Michael Perelman wrote:
Smith, like Keynes, realizes that passions do not disappear with
the rise of
capitalism, but rather markets sublimate the passions into positive
purposes.
Smith, Marx and Keynes all contrast the "passions" specific to
capitalism - the "essential characteristic of capitalism" being,
according to Keynes, "the dependence upon an intense appeal to the
money-making and money-loving instincts of individuals as the main
motive force of the economic machine" - with those dominant in non-
capitalist contexts such as feudalism.
Marx and Keynes, in contrast to Smith, make the capitalist "passions"
a means for creating the material abundance necessary for their
transcendence.
Marx's conception of the "passions" and of class relations and class
conflict as aspects of an historical process consisting of internally
related "stages in the development of the human mind" seems to be
missing from Brenner's account of the transition from feudalism from
capitalism. For instance, he treats "unproductive expenditures on
military equipment or conspicuous consumption" as instrumentally
rational means of feudal lords "increasing their incomes via the
increase of absolute surplus labour," the latter being the method of
increasing their incomes to which they were "largely confined" by
feudal class relations.
"Because the lords could not easily improve the productive forces
under serfdom, they were largely confined to increasing their incomes
via the increase of absolute surplus labour. They could,
specifically, increase output only within the definite limits of the
available land (subject to transport costs), population, intensity of
labour and minimum subsistence level. They thus had little incentive
to ‘accumulate’: to reinvest surplus in improved means of production.
On the contrary, unproductive expenditures on military equipment or
conspicuous consumption could make possible the attraction and
equipment of followers. The resultant enhancement of military
capability could make possible the improvement of the individual
lord’s productive potential— that is, through the outright seizure of
lands and labourers in warfare. Indeed, precisely because the
potential for the development of the productive forces was so
limited, development of military strength might be the most promising
means to increase the productive powers of the individual lords."
Brenner, "The Origins of Capitalist Development: a Critique of Neo-
Smithian Marxism" in New Left Review, July-August 1977.
He treats any implication that feudal lords were "irrational" as a
sign of error in any account of the transition where it's found.
"It is now known that by the later middle ages in northwest Europe
certain methods of agricultural production had been developed which
would have substantially improved output. Yet, as Dobb pointed out
many years ago, where serfdom existed—that is, where the lords were
in a position to actually control peasant mobility and access to land—
the impact of trade only induced the lords to tighten their hold over
the serfs, to increase exactions (including labour rent) and, we can
add, to eschew innovation in agriculture. This was as true for the
areas producing for the urban food markets in England during the
medieval period as it was for the East European regions producing for
the world food market from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
20 Does this mean that the lords were ‘irrational?’"
Ted
- Re: [PEN-L] I say po-tay-to, you say po-tah-to Ted Winslow
-
