MIDTERMM
The Evolution of Capitalism
The Evolution of Capitalism
The transition from feudalism to capitalism
Not just about industrialization, also about property rights
From usufruct to private property
Interest as usury to interest as market price
Just price to market price
Enclosure movement (16th to 18th century)
The putting out system
From guilds to factories
From serfs to free working class
Technology – crop rotation, carts, horses
Long distance trade
The Evolution of Capitalism
Adam Smith’s Theory of History
Hunting
No private property, primitive technology, communal
Pasturage
Domestication of animals, emergence of private property, surpluses and government
Agricultural
Domestication of plants, landed estates, surpluses used to maintain retainers
Commercial
Emerges from burghers, trade is extensive, cities hub of economic activity
Evolution occurs as a result of trade, “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange.”
Leads to specialization and division of labor
The Evolution of Capitalism
Karl Marx’s Theory of History (Historical Materialism)
Economic base
Forces of production
Relations of production
Superstructure of ideas
Forces of production always advancing, sometimes slowly, other times quickly
Conflict between emerging new technologies and new social classes and privileges and ideas of old social order.
Modes of Production: Primitive communism, Slavery, Feudalism, Capitalism
In general, a linear, progressive view of history (similar to Smith)
The Evolution of Capitalism
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of Social Evolution
Society structured by habits of thought (institutions).
Two types of institutions:
Technology – problem solving
Workmanship, parental bent, idle curiosity
Ceremonial - conservative
Predatory, invidious,
No guarantee of progress, stagnation and regression is possible
Surplus leads to predation and class divided societies
Work is denigrated
Conspicuous leisure is exalted
Waste encouraged
The Evolution of Capitalism
Karl Polanyi’s Theory of Capitalist Evolution
Prior to the emergence of capitalism, the economy was submerged in the social fabric of life
Reciprocity – symmetrical exchange
Redistribution – centralizing institutions
Householding - autarchy
Under capitalism, the social fabric of life gets submerged under the economy
The economy stands above society
The economy (market system) regulates itself
The self-regulating market a product of the nation state
The double movement
The Evolution of Capitalism
Ellen Wood on the Origins of Capitalism
Capitalism did not emerge as a result of giving vent to exchange and self-interest
Capitalism emerges out of the changed property relations, in particular over land, that begins to take place in England in the 15th and 16th century.
The concentration of land ownership (enclosure movement) lead to competition on the part of farmers (peasants or freemen) to rent land from nobility
This also leads to competition on the part of landlords to find productive tenant farmers
Economic coercion first appears in the countryside. Its origins are agricultural, not industrial