2083218 Capitalism

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Origins of Capitalism in Western Europe: Economic and Political Aspects

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Annu. Rev. Sociol. 1989. 15:47-72

Copyright

?

1989

by

Annual

Reviews

Inc. All

rights

reserved

ORIGINS

OF

CAPITALISM

IN

WESTERN EUROPE: ECONOMIC

AND POLITICALASPECTS

Richard Lachmann

Departmentof Sociology, University

of

Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706

Abstract

Recent scholars have drawn upon

the

insights

of Marx and

Weber in a

renewed effort to explain the origins of capitalismin WesternEurope. Few

Weberians or Marxists have addressed

the

specific

role of

Protestantism n

fostering

rationaleconomic

action;

instead

they speak

of

modernizationor of

the rise of

the West. Marxists

are

divided

over whether

capitalism developed

out of conflicts

among

classes in feudal

society

or

whether

an

externalmarket

sector served to undermine

feudalism and to stimulate new forms of

produc-

tion.

Analyses

of the world

system, proto-industry,

and the seventeenth

century

crisis

attempt

o

explain

the

concentration

of

capital

and

of

production

in a

few Western

European

countries. Studies of

agrarian

lass conflict and of

absolutism

address he

formationof the

bourgeoisie.

The

most

valuablerecent

syntheses

have come from

scholars who combine class

analysis

with an

examination of the

particular

interests of those actors who inhabited the

complex

of institutions that cohered

into

nation-states.

INTRODUCTION

Social scientists and historians n recent

years

have

renewed their

attention o

a questionthat Marx and Weber both considered central to theirstudies of

modern

society:

How and

why

did

capitalism

first

develop

in

Western

Eu-

rope? Debates among

Marxists

and

with scholars

inspired by Weber have

spurred

much

useful

historical research and

analysis. However,

the most

powerful insights

have come

from scholars who seek to

synthesize

Marxist

47

0360-0572/89/08

15-0047$02.00

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48 LACHMANN

and Weberian

approaches,

most

notably

in works that

relate

capitalismto the

political

development

of

nation-states.

This article

begins by presenting the

chief

lines of

analysis

that have

developed out of Marx's and Weber's treatmentsof

the

origins

of

capitalism.

Debates

among

adherents

of

the various schools are animated

by

their differ-

ent

understandings

of how Marx and Weber

formulated the

problem

of

capitalist

origins.

These differences are

expressed by

the

ways

in

which

they

employ

Marx's and Weber's vocabulariesto define

capitalism

and the

state.

In critiquing work within and across the different

Marxist and

Weberian

schools,

this

article evaluates the uses and limitations of

each definition.

Proponentsof each school define

capitalism,

and therefore

the problem of

capitalistorigins, in somewhat differentways. WithinMarxism,the principal

line of division was

highlighted

in the

debate between

Maurice

Dobb,

who

views

capitalism

as a relation between a

property-owningbourgeoisie

and a

laboring proletariat

1947:11-15),

and Paul

Sweezy,

who

defines

capitalism

as

production

for the

market

([1950]

1976).

Weberians

are closer to

Sweezy

than

to

Dobb in that

they analyze

capitalism

as

a

practice (of

rational

economic

action)

as well as in

structuralterms. Scholars

from all

these

perspectives

make

a

point

of

differentiatingcapitalism

in

general

from

the

specific techniques, scale, and processes associated with the more recent

specific

form of industrial

capitalism.

In

their

emphases

on

origins,

the

scholars reviewed here

look

for the first indications

of those

characteristics f

capitalism

which

they

contrastwith

the

defining

elements of feudal or

tradi-

tional

society:

economic vs

extra-economic

surplus

extraction, proletarian

vs

serf

labor,

production

or the marketvs

production

or

use,

world or

national

economic

units vs manorial or natural

conomies,

rational vs

traditional

economic

action,

individualvs collective

property

and

economic

interest,

and

nation-statevs feudal political organization.Theorists from the variousper-

spectives

are in

greateragreement

on the definition

of the

nation-state. All

would

agree

with

Tilly

that a

nation-state,

at a

minimum,

controlled

a

well-defined,

continuous

territory

. . .

was

relatively

centralized

.

. .

was

differentiated from other

organizations

.

. .

[and]

reinforced its

claims

through

a

tendency

to

acquire

a

monopoly

over the

concentratedmeans of

physical

coercion within its

territory 1975:27).

The concern with

origins

has

served to center

the

historical

debate, and

hence the emphasisin this article, uponthe majornationsof WesternEurope,

principallyEngland

and

France,

and

to

a lesser

extent

the Netherlands

and

Italian and

German

city-states.

Eastern

Europe

s

compared

n

broad

erms, by

Marxists in

particular,

to

the more advanced

capitalism

of

England and

France.

Regions

of

Europe

not

controlled

by

centralized

states and

where

large

landlords

were

not

the dominant

political power are

slighted.

The

extensive researchdone on

those areas in

Europe

where

capitalism

developed


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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ORIGINSOF CAPITALISM 49

relatively late addresses somewhat different theoretical problems and would

need to be the subject

of

anotherreview essay. (Chirot (1976) offers a strong

critique of efforts to apply western Europeanmodels of capitalistic develop-

ment to Eastern Europe.)

WEBERIAN APPROACHES TO

THE

ORIGINS OF

CAPITALIST

RATIONALITY

Weber ([1922] 1978:1086)

viewed feudalism as

inelastic

.

. . a chronic

condition which did not contain within itself the elements

necessary to the

development of rational economic techniquenor to the practice of rational

economic

action. As a

result,

Weber looked to

sources

external to

feudalism

for the

origins

of

capitalism. Surprisingly,

Weber's most famous

discussion

of

the origins

of

capitalism,

his

theory

of the

Protestantethic, has provoked

almost as little recent

scholarship

rom non-Marxistsas it has from

Marxists.

Elaborators

of Weber's work on the Reformation

have been more concerned

with how

political

and economic forces affected Protestantdoctrine

than

with

whether Protestantbelief contributed o

capitalist

action.

Schluchter (1981)

has sparkeda revival of efforts to interpretall of Weber's writings on world

religions

as

part

of a unified

developmental

model

that culminates

in

Protes-

tant

world

mastery. Yet,

Schluchter does not

attempt,

as Weber

himself

did,

to draw

temporal, spatial,

or causal links between

Protestantbelief and

capitalist

action.

Most contemporary cholars who draw upon Weber's ideological analyses,

rather

han his institutional tudies

of

class and

state,

have attenuated

Weber's

precise and

careful contrastbetween rationaleconomic

technique

and rational

economic action, and his hypothesisabout the role of Protestantism n foster-

ing

the

latter:they

have turned instead to broad

generalizationsabout mod-

ernization. Eisenstadt

(1968a:7-8)

advocates a shift of attention from the

allegedly direct,

causal

relationship

between Protestantism

nd

capitalism

...

to the internaltransformative

apacities

of

Protestantismand

to

their

impact

on

the

transformation

of the

modern

world.

While Eisenstadt

(1968b)

addressesmodernization

n

general

and looks for

the functional

equivalents

to

Protestantism

n

non-European ettings,

John

A.

Hall (1985) seeks to specify the role of Christianityin making Western

Europe

the

first site of

modernity.

Hall

places

the

beginning

of

this

process

in

the ninth

century, seeing

that as the moment when

technological

innovation

and

market

exchange began

to differentiateWestern

Europe

from the rest

of

the

ancientworld. Hall

sees the decline of the western Roman

Empire,

and

the

consequent

creation

of

strongcorporate

bodies of

feudal landlordsand free

peasants,

as crucial to the

development

of a

modernizing

Christian

doctrine.


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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50 LACHMANN

In contrast, where

the eastern Roman

Empire persevered, Christianitypro-

vided a Casesaropapistdoctrine

for

Byzantium (1985:120).

In WesternEurope, accordingto Hall, Christianity ustified each corporate

body's rights, thereby preventing ay

or

papal empires

from

weakening

local

autonomy. Instead,

weak states ensured a

multiplicity

of

political centers

while Christianityprovided

a common culture to facilitate trade

among the

otherwise independent

and isolated

regions

and

locales.

The same

Christian

doctrine

also

encouraged

the

weakening

of kin ties

[a development

Weber

(1978: 1243-44)

attributes o urban

iving],

which in

turn

modified

population

increase, allowing peasants

to

enjoy increasing per capita

incomes

from

the

rise

of

trade and

from

technological

advances. The stalemate

among political

bodies forced lords andpeasantsalike to invest in land andcommerce, rather

than in

empire. Thus,

for

Hall,

Western

Europeandynamism

is

due to the

curious concatenation

of circumstances:

1985: 111)

the

plurality

of

classes,

markets,

and states

given legitimacy

and

continuity by

Christian

doctrine.

Goldstone

(1987)

criticizes Hall-and indeed the

entireWeberiancanon

on

the

origins

of

capitalism-for confusing entrepreneurship

and

rational

calculation

with innovationand

risk-taking,

which

Goldstone believes

to

have

been

the

true

engines

of economic

growth.

Goldstone identifies

eighteenth

century Englandas the time andplace when technologicalinnovationacceler-

ated.

He

argues

that

England's uniqueness

stemmedfrom the state's

toleration

for

ideological diversity,

a tolerationwhich was the

only significant legacy

of

the Revolution

and

Civil War.

In

contrast,

the

Spanish

state and

those

of

Ottoman

Turkey

and

China

emerged

from

their

seventeenth

century

crises

with

renewed efforts

to

enforce

ideological orthodoxy.

The

Spanish,

Otto-

man,

and

Chinese empires

survived for

two more

centuries, although

with

economies

that

stagnated

as

subjects

avoided

risk

and

thereby

stifled innova-

tion.

The most

compelling

defense of Weber is

presented by Collins, who

contends that in

the

General

Economic

Theory,

Protestantisms

only

the

last

intensification

of

one of

the chains

of

factors

leading

to rational

capitalism

(1986:33).

As a

result,

Collins

sees

the Italian Renaissance cities as

sites

of

capitalist development, especially

after the fourteenth

century popular

rebel-

lions

which

replaced

the charismatic aw of the

older

patrician

class with the

universalistic and

rationally

instituted

law

upon

which so much

of the

institutionaldevelopment of law was to depend (1986:41). According to

Collins,

the Weber

of the

General Economic

Theory

attributes

he decline

of

the Italian

city-states

relative to

England

more

to

the

advantage

which nation-

states

enjoyed

in the

competition

of

the world market than to

the added

capitalist

fervor induced

by

the ProtestantEthic.

Collins uses the

development

of

legal

and other

aspects

of

rationality

to

explain

Renaissance

capitalism,

while

calling upon

other institutional and


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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ORIGINSOF CAPITALISM 51

religious developments

to

explain the northernEuropeans' later advantages.

For Collins, institutional

actors matter

mainly

to the

extent that they propel

individuals to rational economic action. Collins, as he himself points out, is

close to Wallerstein

in his

(1974, 1980) world system model (discussed

below)

in

pointing to foreign competition, rather

han

to the class dynamics

internal to cities or to nation-states, to explain

the

shift

of

economic power

from Catholic Italy to ProtestantHollandandEngland. Collins's convergence

with

Wallerstein is

possible

because both view

capitalism as

a

practice

defined, for Collins in partand

for

Wallerstein

n

full, by the pursuitof profit

through exchange.

Both

emphasize

national

politico-economic units, rather

than classes, as

the crucial elements in

capitalist

social

relations.

Chirot also sets the development of capitalism within a longer process

of

institutional

rationalization.

Chirot,

like

Hall,

believes

the

rise

of

the

West

. .

. is

so situational,

so bound

by

the context of

a

given time, that

it

offers

no lessons for the

present (1985: 193).

Chirot views the

long-term

stalemate among

classes and between

clergy

and

laity

in

Europe since

the

eleventh

century

as

creating

an interest

among

all actors in

fostering legal

and

religious rationalization.

Such

rationality,

combined

with

the

autonomycities

were able

to win from

stymied

rural

ords,

created

an

environment or

rational

economic actionthat evenbefore the Reformation .. was an importantway

of

looking

at the world

in

key

urban

circles

(1985:191).

An even more extreme

example

of

this

tendency

to locate the sources of

capitalist rationalityprior

to the Reformation s

provided by

Macfarlane

who

argues

that the entire

debate over the

origins

of

capitalism

is invalid

for

Englandwhere there was

an

individualist deology

and

therefore

a

developed

market

and

mobility

of

labour,

land

was treated

as

a

commodity

and

full

private ownership was established, there

was

very considerablegeographical

and social mobility, a complete distinction betweenfarmandfamily existed,

and

rational

accounting

and

the

profit

motive were

widespread,

at least since

the thirteenth

century (1978: 195).

Macfarlane

equates

those characteristics

with

capitalism

and

concludes

that

England

was as

capitalist

in Marx's

and

Weber's senses of that

word

in

1250 as it was in 1550

or 1750

(1978: 195).

England, therefore,

was

uniquely positioned

to

take

advantage

of

the

tech-

nological

advances and

colonial

opportunities

hat

emerged

in the late

eigh-

teenth

century.

Macfarlane's work is criticized for its almost total reliance upon tax

records

and

parish registers [which]

leave so

many things

out

(Stone

1979:40).

Macfarlane

fails to understand hat before the

sixteenth

century

Englishmen were selling

or

exchanging villeinage rights

to work land

and

not

actual

private property.

He

totally ignores

the

close communal

control,

through

the manorial

court,

of almost

every aspect

of the

use

of

property

[including]

so

many aspects

of

personal

life

that

it

is difficult to see

where

in


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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52 LACHMANN

the medieval

village

the

concept

of individualism

found room to

flourish

outside

the

one

sphere

Macfarlane

emphasizes:

the

power

to sell or

bequeath

property (Stone 1979:41).

Collins, Hall, Goldstone,

Chirot,

and Macfarlane

represent

an

advance

upon

Eisenstadt

n

that

they ground

institutional

rationalization,

modernizing

Christianity, pluralism

and

innovation,

or

English individualism,

in

specific

geographicandtemporal

conditions; they

do not

argue

that such an

ideology

is reproduciblein almost

any place

and time.

However,

their

efforts to

differentiate

Europe,

or

England,

from the rest of

the world serve to

downplay

the

complex

causal

importance

Weber

gives

to

the Reformation.

Instead,

with

the

exception

of

Goldstone,

they present

modernizationas a

long-term

pro-

cess that proceeded without major interruption n those places where the

necessary geopolitical and

ideological

conditions existed.

The common

difficulties with Eisenstadt's

general model,

and

Collins's,

Chirot's,

and Hall's historical

models,

have been

flagged by

Tilly

in

his

(1975) critique

of

political

development.

Such

models, Tilly writes,

draw on

an

image

of

politicalprocess

which

only

became

prominent

n the

nineteenth

century [namely steady, orderly evolution]

. .

.

Such a literature seems

unlikely

to

yield

statementsaboutthe conditions underwhich a

given

political

structurewill disintegrate, stagnate,combine with others, or transform tself

into a

variety

which had never been seen before

(1975:615).

Only

Gold-

stone,

of the

scholars reviewed

above,

is

concernedwith

analyzing

the causal

relation

between seventeenth

century political

crisis

and

capitalist

develop-

ment.

Eisenstadt's

ungrounded,

and

Collins's, Hall's,

and

Chirot's very

long-term,

models

of

development

share an

inability

to

explain the

very

differences in timing and

form of

capitalist development

across

Europe

that

were

the

objects

of both Marx's and Weber's

analyses.

While

Macfarlane

offers a nationalist-cultural easonforEngland's early capitalistdevelopment,

he and

Goldstone

are unable to

explain why

some

English

individuals

gained

political

or economic

advantage

over

others,

nor

how that

advantage

was

applied

to

particular

social relations in

different eras.

Collins, Chirot, Hall,

and Macfarlane

consider

changes

over

very long

periods

of

time,

while

Eisenstadt

refers

to cases from all

continents and

historical

eras. As a

result,

all five avoid

specifying causal, as

opposed

to

conjunctural,

relations between the various

ideological,

geographical,

and

institutional factors they highlighton the one hand and the developmentof

modernor

capitalistpractices

and relationson

the other. The

unwillingness of

Chirot, Hall,

and Eisenstadt o addressWeber's

hypotheses (and

Macfarlane's

facile dismissal of

them)

are

especially regrettableconsidering

the

dearth of

Weberians and

Marxists who have elaboratedor

critiqued

Weber's

Protestant

ethic thesis.

Collins's

focus

upon

the General

Economic

Theory

provides

a

welcome

bridge

between Weberian

and

Marxist

concerns, yet

also

signals

an


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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ORIGINSOF CAPITALISM

53

abandonment f

a

needed empirical

and theoretical

dialogue

with

the Protes-

tant ethic

thesis.

A

model of historical scholarship

informed

by, yet

critical

of, Weber's

theoretical framework is offered by Walzer (1965)

who

contends that in

England Puritan Protestant beliefs led to a fearful demand for economic

restriction (and political control) rather

than to

entrepreneurialactivity as

Weber

described

it

(1965:304).

Puritans acted to undermine

traditional

practices; however, they and their noncapitalist

economic

vision were de-

feated

in

the Civil

War

by

liberal

capitalists

whose

beliefs and sources of

political victory remain unanalyzedby

Walzer.

This, then,

is

the relation of

Puritanism o the liberal world:

it is

perhaps

one of historical

preparation,

but

not at all of theoreticalcontribution 1965: 303). However,Walzer is unable

to identify a set of political

or institutional actors that could

account for the

Puritans'combinationof psychological successes andpoliticaldefeats.

Gold-

stone (1987), as noted above,

also sees Protestantism's ontribution o

liberal-

ism as indirect; even though Puritan ministers sought to enforce a

new

orthodoxy, they had

the effect of

forcing

the state to tolerate

religious

pluralismand thereby they stimulatedcultural

and

technological

innovation.

Walzer's thesis

is

opposed by Christopher

Hill

(1963,

1972),

the

only

contemporaryMarxist who has engaged in a sustainedstudy of Protestant-

ism's

role in the development

of

English capitalism.

Hill

argues

that

Prot-

estantism

gave

rise to

a libertarian

communist,

as

well as a

repressive

capitalist, ideology. Only

after

the

English bourgeoisietriumphedpolitically

over

peasants

and

proletarians

did Protestantismbecome a

guide

to

action in

an

actually existing society.

Gould

(1987)

uses

a

Parsonian

vocabulary

in an effort to

integrate

a

Weberiansense

of Puritanismwith a Marxist

analysis

of

modes of

production.

Gouldarguesthat Puritanismbecame a guideto rationaleconomic actiononly

after the early development

of

what Gould

calls a

manufacturing

ocial

formation

made

such action efficacious.

By manufacturing

ocial

formation,

Gould means

the

employment

of

waged

labor under he directionof

capitalists

and

supervisors,

as described

by

Marx in

Capital.

Whereas the drive for

capital

accumulation

s

immanent

n the

economy

of industrial

apitalism,

it is

not in

the

manufacturing

ocial

formation,

and

the

Protestantethic

provides

that

otherwise absent drive. Gould

mistakenlyargues

that an

arbitrary

bsolut-

ist government imited capitalistsin theirabilityto further heir interestsand

to

engage

in the economic behaviors

legitimated by

their

religion.

In

fact,

in

the

centuryprior

to

1640

English

landlordswere

able

to raise rents faster than

prices

and to

dispossess peasants (Lachmann

1987:

100-141).

Gould

argues

that the

motivation for,

and success

of,

the 1640

Revolution arose from

the

contradictionof

economy

and

polity. Subsequentefforts,

in the

period

1641-

1688,

to further or to

repeal revolutionary

actions were

constrained

by

the


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54 LACHMANN

varying ways in

which

the English

usedtheirreligionto derive goals appropri-

ate

for action in

the

new

institutionalcontexts

createdby previousrevolution-

ary actions. Gould contrasts the ways in which the Protestant ethic was

applied variously by royalists, Parliamentarians,

and radicals. He

explains

how the ultimatelytriumphant entryinterpreted

heir

religious

ethic to

justify

a limited monarchy,

a

strong

Parliament,

and local

autonomy

for

property

holders.

The issues of Protestant deology,

which have been addressedby Walzer,

Hill,

and

Gould,

and

critiquedby

Goldstone,

have

not

been at the center of

debates

on

modernization,nor,

as

subsequent

sections make

clear,

have

they

been

key

to debates

on

class

and the state.

Unfortunately,

most

recent

scholarship

in

this area has not

engaged

the theoretical and

empirical prob-

lems posed by

the interactions

of

beliefs

and

practices,

and

of

ideology

and

social structure.

THE

TRANSITION FROM

FEUDALISM TO CAPITALISM

Marxist scholars frame

the

problem

by asking

whether the

conflict of ele-

ments within

feudalism led to the demise of

that

mode of

production

and the

formation

of a new

one,

or

if

feudalism was a static social

formation

un-

dermined

by

actors

and

processes

external to

it.

Attention has centered

upon

the

changes

in

landlord-peasant

lass relations

that

occurred

in

the

century

following

the Black Death

of

1349.

In much of Western

Europe

aristocratic

control over

peasant

labor weakened

as

tenants won

personal

freedom

and

mobility,

even

if their economic

obligations

to landlords

remained

heavy.

Most Eastern

Europeanpeasants, by

contrast,

were not able to

take

advantage

of the post-plagueconditionsof laborshortage,and insteadthey were reen-

serfed by

their lords.

Maurice

Dobb

(1947)

defines feudalism in terms

of

its relations of

produc-

tion

and therefore views the demise

of

serfdom in

England

and France as a

vital indicator hat feudalism

was

beginning

its

decline in those

two countries.

Dobb

argues

that

factors internal

to

feudalism, primarily peasant

and

aristocratic

lass

solidarity(with

the

latter

mainly

circumscribed

by

landlords'

abilities to

profitablyemploy

serf and free labor in different

ecological

zones

under particulardemographicand technological regimes), determine when

and

where

peasants gain

the freedom

to

develop

a

petty [commodity]

mode

of

production (1947: 85)

under the

continuing political

rule of

the aris-

tocracy.

Dobb

argues

that

agricultural

and handicraft

production

were transformed

most

radically by

those

producers

who were both

excluded

from

aristocratic

and

guild privileges

and

free from feudal restrictionson the

employment

of


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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ORIGINS

OF CAPITALISM 55

their labor and their property.However, producers'

abilities to accumulate

capital and

to transform he pettymode

of

production nto genuine capitalism

were limited by unfaircompetitionfrom guilds and mercantile monopolies

and

from

lords

who continued

to

collect rent

under he

protection

of the feudal

state. Dobb argues

that

the

bourgeoisie's victory

in

the English Civil War

freed the means of production

rom

feudal controls, allowing

England . . to

accelerate enormously

the

growth

of industrial

capital

in

the

next half-

century-a growth surpassing

hat

of

other countrieswhich

as

yet

lacked

any

similar

political upheaval

(1947:176).

Dobb's contention,

echoed by

most

Marxists, that

capitalism first de-

veloped in Englandhas been challenged by championsof Italy and France.

Cohen

(1980) argues

that

Renaissance

Italian merchants

exhibited a commit-

ment to profit through

their use of rational business methods.

However,

Cohen

conflates

rational

technique,

which some fifteenth and sixteenth

cen-

tury

Italians

did

practice,

with

rational economic

action,

which was not a

characteristic

of

most Italian

enterprises. Instead,

Renaissance

Italians pur-

sued what Weber

calls

politically

oriented

capitalism,

and

they sought

wind-

fall

profits through

war and

political

alliances.

Leon (1970) contends

that

during

the

eighteenth

century

the rates

of

economic

growth

in France

exceeded those in

England.

Such

data,

even

if

correct,

do not demonstrate

that

prior

to 1700 France also

underwent a

transformation

n the

relations of

production equivalent

to

that of

sixteenth

century England.

Elsewhere

(Lachmann

1987:

16-17),

I

argue that capital-

ism, if defined as private property

in land and

proletarianized

abor, de-

veloped

in

England

in the

century

from

1536

to

1640,

well

before

any

other

country.

An

equivalent agrarian

transformation

began

in

a few

regions

of

France in

the late seventeenth

and

eighteenth

centuries but occurred n

much

of

France only

after 1789.

Dobb measures

the effect

of the

bourgeoisie's

ascension to

political power

with

a

clear,

if

standard,

Marxist

analysis

of how

Englishcapitalist develop-

ment accelerated after

the

Revolution, especially

in

comparison

with

those

European

countries

still

under aristocratic

ule.

However,

the

importance

or

economic

development

of which class held

political power

makes it vital for

Dobb

to

explain

how a small

English bourgeoisie

still in

formationwas able to

overthrow

the

aristocracy

more than a

century

before

its

French

counterparts

did. Dobb's failure to clarify feudal political dynamics has had two con-

sequences.

Some Marxistshave turnedtheir

attention o the

problem

of state

formation.

Their work

is

considered

later.

However, many

Marxists have

sought

to

analyze

the

development

of

capitalist

markets

as a

process

external

to feudalism.

That

tendency

has

drawn

upon

the

non-ideological aspects

of

Weber's

discussions

of cities and markets and

is

addressed n the

following

section.


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56

LACHMANN

Exchange,

World

Markets,

and

Proto-Industry

Marxiststudies of the markethave developed from Sweezy's ([1950] 1976)

critique of

Dobb. Sweezy

challenges

Dobb's

archetypal

Marxist

vision

of the

transition o

capitalismas the outcome of a

struggle

between two

classes, each

with a

vested

interest in

a

particular

form of

property

and in

particular

relations

of

production.Sweezy is

unconcernedwith the

dynamics

of

feudal-

ism, which he

believes neither

fetters nor

generates

capitalist

development.

Instead, he

describes

feudalism as

production

for use and

capitalism

as

production for

the

market.Thus,

Sweezy argues that

capitalism arose in

an

urban, market sector outside the control of feudal lords. Where Dobb sees

capitalismas

fettered

by

the class interestsand

the

power

of a feudal

aristocra-

cy,

Sweezy argues

that

production

or the market s

inherently

more

profitable

than

realizing

a

surplusthroughfeudal

appropriation

n a

natural

economy.

Sweezy

contends that

pre-capitalist

ommodityproduction

developed

in the

fourteenth

through

sixteenth centuries and

was

superseded

by

full-fledged

capitalism

thereafter,because efficient

producers

were

able to

outbid feudal

rivals for

the

inputs

of

land,

labor,

and

capital, regardless

of

the

relative

political

power

of

aristocratsand merchants.

Sweezy's

argument

suffers from a

degree

of

circularity.

He is

unable to

explain

why markets and cities were more

developed

in

Italy

and in

north-

western

Europe

than in

the eastern and

peripheralregions

of the

continent,

except

by referring

to the earlier

development

of markets

in those

regions.

Nor,

if

existing

markets are

the

main

predictor

of future

capitalist

develop-

ment,

can

Sweezy explain

how the once

backwardmarketsector

of

England

overtook the older

mercantile cities in the

seventeenth

century.

Ironically, North & Thomas

(1973),

who

adopt

the

perspective of mod-

ernizationtheory, offer a far more political explanationfor England'searly

market

preeminence

than does

Sweezy

who defines

himself as a

Marxist.

North

& Thomas

analyze

how the

political

interestsof feudal

classes

and state

rulers

inhibitedthe

development

of

private

property

and of

efficient

market

organizations.

By

acting

in their own

particular

nterests, premodern

Eu-

ropeans

elevated the

search, negotiation,

and

enforcement

costs of

exchange,

which

kept

the

private

rate of return rom

investmentfar below

the social

rate

of

return.In

North

&

Thomas's

view,

Englishentrepreneurs

njoyed

a

higher

level of economic understanding nd fortuitouspoliticalcircumstances,which

allowed them

to demand from the state

private

property

rights,

and

patents

to

protect heir

property

n

technical

knowledge.

These

innovations

ncreased

he

return

to trade and

production,

sparking English

industrial

capitalism.

While

North & Thomas

identify

some of

the

necessary political

causes of

capitalism, they

are unable to

explain why

the feudal

opposition

to

private

property

was

overcome in England and not

elsewhere. A

similar

problem


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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ORIGINS OF CAPITALISM 57

befalls deVries (1976) and Wrigley (1987). DeVries

offers a masterful

history

of the divergent paths of economic stagnation and development in Europe

between 1600 and 1750. Like North & Thomas he attributesthe different

outcomes to government policies, yet does

not

analyze

the

sources of those

policies.

DeVries is

especially convincing

at

showing how innovations

in

banking, putting-out,

and

local

and transnationalmarkets were

critical

to

capitalist development. Wrigley

traces the effects of

London's urbanization

upon growth throughoutEngland,

and

upon rationalizing

shifts in

marriage

and

childbearing

decisions. Yet

neither deVries nor

Wrigley explains why

those innovations were

confined to

particularnations,

nor

how

some

states

pursued policies that served to organize marketson a national level.

Wallerstein's

(1974, 1980)

world

system theory

addresses

a number

of

the

shortcomings

in

the

market

approaches

of

Sweezy

and the

non-Marxists,

while

sharing

their definition

of

feudalism as

production

or

use.

Wallerstein

defines

the bourgeoisie

in

terms

of market

opportunities. Bourgeois

classes

emerge

where and when the technical

means of

production, communication,

and

transportation

llow

that

class to

take

advantage

of differences

between

the costs of

production

n

one

region

and

the

price

of

goods

in other areas

of

the world market(1974:36). Thus, the timing

of

technological innovation

determines

the moment

of

initial


in

Wallerstein's

model.

Wallerstein

argues

that

capitalists

can

profit

from

exchange

with

noncapi-

talist

systems, e.g. by exploiting

slaves in Africa or in

the

Americas,

or

throughbuying

the

products

of serf labor in

Eastern

Europe.

In

Wallerstein's

model,

slaves and

serfs,

and

slave

owners and feudal

lords,

become

part

of a

capitalist system

of

productionmerely by taking

their

place

at the bottom of

commodity chains that end

in

mercantile

cities.

Wallerstein

brings politics

into the marketmodel

of

capitalismby recogniz-

ing

that state

power

was

needed

to control

the

producers

of

commodities and

to secure domination over the markets

in which

commodities were sold for

profit. Thus,

Wallerstein

argues

that the

main

advantage

that the core coun-

tries of the sixteenth

century European

world

system enjoyed

over the Italian

city-states which had previouslydominatedEuropean rade

was the

national

form

of

their

state,

rather han

any improvement

n the forces or

techniques

of

production they employed,

or

in

the

rationality

of the

ideology

which moti-

vated theireconomic actions. Strongnation-stateswere able to enact mercan-

tilist

policies

that served to

organize

markets

on

a national

basis, thereby

directing

demand

for finished

goods

to favored

producers

n core

countries.

Wallerstein

makes an

important

contribution n

presenting

the

formation

of

national markets

as

a

political process,

even

if

he is unable to

explain why

particular

states were

able,

or

failed,

to

sustain

mercantilist

policies.

He

employs

a

multiplicity

of

factors-geographic location, ecology,

and

es-


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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58 LACHMANN

pecially the balance of class forces-to explain variations n the

type and mix

of

agricultural

and manufacturedcommodities

produced

across the

regions

and political units of Europe, and thereforethe initialcore, semi-peripheral,

or

peripheralposition

of each

European

nation.

The rulers of each state

gain

access to certain evels

of

resources and must

find allies and

fend off

opponents

from

among

the

particulararray of class

actors

created

by

their nation's

position

as the

producer

and

purveyor

of

commodities

in the

world

system.

Wallerstein's

analysis

is

functional

in

that

he assumes state

and class actors have

relatively

little

difficulty

in

adopting

policies that allow them to find and maximize thereturn rom

their appropri-

ate niche in the world system. Wallerstein'sdiscussions of strugglein the

core for

primacy

in the

world

system (1980:74-125, 244-289)

attribute

shifts

in the

pecking

order

among European

nations to evolution in the

overall

size and structure

of the

world system.

The weak role

of class

agency

in the

world system

model

can be gauged by

comparing

Wallerstein's discussions of the sixteenth and the

seventeenth

centuries.

While,

in his

(1974)

discussion of the

formation of the world

system

in

the

sixteenth

century,

Wallerstein

acknowledges

that

preexisting

class interests were critical

to

a

nation's

entry

into

the world

system,

in his

second

(1980)

volume

on

the seventeenth

century

consolidation of the Eu-

ropean

world

economy,

Wallerstein

rarely recognizes

the

capacity

of

any

class to

successfully pursue

nterests at

variance

with

those determined

by

the

logic

of its

nation's place

in

the

world system. Already

in

the first

volume,

as

Skocpol (1977) points

out

in

her

penetrating

review

essay,

Wallerstein

assumes

rather than

explains

the existence of

transnationalmarkets and of

market rationality.

Research by students

of

proto-industrialization

hallenges Wallerstein's

pessimistic view of the possibilities for class agency within early modern

European

markets. Kriedte et

al, following Tilly

&

Tilly (1971), define

proto-industrialization

as rural

. .

.

industrial mass

production

for in-

terregional

and

international

markets

(1981:6).

In

pointing

to

rural

proto-

industry

as the crucial

engine

of

capitalist development,

Kriedte et al are

modifying

Weber's

(1978: 1236-65)

and

Sweezy's

(1976) depictions

of the

city

as a realm

of

freedom.

Instead,

Kriedte et al

arguethat while medieval

cities

helped peasants escape

feudal

bonds,

as

Sweezy

contends,

cities also

blocked furthergrowthof industry because n the urbaneconomy the supply

of labour

and

materials

was inelastic and was

kept

that

way by

the economic

policies

of

the

guilds (1981: 7).

Kriedte

et al offer

a

resolution to the

Dobb-Sweezy

debate

by showing

that

the absence

of

feudal

fetters,

in some rural

areas but not in

towns,

was a

necessary precondition

for

proto-industry.Thus,

Kriedte et al

(1981) and

Kriedte

(1983) urge

scholars

to look at the

specific

interplay

of

demographic


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

14/27


regimes, geographical comparative

advantages,

and

rural class relations

which generated

often

tiny islands

of

proto-industry

within

otherwise feudal

regions. States, and the worldsystem's expansion,undermined eudalism by

increasing

the overall demand for

proto-industrial roduction;however, nei-

ther national nor international tructural

development predicts where proto-

industrialists ouldbenefit from, and

further,

he

disintegrationof feudalism.

Kriedte has a stricter

definition of

capitalism

than does

Sweezy

or

Waller-

stein. For Kriedte

t is not

enough

that commodities are

sold

on

a

market.

The

commodities must

be

produced

with

labor

and

capital

that have been

freed

from feudal controls.

The

advantage

of Kriedte's definition and

method of

historical analysis over those of Sweezy and Wallerstein becomes apparent

when one addresses

the conundrum

of

capitalist development,raisedby

Eric

Hobsbawm ([1954] 1965).

Hobsbawm

pointsout

that

the economic crisis that

affected

all

of

Europe

in the

seventeenth

century

forces one to

ask

Why

did

the

expansion

of the later fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries

not

lead

straight

into the epoch of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuryIndustrialRevolution?

What,

in other

words, were the obstacles

in

the

way

of

capitalistexpansion?

(1965:14). To redirect

Hobsbawm's

question

toward Wallerstein's

later

work,

we

might

ask

why

the initial

beneficiaries

of

unequal exchange

in

the

world

market,

the Italian

city-states, Spain, Portugal

and the

Netherlands,

couldn't convert

their

profits

into

capital

for

investment

in

industrial

produc-

tion?

Hobsbawm answers

his

questions

and ours

by pointing

out

that So

long

as

there is

no

large body

of

wage-workers;

so

long

as

most men

supply

their

needs

from their own

production

or

by exchange

in

the

multiplicity

of

more or

less autarkic ocal marketswhich exist even

in

primitive societies, there is a

limit to the horizon

of

capitalist profit and

very

little

incentive to undertake

what we may loosely call mass production,the basis of capitalistindustrial

production 1965: 15). Where such

a

transition rom

feudalism to capitalism

did not

occur,

as

in

Italy,

Spain,

and

Portugal,

one

got

what

Weber

(1978:164-66,

193-201,

1961:246-47)

calls

politically-orientedcapital-

ism, an orientation to the

profit

opportunities

obtained

through political

domination, predatoryactivity,

and

irregular

ransactions

with

political

bod-

ies. Those were the

only

sorts

of

profits

the

original

core

countriescould make

from

exploiting

slaves

in

Africa and

in

the

Americas

or

by buying the

productsof serf labor in EasternEurope.

Only

after

proletarianization

reated

a

mass

marketcould

capitalists

make

continuous

profits

from

goods produced

in

the

periphery alongside

the far

more

profitable

market

for

mass-producedgoods

created

by

the

proletarian

workers themselves.

While

Hobsbawm identifies

proletarianization

nd the

mass market

as

the

key preconditions

or

capitalistexpansion,

his

essay is too

brief

to

suggest

an

adequate

framework

for

finding

the

processes through


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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60 LACHMANN

which, and the sites where,

capital was concentrated.

Such a study can begin

on the micro

level

proposed

by the studentsof proto-industry.But it must be

complemented, as Hobsbawmsuggests, by identifying the factors that de-

termined

who

gained

and

who

lost control over

capital

duringthe seventeenth

century crisis.

Feudal Class

Conflict

and Capitalist Origins

A renewed

interest

in

the

dynamic

of feudal class conflict has

yielded

several

suggestive answers to the questions

of

how a bourgeoisie

emerged first

in

England

and

why

that class

used

its

power

to foster mass

production

and to

dominateinternationalmarkets. BarringtonMoore, Jr. (1966) looks to agrari-

an class struggle

to

explain

the different

political,

and

by implication

eco-

nomic, systems

created

n

England, France, and Germany,

and

in

more recent

non-European

cases. Moore

identifies the

relative weakness of the English

ruling class-with neither a strong

crown as

in

France,

nor a

powerful

aristocracy

as

in

Germany-as

the reason for

that

class's

inability

to sustain

feudal

surplus

extraction.

Moore argues

that the demise

of feudalism

opened

the

way for yeomen,

drawnfrom

the ranksof landlordsand from the wealthierstrataof

peasants,

to

take

advantage

of

internationalmarket

demand for wool

by converting grain

lands to

pasture.

Moore does

not

explain why

sixteenth

century peasants

failed to

resist their

proletarianization,

or does he

acknowledge that peasants

continued

to lose their leaseholds

even

after the

market

for wool declined.

Moore believes

that

commodity

markets

generated

a

powerfulstimulus

to the

growth

of

commercial and

even

capitalist

outlook

in

the

countryside

(1966: 6). However,

Moore

merely presumes

that those factors led

to

capital-

ist interests and practiceswithout explaining why.

RobertBrenner(1976, 1982) defines feudalismandcapitalismin termsof

relations

of

production.

In contradistinction

o

what he

(1977)

calls

neo-

Smithian

Marxists who stress

market

relations,

Brenner sees the relative

class

strength

of

peasants

and

landlords as the

key

variable. He

argues

that

lords

everywhere sought

to

reenserf

peasants

following

the

Black Death.

In

Western

Europe,

where

peasant community solidarity

was

strong,

landlords

failed;

in

Eastern

Europe

solated

peasants

were unable to enforce their

strong

formal land rights

and

prevent imposition

of a second serfdom.

By focusing uponthe internalclass dynamicsof each country,Brenner s

able to

refute Wallerstein and

Sweezy's assumption

that feudal

production

and class

relations remained

static until

penetrated

by

external forces. For

Eastern

Europe,

Brennerdraws

a clear causal line

from

class

struggle

to the

second serfdom

and

to

that

region's

backward

export

economy.

The

ability

of

the Eastern

European

lords

to constrict the

mobility

and

income

of their

tenants

eliminated the labor

supply

and home market for

industry;

their


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

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ORIGINSOF

CAPITALISM

61

relianceupon forced labor arrested

he

development

of

productivity

and

skill

on Eastern

European

estates centuries

before the formationof a world

market.

Brenner argues that the social-propertysystems formed out of the post-

plague class

struggles

determined he

form

of

ruling-class

elf-organization,

i.e.

of

the state

(1982: 69),

as well as the direction

of economic

development.

Here Brennerconcurs

with

Perry

Anderson who

states that one

of the

basic

axioms of historical materialism

[is]

that the

secular

struggle

between classes

is

ultimately

resolved

at

the

political-not

at

the economic or

cultural-level

of

society

(1974:1

1).

Both

agree

that differences

in

the form

and

develop-

ment

of Eastern and

Western

European,

and

of the

French and

English,

absolutiststates in turnaffected subsequenteconomic developmentandclass

formation.

Powerful nobles

in

Eastern

Europe

subordinated

ndependent

cities

(here

Brennerand Anderson

disagree

with

Sweezy

and

Wallerstein as

well as with

Chirot

and Hall in

seeing

weak cities as

consequences

ratherthan

causes of

the outcomes

of

agrarian

class

struggle)

and

starved

monarchs of

revenues.

After monarchs and urban elites had

lost

their

autonomy

and

peasants

were

reenserfed,

the

principal

challenge

to

Eastern

Europeanseigneurs

came from

other nobles who

attempted

o

conquer

rivals' territories

as the

only

remaining

way

to

expand

their incomes. As a

result,

Easternnobles

quickly consolidated

themselves

into

ever

largergeographical

units

(Brenner

1982:

38-41,

75-76).

Anderson,

like

Moore, argues

that the

continuing

threat

of

peasantrebellion

was an even more vital reason for

Eastern

European

nobles

to

unite

in

strong

states.

The

differing

outcomes of

postplague

class

struggles created

more

auspi-

cious conditions for Western

European

kings

to

build the sorts

of

autonomous

absolutisms

which Anderson believes

fostered

bourgeois

class

formation.

Most critically, peasantsretained

personalfreedoms and

land

rights.

Kings

could

protect

and tax

peasant

farms,

and this

served to

limit noble

resources

while

providing

the

state

with revenues to

build

armies and

bureaucracies

independent

of

their

nobles. Autonomous

towns,

which

survived the

failed

seigneurial

offensives,

offered further

allies and

resources

for the

construction

of

absolutist states autonomous

from

feudal

lords.

The

contrast

between

Eastern and

Western

European

absolutism is

apparent

rom the

development

of

noble estates. The

estates retained control

of the

state

in

the

east;

in

the

west they steadily lost legal and fiscal powers as nobles were reduced to

officeholders

and

pensioners

dependentupon

state

favor.

Anderson and Brenner

believe that

fourteenth-century lass

conflicts

set

Eastern and Western

Europe

on

different, though

unilinear, paths

of

state

formationand

therefore

of

economic

development.

The

difficulties

with their

formulations

emerge

when

they try

to

explain

how a

bourgeoisie formed

under absolutism and

why capitalism

developed

sooner in

England

than in


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

17/27

62

LACHMANN

France.

Brenner argues

that France

failed to develop economically

in the

sixteenth

through eighteenth centuries

because state

protection of peasant

tenures preventedpropertyaccumulationwhile encouragingpopulationin-

crease. Surplus

extraction was increasingly

carriedout through taxes

which

fed

the

military and

bureaucracy

ather han economicprojects (1982:76-83,

91-94).

Brenner

correctly contends

that the decentralization

of power among

En-

glish magnates,

lesser

nobles,

and the

crown prevented he development

of a

strong

absolutism

similar

to that of France in the fifteenth and subsequent

centuries.

A

weak

state

precludedEnglish

nobles from

squeezing

more taxes

frompeasantsand ensuredtheir

defeat

in

foreign

wars.

The English

aristocra-

cy

then turned to

a

zero-sum

game

of

attacking

one another

in

civil war.

When that failed, English

landlords used their

continuing political control

over

land

[which] proved

to be

their

trump

card to

dispossess the peasantry

(Brenner 1982: 84).

Brenner fails to explain how the English aristocracy

n

the

sixteenth

century

suddenly

came to understand hat

private property

in

land

and

proletarian

abor

would

lead to specialization

and improvement ..

an

agricultural

ransformation

1982:

88).

Nor does

he explain why English

peasants,

who

had turned back

a

seigneurial

offensive

in

the

fourteenth

century,

fell victim

to a land

grab by

a landlord

class

which

Brenner

views as

even less

well-organized

in

the

sixteenth

century.

Anderson differs

from Brenner

in

his belief that

English

and

French

absolutism

both

aided


in

similar

ways:

merchants

accumulated

capital by

investing

in

state offices and

monopolies

and

by

selling goods

to the

state;

and the

state's interest

n

reviving

Roman law

(or,

in

England,

in

codifying

common

law)

for

its

own

administrative

purposes

created

a mechanism

the

bourgeois

could use

to

guard

their

private

property

rights againstappropriation y aristocratsor by the state. On this latterpoint

Anderson

is in accord

with Weber

(1978:

809-10)

and

Chirot

(1985)

that the

law

contributes

to

general

capitalist

rationalitybeyond

its

specific

origins

in

and

use for

guarding

the

particular

nterests

of state

officials

or of

an eco-

nomic

class.

Anderson's

analysis

is a clear

advance

upon

earlier Marxist scholars

(e.g.

Hill

1967)

who

presume

that

classes

develop

on their

own

in

the

realm

of

production

and that

the state

merely

reflects the balance of class

power

in

civil

society. By distinguishingbetweenmode of productionandsocial formation,

Anderson

provides

a mechanism

through

which absolutism

can

undermine he

interests

of the

aristocraticclass

which formed

and

staffed

it. As

a

result,

Anderson

is

suggesting

that

bourgeois

class formation was

an

unintended

effect

of

absolutism,

ratherthan

claiming

that

a

rising bourgeoisie

gave

the

absolutist

state a

relative

autonomy

from and

power

over

the

aristocracy.


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

18/27


Advocates of that latterview-which began with Engels ([1884] 1972) and

was elaborated by Dobb (1947:161-76), Porchnev (1963), Lublinskaya

(1968), and in a somewhat different way by Poulantzas(1975)-suffer from

an inability to identify instances of bourgeois-state alliances against the

aristocracy.

Nor do

they

offer

a

mechanism

through

which

the bourgeoisie

gained independentpower. Those failures

allow

Trevor-Roper [1959] 1965)

to argue that seventeenth century antistaterebellions were neither bourgeois

revolutions, as

Hill

claims

for

England,

nor

aristocraticreactions, as argued

by relative autonomy

theorists.

Instead, Trevor-Ropermistakenly describes

such

rebellions

as no more

than

conflicts between a court

composed

of

self-interestedstate officials and the country which was forced to bear the

increasing

burden of taxes.

Anderson suggests that

the

lines of seventeenthcentury conflict can be

analyzed

in

terms of

the

particular groups

of aristocrats

advantaged

and

harmed by

each

country's

absolutism

in

successive

historical

eras. Un-

fortunately,Andersondoes

not

undertake

uch

an analysishimself. Nor is

his

model of absolutism sufficiently developed

to

specify the state's different

effects upon bourgeois

class formation

n

England

and

France;

o do so would

close the

gap

in

Brenner's

argumentby explaining

how the

capacities

and

interests

of

English

landlords were transformed

in

the

sixteenth century.

However, Anderson's

work focuses attention

upon

absolutism

as

the

political

institutionalization

f

evolving

feudal class relationsrather han

as merely

the

instrument

of an aristocraticclass. His

effort

builds the foundationfor future

work

which

could

explain

the

discrepancies, highlighted by

critics of Marx-

ism, between revolutionary

actors and

their

purported

class interests

by

looking at the inadvertentstructural

ffects of

the state as social formation.

John

Merrington's(1978) analysis

of the role of towns

in

the transition

o

capitalism suffers from a problem similar to that of Anderson's study of

absolutism.

Like

Anderson, Merringtonargues

that the

Dobb-Sweezy

debate

falsely

dicotomizes the

relationship

of

cities and

feudalism.

Merrington

views

cities and

their

development

as

internal

o

feudalism yet

ultimately creating

a

bourgeoisie

with

interestsopposed

to those

of

the

feudal

ruling

class.

Thus,

for

Merrington,

cities

eventually

become the site of a

revolutionary hallenge

to

feudalism.

However, Merrington's

and Anderson's schema

fail to

identify

a

point when,

or

a

reason

why,

a

bourgeoisie

that thrived within feudalism

and through absolutism came to oppose their aristocraticcustomers and

sponsors.

Gintis &

Bowles

(1984) provide

a

bridge

to Weber's

own

(1978:901-

1110) analysis

of

the

state

by highlighting

the

economic

consequences

of

a

developing

absolutist

state

bureaucracy.They argue

that once

political power

was concentrated

n state

structures,

he essential character

of

feudalism-the


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

19/27

64

LACHMANN

fusion of

political

and economic

powers

in

manors-was lost.

Thus,

absolut-

ism,

in Gintis

&

Bowles's view was a new articulationof

state and

economy:

If the fundamental orm of surplusextraction is no longer feudal, the state

cannot be considered an

agent

of

feudal

reproduction,

whatever its

role

in

sustainingthe preeminence

of

aristocratic

amilies

(1984:40).

Gintis & Bowles are better able than Anderson to

articulate

why

the

aristocrats

who manned absolutist states undermined heir

own interests.

In

the course of

building

state revenues for the

purpose

of

protecting

class

privileges, state managers inadvertentlyweakened

seigneurial powers and

strengthenedpeasant

and town

legal rights.

However,

while Gintis

& Bowles

describe the general effects

of

absolutism,they

cannot

pinpoint the reasons

for

England'sdivergence

from that

pattern:

why England developed

capital-

ism instead of

prolonging

the transitionalarticulationGintis

& Bowles iden-

tify elsewhere

in

Europe.

STATE AUTONOMY AND CAPITALIST

DEVELOPMENT

Much

of the most useful researchon the

relationshipbetween state formation

and capitalistdevelopmenthas come from scholars who

doubtthat absolutism

was a state

of, by,

and for the

aristocracy

and instead make

the Weberian

assumption

that states are run

by

self-interested and therefore

autonomous

officials. Otto Hintze

([1902-1906] 1975)

and

Frederic Lane

(1958,

1979)

have been influential

n

developing

this line of

analysis.

Hintze sees the

state

as

primarily

a

military organization.

State

power

is

based

on

the

ability

to

draw

manpower

and other resources

for

war from the

country

at

large.

The

transition

rom the

feudal

to the modern

military

state is a result of the

state's

ability to conscriptmen directlyfrom the nationalpopulation.This serves to

undercut the

position

of the

nobility

and

strengthens

hat of an

autonomous

state elite. Hintze is

unclear

as to

why

aristocracies

agree,

or

how

they

are

forced,

to subordinate heir class interests to the

geopolitical

needs of their

nation,

nor does his work

provide

a

guide

for

understanding

how modem

military

states

contribute

to

capitalist

development.

Lane uses economic terms to

analyze

relations

between states and

their

subjects.

He traces the

ways

in

which such

political exchanges

affect other

types of economic relations.Lane arguesthat aristocratsandmerchantsalike

need to

buy protection

from violent

attack,

and

he defines states as

organiza-

tions that collect taxes for the

expense

of

policing

and

maintaining

a

monopo-

ly

on force within a

territory.

The state benefits to the

extent that it can

collect

taxes above the costs of

providing protection

services. Lane calls

that

profit

tribute. Merchants make a

form of

profit

Lane calls

protection

rents, 9

which

accrue

when taxes

are

less

expensive

than losses from

attack and

are


8/10/2019 2083218 Capitalism

20/27

ORIGINS OF

CAPITALISM 65

lower than the

protection costs

incurredby rivals.

Lane argues that

During

the Middle

Ages and early modem

times protection rents

. . . were

a more

importantsource of profits . . . than superiority n industrialtechniques or

industrial

organization

1958:410).

Lane

offers a stage theory of

history from

700 AD to

1700 AD based on the

changing relation

of

violence-using enterprisesto the

amount and

distribu-

tion

of

surplus (1958:412).

Initially,

armed men

established their own

tribute-collecting

enterprises.

These

feudal lords had

little

incentive to control

costs.

Only

later

when

such lords were

brought

within

larger

state

enterprises,

and their

land

rent became

separate

rom

taxes,

did

kings

have

reason to

try to

controlmilitarycosts andtherebyto raise the royal share of surplus.Finally,

the

profits

from

trade and

technical innovation came to

exceed

those from

protection;only then did the

customers

(citizen voters)

take control

of states

and their armed

employees.

McNeill

(1982)

contends that the

European

multistate

system,

in

contrast o

the Chinese

empire,

fostered trade

and increased

competitive

demandfor new

weapons.

McNeill

traces

how

different nations

gained

continental,

and later

world, power

from the

use

of new

militarytechnologies

and

strategies.

Yet

he

is not able to

explain

why

some countries failed to

develop

the

bureaucracies

and

procapitalist policies

needed to

organize

and

pay

for

the means

to

compete

in

European wars.

Lane's

suggestive model has

been

fleshed out for

France, and

recently for

other

European

nations, by

Charles

Tilly. Tilly

(1985)

views

European

monarchs as Mafia chieftains who

use their

militarymight

to

threaten war

upon

peoples

and territoriesunless

they pay

protection

n the

form of

taxes.

Taxes,

in

turn, p

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