I think the rebuttal is excellent, especially since it addresses one of
my pet peeves -- that academics and researchers like Greg Clark tend to
assess the nineteenth century with twentieth century perceptions. and,
one of the things I like about your work, Michael, is that you attempt
to put things like the game laws into the context of the whole and
explain it from the prevailing point of view from that particular time
period. maggie coleman
Michael Perelman wrote:
> I just whipped off a response to a
> negative review of a book of mine. I
> finally show it to you for comments
> before I submitted it. I will probably
> send it off tomorrow morning show any
> quick reviews would be appreciated.
>
> Greg Clark gave my book, The Invention
> of Capitalism, a good-natured, but
> dismissive review. Perhaps merely
> associating me with Karl Marx or Chico
> Marx is enough to write off my book for
> some people.
>
> Greg offered a more substantial
> critique, rebuking me for criticizing
> the classical political economists for
> not mentioning the Game Laws. Taken out
> of context, my position might seem
> rather silly, since the Game Laws might
> seem to be an obscure concern, hardly
> worth any notice. At the time, however,
> the Game Laws were having a profound
> effect on society.
>
> The Game Laws prohibited farmers from
> bothering animals that ate their grain.
> For example, in the 1840s, game
> destroyed an estimated quarter of the
> crops of Buckinghamshire (Horn 1981,
> 179). Wealthy hunters were permitted to
> chase their prey across farmers'
> fields. One fox hunt had numerous
> horsemen trampling crops on a 28 mile
> ride. One can only imagine the immense
> destruction of crops.
>
> The Game Laws had a human dimension as
> well. In Wiltshire alone, more than
> 1,300 persons were imprisoned under the
> Game Laws in the fifteen years after the
> battle at Waterloo in 1815, more than
> twice the number for the previous fifty
> years (Munsche 1980, 138). Between 1820
> and 1827, nearly a quarter of those
> committed to prison were convicted of
> poaching (Shaw 1966, 155). The number
> of convictions was undoubtedly
> understates because the Justices of the
> Peace who heard cases frequently
> neglected to record them (Hay 1975,
> 192).
>
> Poaching was taken so seriously that it
> was, on occasion, even equated with
> treason. The British courts enforced
> these laws with shocking ferocity.
> Several poachers were actually executed
> under the famous Black Acts (E. P.
> Thompson 1975, 68).
>
> The Corn Laws also caught up innocent
> people. Wealthy landowners installed
> lethal spring guns and man traps to
> protect their game from poachers. Many
> of the victims of these instruments were
> children just playing outside.
>
> This Game Laws created far more damage
> than the Corn Laws, which agitated many
> political economists of the time. Why,
> then, did the classical political
> economists spill so much ink regarding
> the Corn Laws and let the Game Laws pass
> unnoticed? For Clark, questioning this
> lack of interest on the part of the
> classical political economists seemed
> frivolous, or worse, an indication that
> I was indulging in some sort of
> Roswellian conspiracy theory. [see below
> in Clark's review]
>
> In truth, no conspiracy was necessary.
> While the Corn Laws seemed to threaten
> profits, the Game Laws augmented them.
> By depriving people of a traditional
> food source and requiring them to
> purchase substitutes on the market,
> forced people into labor markets,
> holding down wages.
>
> Perhaps, I am being uncharitable in
> attributing class interest to the
> political economists. In fact, I found
> a curious pattern among the writings of
> the classical political economists.
> While in their theoretical works they
> often praised the natural efficiencies
> of markets, in their letters and diaries
> and less theoretical works, they took a
> keen interest in finding ways to
> manipulate conditions in the
> countryside. Sometimes, such interests
> crept into their theoretical work as
> well, as in the case of Ricardo, the
> great opponent of the Corn Laws, who
> worried that the price of food was too
> low in Ireland because Irish people
> could get by too easily without engaging
> in wage labor.
>
> On many occasions, I have learned a
> great deal from Greg Clark's writings.
> I do not always agree with his
> conclusions, but I regard him as very
> knowledgeable. Generally, Greg defends
> markets as being beneficial. I would
> expect him to find my book uncongenial
> just as I do not always accept his
> findings. Rather than to claim that I
> have been wronged in any way, I believe
> that it is best to leave the verdict up
> to other readers.
>
> Published by EH.NET (March 2001)
>
> Michael Perelman, _The Invention of
> Capitalism: Classical Political
> Economy and the Secret History of
> Primitive Accumulation_. Durham,
> NC: Duke University Press, 2000. 412 pp.
> 2,95 (paper), ISBN:
> 0-8223-2491-1; 4.95 (cloth), ISBN:
> 0-8223-2454-7.
>
> Reviewed for EH.NET by Gregory Clark,
> Department of Economics,
> University of California-Davis.
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> One of our popular diversions here in
> California is "channeling" the
> thoughts of those who have passed on to
> the spirit world. Michael
> Perelman has seemingly by these methods
> made contact with Karl Marx
> himself. For his book is a lively
> polemic directed at the Classical
> political economists, full of
> allegations of double dealing and bad
> faith, that the master himself would
> have been proud to deliver. Marx
> lives. He lives in Chico, California.
>
> Perelman interprets Classical political
> economy as a political
> program in search of an intellectual
> justification. Classical
> economists wanted to promote the
> interests of the new capitalist
> class. To this end the Classical system
> celebrated the virtues of the
> free market. But free markets were of no
> use if the capitalist class
> could not recruit the wage slaves they
> needed for their factories. So
> Classical economists simultaneously
> promoted intervention in markets
> to strip the peasantry and handicraft
> workers of the vestiges of
> their independence and reduce them to
> the wage labor. They advocated
> in Marx's terms (or at least in the
> terms of Marx's English
> translators) "primitive accumulation" as
> necessary to make a market
> economy. But they did not advocate this
> openly: thus the "secret
> history of primitive accumulation." Free
> competition was optimal,
> unless it produced an independent
> peasantry unwilling to submit to
> wage labor. "While energetically
> promoting their laissez-faire
> ideology, they championed time and again
> policies that flew in the
> face of their laissez-faire principles"
> (pp. 2-3).
>
> Exhibit A in Perelman's indictment of
> the Classical mob is the case
> of the Game Laws. The Game Laws banned
> the landless and small owners
> in the countryside from taking game
> animals. Thus in England by the
> laws of 1670 to take game even on your
> own land a person had to meet
> a very substantial property
> qualification. In both England and
> Scotland these laws became more severe
> as the eighteenth century
> progressed, and more people were
> convicted under the laws. Why, asks
> Perelman, did the new capitalist class
> and their PR agents, the
> Political Economists, support these
> feudal restrictions in favor of
> the country squires? They did so because
> it took away the sources of
> support that kept the poor in the
> countryside from the factory door.
> They did so because a hunting peasant
> was an idle peasant and an
> insolent peasant, not a docile and
> dependable worker.
>
> That is the Perelman claim. What is his
> evidence? The main evidence
> that Classical political economy
> promoted the game laws to dispossess
> the peasantry is their almost complete
> silence on the subject! Adam
> Smith, "that great master of capitalist
> apologetics" (p. 49), was,
> writes Perelman, the only Classical
> Economist to ever mention the
> Game Laws. Smith, however, condemned the
> game laws as a feudal relic,
> noting that "The reason they give is
> that the prohibition is made to
> prevent the lower sort of people from
> spending their time on such
> unprofitable employment; but the real
> reason is that they delight in
> hunting" (p. 50). In light of this
> Perelman concludes this discussion
> by noting generously that "Although
> Smith refuses to acknowledge any
> association between the Game Laws and
> the interests of capital, he
> deserves some credit for broaching the
> subject, since all other
> political economists failed to make any
> mention whatsoever" (p. 51).
>
> Since Classical writers cunningly
> concealed their support and
> promotion of the Game Laws by not
> discussing them, or pretending to
> be opposed to them, their guilt is
> established by the silence of
> their friends in Parliament on the
> issue. "When Parliament debated
> the Game Laws again in 1830, not one
> prominent spokesperson for
> political economy called for their
> abolition" (p. 54). The
> alternative hypothesis, that Classical
> economists really thought the
> Game Laws were a feudal relic too minor
> to bother with, is not
> explored.
>
> Exhibit B in the indictment of the
> Classical mob is their treatment of
> household "self provisioning" or as
> Perelman also refers to it
> "the social division of labor." Here
> again we know of their bad faith
> in this matter in the contrast between
> their obvious desire to
> destroy self-provisioning and force all
> workers into the market and
> their public silence on the issue. Thus
> "Smith, insofar as he
> addresses the subject, treated the
> social division of labor as the
> result of voluntary choices on the part
> of free people" (p. 90). On
> the other hand any random statement by
> anyone criticizing sloth or
> indiscipline by independent producers is
> sign of a plan to
> eliminating independence and create a
> proletariat.
>
> It is true that Classical economists
> often wrote about the indolence
> of the poor and of smallholders. But was
> this casual moralizing just
> a relic of earlier modes of discourse,
> on the way to a more
> systematic way of thinking about the
> economy? Here I read their
> general silence on the issue very
> differently. It is the silence that
> shows that concern with forcing the poor
> to labor for wages was a
> peripheral element of their system.
> Perelman, has to transform this
> casual silence into a much more sinister
> conspiracy to conceal. The
> book makes little progress in that
> direction. Indeed the bold links
> drawn on the most tenuous of evidence
> are one thing that
> distinguishes the Chico Marx from the
> original. Those connections are
> so bold that this book might better be
> placed on the shelf with the
> "grassy knoll" and "Roswell" genres.
>
> As a historian who has written on
> England in the Industrial
> Revolution period I have a more innocent
> interpretation of the
> Classical conspiracy of silence on the
> alleged expropriation of the
> peasantry. This is that the process
> whereby independent peasants and
> artisans became wage laborers was
> already largely complete in England
> by the time the Classical economists
> arrived on the scene in the
> eighteenth century. Their silence on the
> issue is a silence of true
> indifference. They had no need to
> conspire in the expropriation of
> the means of subsistence by capitalists,
> because a free labor market
> was in place. The issue of common
> rights, access to land, and
> self-provisioning had been settled in
> favor of wage labor by 1700 in
> all but the rural fastnesses of the
> Scottish highlands. Even before
> the formal Parliamentary enclosure
> movement of 1750 and later common
> rights had mainly become private
> tradable rights of access unlikely
> to be owned by the poorest workers.
> Truly common areas with free
> access were limited and of little value
> (see Leigh Shaw-Taylor, "Did
> Agricultural Laborers Have Common
> Rights?" forthcoming, _Journal of
> Economic History_, and "Labourers, Cows,
> Common Rights and
> Parliamentary Enclosure: The Evidence of
> Contemporary Comment, c.
> 1760-1810" forthcoming, _Past and
> Present_).
>
> Perelman, like Marx, suffers from a
> wildly romantic vision of a
> pre-industrial England of laughter and
> leisure that accords little
> with reality. Marx had the excuse that
> he was writing at a time when
> little was known about that past.
>
> Gregory Clark is Professor of Economics
> at the University of California, Davis.
>
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>
> --
>
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
