Next in line is Perry Anderson, whom Wood thinks added little to
the debate except clarify the disctinction between "politico-legal
coercion" and "economic" exploitation, with his argument that the
Absolutist state "represented the displacement upward and the
centralization of the feudal lords' politico-legal coercive powers,
separating those powers from economic exploitation" (37), so that
the prior feudal fusion of the political and the economic gave way to
a separation between these two levels characteristic of capitalism.
As the feudal ruling classes handed their private coercive powers to
the state, and became dependent on the state for protection, and
for the spoils of office generated through taxation, commodity
production "was able to grow, and the 'economy' could follow its
own inclinations" (38). You guessed it: Anderson, too, felt prey to
the temptations of market ideology with this idea that commodity
production only required the removal of feudal coercion to flourish
into capitalism. Wood will have none of this ideology. Capitalism is
not an opportunity but an imperative, an imperative which only
comes into effect when the relations of production themselves are
transformed...not because the market creates the opportunity but
because there is already something about the nature of those
relations which makes possible their transformation.
