Origins of capitalism
The reality is that what we want to find out is not necessarily the way that capitalism ties in with the industrial revolution. I presume that it will at some point, but that is not really the point. The point is to investigate the origins of capitalism, and it seems to me that this is the appropriate Google string to search for.
The top-ranked page for a search on "origins of capitalism" is of an article called "The agrarian origins of capitalism" by Ellen Meiksins Wood (Monthly Review, July-August, 1998). She is challenging the conventional notion that capitalism originated in cities. In the first paragraph already, she has given me a picture into why the industrial revolution would have been associated with the rise of capitalism. The implication is that any city - with its characteristic practices of trade and commerce - is by its very nature potentially capitalist from the start. The industrial revolution permitted the production of adequate surpluses to enable the full power of capitalism to be felt. It suddenly became in the enlightened self-interests of the middle classes to challenge the traditional social hierarchy that kept them from social climbing. The enlightenment was, after all, basically a middle-class movement. Its key figures were bourgeois: Descartes, Pascal, Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, expressing their ideas in the environment of the Parisian salon. Hence, the movement was also primarily French, because French culture at that time dominated Europe1.
Hence, the Age of the Enlightenment could have been seen as emerging from enlightened bourgeois self-interest. Of course, it does not end with same. In particular, the implications of many of the enlightenment ideals, such as either equality or rights, strongly suggest that animals are entitled to certain forms of consideration. Yet this would seem hardly in human self-interests, enlightened, bourgeois or otherwise. It is simply the following through of the logical consequences of the ideals spawned in the enlightenment, as I argued in "The efficacy of philosophy".
Unfortunately, many pieces to do with the origins of capitalism have a decidedly Marxist base and you can count this article among them. But she puts forward a very interesting case that capitalism had its origin not in the cities, but in agrarian England. English landlords in the sixteenth century had very limited 'extra-economic' powers to squeeze more rent out of their tenants by direct, coercive means. This was because they were part of an increasingly centralized state, in alliance with a centralizing Norman monarchy. However, the landlords did have unusually large economic powers to extract greater wealth from tenants. This was because land in England had for a long time been unusually concentrated, with big landlords holding an unusually large proportion of land. There are limits to how much wealth can be extracted by political coercion, because only so much can be forcibly removed from people before they die off and you lose your source of income. But there are no (short-term) limits to how much wealth can be extracted by economic pressure, through economic growth. Of course, one cannot escape the value judgements that follow in pieces like these, and she begs the question against capitalism horribly. But I shall look for other agrarian explanations for capitalism in my further reading, thanks to this article.
The second-highest ranking article is a critique of Karl Marx's The Origins and Development of Capitalism. I can see now that Wood has indeed simply lifted most of her analysis straight from Karl Marx's own words himself. Of course, we should not forget that Marx was an admirer of capitalism for its achievements and its improvement on feudalism, "abolishing as it did serfdom, and creating the free labourer who was not bound to the economic structure of feudal society". Of course, he did not think that capitalism abolished exploitation of the workers, but he did think that capitalist exploitation was of a better kind than feudal.
To be perfectly honest, this makes it sound more like capitalism brought about the industrial revolution than the other way around. After all, it was the dispossession of commoners by the process of capitalist enclosure that brought about a large enough labour force to help industry to flourish. It was also the ethic of agrarian improvement that seemed to motivate the technological improvements to make urban capitalism flourish. The surpluses then caused by industry resulted in the ability of the lower classes to climb the social ladder, undermining traditional class hierarchies. This actually seems to have been a major weakness in Marxism that Marx did not account for this process of upward mobility. The world under capitalism was composed of fixed roles of proletariat and bourgeoisie. One's productivity determined one's place in the new order, and people could fall from riches to rags if they were unproductive, just as others could climb from rags to riches.
1"The Age of the Enlightenment" by Professor Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.
The top-ranked page for a search on "origins of capitalism" is of an article called "The agrarian origins of capitalism" by Ellen Meiksins Wood (Monthly Review, July-August, 1998). She is challenging the conventional notion that capitalism originated in cities. In the first paragraph already, she has given me a picture into why the industrial revolution would have been associated with the rise of capitalism. The implication is that any city - with its characteristic practices of trade and commerce - is by its very nature potentially capitalist from the start. The industrial revolution permitted the production of adequate surpluses to enable the full power of capitalism to be felt. It suddenly became in the enlightened self-interests of the middle classes to challenge the traditional social hierarchy that kept them from social climbing. The enlightenment was, after all, basically a middle-class movement. Its key figures were bourgeois: Descartes, Pascal, Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, expressing their ideas in the environment of the Parisian salon. Hence, the movement was also primarily French, because French culture at that time dominated Europe1.
Hence, the Age of the Enlightenment could have been seen as emerging from enlightened bourgeois self-interest. Of course, it does not end with same. In particular, the implications of many of the enlightenment ideals, such as either equality or rights, strongly suggest that animals are entitled to certain forms of consideration. Yet this would seem hardly in human self-interests, enlightened, bourgeois or otherwise. It is simply the following through of the logical consequences of the ideals spawned in the enlightenment, as I argued in "The efficacy of philosophy".
Unfortunately, many pieces to do with the origins of capitalism have a decidedly Marxist base and you can count this article among them. But she puts forward a very interesting case that capitalism had its origin not in the cities, but in agrarian England. English landlords in the sixteenth century had very limited 'extra-economic' powers to squeeze more rent out of their tenants by direct, coercive means. This was because they were part of an increasingly centralized state, in alliance with a centralizing Norman monarchy. However, the landlords did have unusually large economic powers to extract greater wealth from tenants. This was because land in England had for a long time been unusually concentrated, with big landlords holding an unusually large proportion of land. There are limits to how much wealth can be extracted by political coercion, because only so much can be forcibly removed from people before they die off and you lose your source of income. But there are no (short-term) limits to how much wealth can be extracted by economic pressure, through economic growth. Of course, one cannot escape the value judgements that follow in pieces like these, and she begs the question against capitalism horribly. But I shall look for other agrarian explanations for capitalism in my further reading, thanks to this article.
The second-highest ranking article is a critique of Karl Marx's The Origins and Development of Capitalism. I can see now that Wood has indeed simply lifted most of her analysis straight from Karl Marx's own words himself. Of course, we should not forget that Marx was an admirer of capitalism for its achievements and its improvement on feudalism, "abolishing as it did serfdom, and creating the free labourer who was not bound to the economic structure of feudal society". Of course, he did not think that capitalism abolished exploitation of the workers, but he did think that capitalist exploitation was of a better kind than feudal.
To be perfectly honest, this makes it sound more like capitalism brought about the industrial revolution than the other way around. After all, it was the dispossession of commoners by the process of capitalist enclosure that brought about a large enough labour force to help industry to flourish. It was also the ethic of agrarian improvement that seemed to motivate the technological improvements to make urban capitalism flourish. The surpluses then caused by industry resulted in the ability of the lower classes to climb the social ladder, undermining traditional class hierarchies. This actually seems to have been a major weakness in Marxism that Marx did not account for this process of upward mobility. The world under capitalism was composed of fixed roles of proletariat and bourgeoisie. One's productivity determined one's place in the new order, and people could fall from riches to rags if they were unproductive, just as others could climb from rags to riches.
Notes
1"The Age of the Enlightenment" by Professor Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.
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