me:
>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.)
LP:
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.
What do you mean by "bogus"? I doubt that Brenner would measure the
success of his theory by reference to productivity alone. It's about
structural transformation.
Could you please state the Brenner hypothesis or hypotheses that you
see as being disproved? It's quite possible that different people have
different interpretations of his theory.
Everybody [including Adam Smith] 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.
What is "superiority"? is it the superiority of _all_ British
agriculture? or just the capitalist segment? is it static superiority?
or dynamic superiority, i.e., the creation of the structural basis for
a take-off of capitalist agriculture, after the period around 1700.
(The non-availability of data makes the cut-off period ambiguous.)
me:
>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.
Again, what kind of superiority? a greater ability to feed the people?
no -- a greater ability to promote profits and accumulation.
By the way, structural transformation does pay off slowly. It took
more that 200 years for the colonies on the East Coast to turn into
the preeminent imperial power in the world.
BTW2, I think it's a mistake to conflate Brenner and Wood. They have
different views.
>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 am much too busy. I like numbers (a lot), but I also know that they
mean completely different things in different theoretical contexts.
The same numbers can have a lot of different interpretations. Because
I lack the time to do research outside of my current fields, I am
staying on a theoretical level. (I thought that I'd said this before.)
>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.
as I said, I don't have the time. But it's quite possible that he's
got things in reverse. It is true that the commodity status of final
goods and services is crucial to capitalism as a full-blown system
that Marx describes (as it is to simple commodity production). It is
also true that for many goods and services, this status preceded
capitalism by centuries. (That is, markets go back to ancient Babylon,
if not earlier.) But it's pretty clear that for Marx,
proletarianization defines capitalism (as opposed to other modes of
production). For example, with social democracy and Algerian-style
state capitalism, a lot of final goods and services do not have
commodity status, but capitalism remains. (BTW, I don't see "state
capitalism" as describing the late USSR and similar countries.)
FWIW, my impression is that Albritton is more than a purist. He's a
proponent of the Japanese Uno school of Marxism, which has its own
definitions. That's okay, since definitions are usually a matter of
convention, but sometimes that messes up the ability to communicate.
>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.
LP:
Where's the beef?
I'm not sure what you're asking here. I guess that it's what's the
point of what I said. My point is that we have to be careful with the
relationship between theory and empirical reality. For example, one
historian said that Marx was wrong about enclosures because the
distribution of the population between English counties didn't vary
much at all during the relevant period. But it turns out that there
_were_ tremendous shifts in the definition of property rights (at the
expense of the direct producers). It was the latter that was central
to Marx's theory. (Further, the kind of poor relief that existed at
the time kept the poor from flowing "too quickly" into the city,
discouraging the kind of population shifts being looked at.)
Since I do not have the time to deal with (or rather, return to) this
topic of research, all I can do is to try to understand what's being
said on the theoretical level (which is easier).
>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.
maybe, but that's basically Marx's theory. and it fits evidence I've
seen about the English economic history.
>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.
indolently yours,
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your
own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
