Does this author address the problems with measuring productivity?
Not really. But as I said, he is a proponent of British superiority.
It is just his time-frame that differs from Brenner's. England was
part of the pack and shot ahead after 1700.
It's been argued that among other places, China was also "ahead" of
England about the same time (however "ahead" is measured). But the
point of capitalism is not who is ahead at any single point in time.
(That's always changing.)
Well, look. If England was not measurably more productive than other
European nations in terms of agricultural productivity until 1700, then
the Brenner thesis is bogus. Everybody understands that China was
superior in its own way in 1700, but the crux of the Brenner thesis
was superiority in farming. Period. If the facts don't bear that out,
then something is really amiss.
The question is the rate of _accumulation_ and the structural basis
for faster accumulation. Brenner's stuff is about the creation of that
kind of structural basis: proletarianized agriculture has a greater
potential for capitalist accumulation than does French-type
small-holder agriculture of that era.
Oh, I see. Potential. Maybe so, but Brenner and Wood don't talk about
potential. They talk about actual superiority as early as the 15th
century. Maybe England had a potential in the 1400s to shoot ahead by
1700. What's 300 years here or there, I suppose.
What time period is relevant to the issue of the creation of
capitalism as a mode of production? it seems to me that we can see a
two-step process:
(1) the expropriation of the agricultural producers, which creates
merely direct and redistributive benefits (i.e., looting rewards) to
the landlords; and
(2) the later realization of faster accumulation, productivity, and
economic growth (as usually measured). Of course, this was not part of
the landlords' intentions, except in the idealized tales of bourgeois
economic history textbooks (Turnip Townsend and all that).
As an economist, Jim, you seem awfully averse to numbers. Perhaps you
are too busy with other things to actually read Robert Allen's
article that I took the trouble to make available.
I'd like to here what you have to say about that. Of course, the
answer to Albritton's question depends on one's definition of
capitalism. A.G. Frank and others seem to equate capitalism with the
existence of markets in final commodities (consumer & investment
goods). Marx and others equate capitalism with the existence of
proletarian labor ("free in a double sense").
Albritton is rather a purist when it comes to such definitions. That
is chiefly why he dismisses Brenner. For Albritton, the key question
is the commodification of labor power. By this criterion, there was
no "agrarian capitalism" in Great Britain since there was a general
lack of such commodification well into the 18th century. There is a
wealth of evidence in Albritton's article to support this point, but
I doubt that you will take the trouble to track the article down and
read it for yourself. Your general indolence in this now nearly 10
year old debate is pretty well established.
Further, when capitalism "exists" is often a matter of opinion because
of uneven development. The enclosure movement -- which people like
Marx saw as a precondition for the existence of capitalism in England
-- was uneven, coming in waves and hitting different parts of the
country at different times. There are still parts of England that
haven't been enclosed, I am told (by someone from that non-enclosed
region).
When did capitalism suddenly cross the threshold and "exist" for
English agriculture -- or England -- as a whole? If we require 100%
enclosure, it still doesn't exist. The existence of capitalism thus
depends on how one defines the threshold.
Where's the beef?
More likely, the story is best seen as a process. Enclosure and
similar moves (shutting off forests to "poaching," etc.) created a
flow of proletarianized labor-power that was sometimes enough and
sometimes insufficient for industrial capitalism's ravenous maw. Then,
at some point in the 19th century, mechanization of production (the
"real" subjection of labor by capitalism) meant that flows of labor
from agriculture were no longer needed. This likely weakened any urban
capitalist support for rural efforts at furthering enclosure.
More empty speculation.
Thus, the Brenner thesis about agriculture is more about the existence
of the process than the existence of full-blown capitalism in English
agriculture. It's more about the creation of a structural basis for
capitalist accumulation than it is about the existence of pure
capitalism (however defined).
Yawn.
