not by me),
nobody "invented" capitalism. Even if the tenant farmers had introduced all
sorts of new technology (including mechanical reapers), that is not
"inventing capitalism." Using Marx's definition, capitalism is a _social
relationship_, not a matter of _technology_.
Now if you want to use a different definition of "capitalism," that's your
right as an American, guaranteed by the first amendment to the
Constitution. But be very clear that _I_ am NOT using the technological
definition of capitalism that you seem to be using, which stuffs the social
relations of production into the word "etc."
Open your bible to ch. 33, the fourth footnote and quote scripture: "A
negro is a negro. In certain relations he becomes a slave. A mule is a
machine for spinning cotton. Only in certain relations does it become
capital. Outside these circumstances, it is no more capital than gold is
intrinsically money, ... Capital is a social relation of production. It is
a historical of production." (Marx, "Wage-Labor and Capital," quoted
CAPITAL, vol. I.)
Similarly, agricultural technology is agricultural technology. Only in
certain social relations is it part of capitalism.
Maybe the "tenant farmers" could be seen as "inventing capitalism" because
they greedily redefined traditional property rights in land as being their
own, denying the direct producers the traditional property rights that the
latter had. But I don't like the word "inventing" unless it's applied to
technology.
One distinction between the lumpers and the splitters is that the former
often emphasize _technology_, since technological change is usually gradual
and can be seen as a generally gradual process. After all, what is the
difference, really, between gunpowder and an atomic bomb? Obviously, the
latter evolved from the former, but as a gradual and incremental process,
while you find TNT (glorified gunpowder!) in a-bombs.
The splitters of the Marxian tradition, on the other hand, emphasize not
technology in defining "feudalism," "capitalism," etc., but social
relations of production. There are _qualitative differences_ between
serfdom and capitalist wage-labor (and between having a relatively
independent peasantry and capitalist wage-labor), even though we can see
some real-world mixed or intermediate cases. (Note that we can't understand
the mixed cases of the real world unless we understand the pure cases.)
[this is issue D again.]
[so issues A, B, and D are intimately linked.]
(b) I should mention that the enclosure movement itself was not just a
change in social relations. It was also in some ways a technological
change. If one shifts from the old system of splitting the fields into
little strips that are shared among the community of agricultural direct
producers to the new system of making it one big field with a big fence
(enclosure) around it, that changes not only the relations between people
(proletarianizing some) but also the relationship between the producers and
the land (which is one definition of agricultural technology).
Some of those changes might be seen as "sideways changes," i.e., simply
shifting from producing one set of products (grain and lots of other crops)
to another (sheep) that involves a similar level of technology. But uniting
fields means that different (often technologically-superior) techniques of
plowing can be applied. And even clearing the land for "mere sheep" allows
for bringing in other technological change in the future.
(Strictly speaking, one can't say that a method of producing grain is on "a
similar level of technology" to a method of raising sheep, since grain
yields can't be compared to sheep yields. Apples and oranges can't be
compared that way. But you know what I mean.)
>I have no problem with the idea that there
>were some petty capitalists in the English countryside (and elsewhere) in
>this period, but they sure as hell didn't invent capitalism or transform
>England's green & pleasant land into a black, smoky, industrial capitalist
>society.
[issue D] The issue of the creation of the industrial revolution (which
_did_ transform England's green & pleasant land into a bunch of satanic
mills) is _irrelevant_. The industrial revolution is NOT the same thing as
the rise of capitalism, at least according to the definition of capitalism
that I learned from Marx.
The rise of capitalism in the countryside (starting in the late 1400s,
according to Marx) preceded the industrial revolution (roughly 1770-1830)
by centuries. (BTW, the USSR, which in my book was _not_ capitalist, also
turned the countryside into a "black & smoky industrial society," while
Haiti is capitalist but hardly industrialized. So there is no necessary
connection between capitalism and industrialization.)
>And, incidentally, Brenner says essentially nothing about class
>struggle. I can't find out who he believes might have been struggling
>against whom -- not serfs against lords because serfdom had ended.
[issue D] If I remember correctly, Brenner was talking about a generally
one-sided class struggle by the land-owners in alliance with their tenants
against the direct producers (who were not serfs). Since this is the kind
of class struggle that we in the US have been "enjoying" for many years, we
cannot rule out this phenomenon's relevance. For France, on the other hand,
Brenner discusses the relative success of the resistance by the direct
producers.
BTW, I thought serfdom hadn't ended, based on your citation of Dobb above.
(Dobb, if you remember, defined feudalism basically as serfdom. I'd bring
in Marc Bloch's definition, but that's another issue.)
>Again on the Hilton volume: I think all of the contributors were in
>agreement -- and nobody since then has proven them wrong -- that the period
>from the 15th to the 17th century was a period of slow transition from
>feudal society (with sprouts, etc.) to preindustrial capitalist society of
>the Bourgeois Revolution era.
[issue B] what kind of transition are you talking about? a technological
one? or one in which radical new relations of production were being
introduced (in waves), at first in agriculture?
BTW, I think that the issues of the pen-l debate do NOT concern the
"Bourgeois Revolution" (in England, the Civil War roughly 1640-1660, and
the "Glorious" Revolution, 1688). These had the effect (despite the heavy
religious content of these conflicts) of the _cementing_ of bourgeois
_political_ rule rather than changing the nature of _economic_ rule in the
countryside and later in the cities (some of which sprang up in the
countryside, where the guilds could be evaded).
>My argument fits their -- and especially
>Dobb's -- quite comfortably.
My reading is that theoretically speaking, there is little difference
between Dobb and Brenner (and Marx), since they are splitters who emphasize
the role of social relations of production rather than technology. There
are obviously differences in terms of the facts presented by these three
thinkers, but their theories are very similar.
>I say (1) that transition would not have led
>to full capitalism, to capitalist society -- certainly not for many many
>more centuries -- had it not been for the capitAL acCUMulated in
>colonialism, and (2) the same sort of slow transition was taking place in
>several other pparts of the world at the same time. I truly think that the
>only reason Dobb didn't say precisely that is the fact that, in the '50s
>and '60s, when the transition debate took place, Marxist scholars knew very
>little about the evvolutionary processes that had been going in regions
>other than Europe ("I have very little knowledge of the differing forms of
>feudalism in different parts of the world," Dobb in Hilton, ed., p. 166.).
>Such knowledge WAS available when Brenner wrote his stuff.
[issue C]
(1) I NEVER denied the role of "capital accumulated via colonialism," so
that issue is irrelevant here.
(2) I NEVER denied that other areas of the world could have been
"developing," so that issue is irrelevant here.
Of course the issue is what where they transitioning to? were they
introducing proletarian wage-labor on a large scale? or were they simply
developing technology, which is a completely different issue from the rise
of capitalism. [the interrelated issues A, B, and D raise their ugly heads
again!]
>By the way, there seem to have been agricultural estates in the 15th
>century in some other places, like Flanders, Cyprus, and Malabar, that were
>much more like factories in the field than anything you could find in
>England in the Brenner era. Even the English wool industry of that time was
>dependent on -- the grazing of sheeep!
[issue C]
(a) I never denied the existence of "agricultural estates" in other places
besides England, just as I never denied the role of luck in history (such
matters as the fact that England is a large island and the role of the
threshold effect). I don't know about the agricultural estates in Cyprus
and Malabar (or even Flanders), though. The word "estate" covers a
multitude of sins, including slave plantations and especially feudal
estates. What was the nature of these "estates"? What kind of social
relations of production prevailed?
One of Brenner's points is that if the option of forcing labor to do the
work is an option, the "estate"-owners are much more likely to use that
force rather than to introduce new ways of plowing, etc. So this question
of the nature of the estate -- i.e., the nature of the _social relations_
between people -- is crucial. (The opening of the door to technological
"progressiveness" is of course only _part_ of the story of the rise of
capitalism, since such matters as luck and colonialism obviously played a
role.)
(b) As noted above, the introduction of sheep (however technologically
backward it may be) can be a revolution in terms of _social relations_
(which is what I think is crucial). As old Karlos notes, the introduction
of sheep meant the expulsion -- i.e., proletarianization -- of people.
These folks could be used as proles later on, in both the countryside and
the city.
BTW, why do you think that old Karlos didn't sneer at mere sheep-herding
the way you seem to do? Why is it that he thought that the Dutchess of
Sutherland was actually doing something important when she cleared her
lands of people to make way for sheep?
>(2) You don't seem to read my posts before you lash out at them ("straw
>man," "single factor theory," etc).
I wasn't calling _you_ a "straw man." Rather, I was saying we should get
away from the two stereotyped positions that some people on the list were
pushing and to seek a critical synthesis. (Each of the two camps was
stereotyping the other.) As for the single factor theory, see below.
>I argue that processes going on in
>Europe were not fundamentally different from processes going on elsewhere
>in terms of an emerging "transition" but the transition-that=happend
>actually happened only because it got a push from the outside -- from
>colonialism.
[issue C] I _never_ (ever!) denied the role of colonialism. But you still
have to face the issue (brought up many times on pen-l, by several people)
of why the benefits of colonialism to the colonizers helped England become
capitalist but not previous conquering powers like the ancient Persian or
Roman empires.
Colonialism hardly seems sufficient to explaining the rise of capitalism
(unless you use some other definition of capitalism than I am using). Maybe
it's necessary, but since colonialism (looting, land-grabbing, the
subjugation of foreign peoples, gold-grabbing, etc.) has been so common in
human history, other factors besides mere colonialism are needed to the
explanation of the rise of capitalism (as I define it).
I still don't see what's wrong with the dynamite theory, i.e., that the
English AgRev (which involved not mere technical change but changes in
social relations of production) but colonialism lit the fuse and fed the
resulting blaze.
>It might have produced a truly capitalist society many
>centuries later without that push -- or it might not have: who knows?
Of course no-one knows. We also don't know what would have happened if
there had been no AgRev (i.e., a radical change in rural relations of
production, not a mere technological change) starting in the late 1400s.
>The only "single-factor" theory around here is the Eurocentric aregument
>that Europe, and europe alone, would have effectuated a trasnsition to
>capitalism in the 17th century whether or not there had beenb accumulation
>in the mines and slave plantations of the colonies.
I have no defense for the Eurocentric argument, especially its Weberian
variant.
But I think that your theory is really nothing but a single-factor one
because there's only _one_ factor that differentiates England (and more
generally, W. Europe) from the conquered world. And that's the _luck_ with
England and W. Europe of conquering the rest of the world before the rest
of the world conquered them.
As noted, I never denied the role of luck. In fact, the English ruling
class can be seen as benefiting from "dumb luck" to have an AgRev in the
first place. Those dummies!
----------------
BTW, I've forgotten who it was who said that I attributed academic
sectarianism to Jim Blaut. I did not do so. If anyone, I was thinking of
Ricardo Duchesne (though I'm willing to widen my scope). Instead, I was
simply speculating about why single-factor theories are so popular. It
could be academic sectarianism: people benefit from endless
Zoroastrian-style dualistic battles between "schools." On the other hand,
most academics simply have a hard time thinking very deeply.
BTW2, I'm sorry if I've offended any Zoroastrians. I also show disdain
toward other religions, including atheism.
this is my last missive for the day!
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
