Charles wrote:
>This is an interesting "whose who ?" type puzzle. I would just think that
>the M-C-M' that the newly rising capitalists were doing, even with some of
>the actual personnel coming from feudal lords' offspring, would have very
>significant analogies in the practices of the bourgeois merchants and
>userers during feudalism and on into the transition period. This is a long
>term debate here, but I cannot yet see the landlords turned bourgeois in
>the countryside originating M-C-M' more than the bourgeois
>merchants/userers turned big bourgeoisie in the towns and seaports, which
>seems to be the Wood/Brenner thesis.
The landlords were involved in actual production, unlike the merchants and
usurers. The latter often did become industrial capitalists, when a "doubly
free" proletariat became available (thanks to the enclosure movement, etc.)
The "agricultural revolution" fed the "industrial and commercial
revolutions," which in turn fed the agricultural revolution. It shouldn't
surprise us that the rise of capitalism started in the countryside (fed by
international trade, colonialism, the slave trade), since the vast majority
of people lived in the countryside, while guild laws and the like stifled
capitalism in the towns and cities.
It should be stressed that some merchants and usurers _were_ involved in
production (though not directly), in "putting out" (basically the same as
what's nowadays called "protoindustrialization"). However, the direct
producers were only partly proletarianized, while the merchants and usurers
used direct force to get a surplus out of the domestic producers. (They
didn't have control over the technical process of production the way a
modern capitalist is, i.e., with supervisors, technical control,
etc.) Industrial capital doesn't involve the use of direct force as a way
to get a surplus out of workers (the exceptions are in guarding property
and breaking strikes) but instead relies on direct control over production,
the state, and the reserve army of the unemployed. When the application of
direct force is a normal option for the organizer of production, that
discourages technical progress (relative surplus-value extraction). When
the capitalists own and control the machinery, hire supervisors, and rely
on the state and the reserve army to keep workers in line, there's more
encouragement to engage in technological improvement (where this
improvement, like "progress" above, is defined in terms of making a
profit). For example, if you own the factory, you can change the set-up of
the machines, introduce an assembly line, bring in new machines, etc. All
of this is much less possible if you rely on people to do work in their own
homes, often with their own equipment.
This is my last comment on Brenner/Wood type stuff until the New Year (of
the Gregorian calendar).
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
