The Birth of Capitalism

Heller, Henry

doi:10.2307/j.ctt183p671

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…The principal driver of English colonization was the crisis of accumulation arising from the long-term economic decline of feudalism. As early as the 14th century, the feudal order – resting on the extra-economic extraction of rents and services from a class of subsistence producers – was irreparably damaged by catastrophic population loss from the Black Death, recurrent famine and the Hundred Years’ War with France (Heller, 2011, p. 25). With labour scarce, wave after wave of explosive class struggles ensued between peasants and lords undermining the system’s legitimacy including its political structures over the course of two centuries (Wallerstein, 1979, p. 42).…”

Section: Colonialism Containment and The Genesis Of Racialized Capitmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The foundations of this industrial capitalism lay not only in slavery and colonialism abroad but enclosure at home – that is, the forcible appropriation of communal lands for the development of capitalist agriculture. As fences and hedges rose up across the countryside, whole villages disappeared with peasants expropriated of their small holdings and reduced to a state of market dependence (Heller, 2011). Over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, social property relations were transformed throughout much of rural England, with many of the former peasants reduced to the status of abject proletarians (Thompson, 1991, p. 218).…”

Section: Industrial Capitalism Class Struggles and The Racializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, the returns from agricultural capitalism within Britain combined with those from slavery and colonialism abroad were decisive in kickstarting the Industrial Revolution which only added to the misery and stigmatization of Britain’s poor. Against a backdrop of long-standing structural and symbolic violence involving dispossession, proletarianization and stigmatization, this subaltern class were now pulled from the countryside to work in the engine-room of the new industrial capitalism in what William Blake so aptly described as the ‘dark satanic mills’ where they found themselves ‘more exploited, more insecure and more miserable than before’ (Heller, 2011, pp. 197–198).…”

Section: Industrial Capitalism Class Struggles and The Racializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Racialized capitalism: An account of its contested origins and consolidation

Virdee

2019

The Sociological Review

179

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Undergirded by the perspective of historical materialism in dialogue with black Marxism and Marxist feminism, this article constructs an account demonstrating the significance of racism to the making of modernity. The analytic returns of unthinking Eurocentric sociologies in favour of a more unified historical social scientific approach include the unmasking of the intimate relationship between capitalism, class struggles and racism, particularly how capitalist rule advanced through a process of differentiation and hierarchical re-ordering of the global proletariat. From the 17thcentury colonization of Virginia to Victorian Britain and beyond, racism formed an indispensable weapon in the armoury of the state elites, used to contain the class struggles waged by subaltern populations with a view to making the system safe for capital accumulation. Additionally, situating an account of racism within the unfolding story of historical capitalism as against the postcolonial tendency to locate it within the civilizational encounter between the West and the Rest helps make transparent the plurality of racisms, including the racialization of parts of the European proletariat. This explanation of the structuring force of racism and the differentiated ways in which the proletariat has been incorporated into capitalist relations of domination has important implications for emancipatory politics. A race-blind politics risks leaving untouched the injustices produced by historic and contemporaneous racisms. Instead, an alternative approach is proposed, one that invites movements to wilfully entangle demands for economic justice with anti-racism and thereby embrace and demystify the differences inscribed into the collective body of the proletariat by capitalism.There is a powerful origin myth produced by, and on behalf of, sociologists which tells a rather comforting story about the discipline's inherent radicalism and critical outlook. We are all familiar with Becker's (1967) refrain 'whose side are we on?', which long ago suggested sociologists instinctively take the side of the underdog, while in a recent edited

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Section: Colonialism Containment and The Genesis Of Racialized Capitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Industrial Capitalism Class Struggles and The Racializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Industrial Capitalism Class Struggles and The Racializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Racialized capitalism: An account of its contested origins and consolidation

Virdee

2019

The Sociological Review

179

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confidence: 99%

“…North America, Latin America and the Caribbean were far and away the major markets for these overseas sales. 273 Moreover, it is estimated that this Atlantic trade constituted as much as 55 per cent of Great Britain's 'gross fixed capital formation investment'.274 By 1772, the Americas consumed 37 per cent of English exports, making them a critical market for the imperial metropole while allowing the West Indies to concentrate exclusively on sugar. 275 If we include all the colonies, the proportion of British manufacturing exports rose from 14 per cent in 1700 to 55 per cent in 1773 to 71 per cent in 1855.…”

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How the West came to rule: the geopolitical origins of capitalism

2016

Choice Reviews Online

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AcknowledgementsThis book has been almost three years in the making. Its origins lie in a collaborative article written for Millennium -Journal of International Studies in 2012-13 entitled 'What's at stake in the transition debate? Rethinking the origins of capitalism and the "rise of the West"'. It was here that we first explored the possibility of rewriting the history of capitalism's genesis by drawing on the framework of uneven and combined development. As this led us to a radical departure from histories centred on European developments, it became evident that there was a considerably more extensive and complex story to tell about the origins of capitalism. Our initially brief engagement with the global history of the 13th-17th centuries rendered evident a palpable dissatisfaction with the Eurocentrism of dominant accounts of this period. It appeared not only that vast swathes of key historical events, actors and processes had been left hidden behind the veil of Eurocentrism, but that the theorisations constructed from this narrow geohistorical vantage point had left the field of historical sociology with only a partial understanding of capitalist modernity. Moreover, it appeared that our very engagement with the historical record would demand some reconsideration of the theoretical conclusions we drew back in 2013. We were thus driven back to the drawing board -back to history, back to theory and into an enormously stimulating collaborative project of research, debate and writing. How the West Came to Rule is the result. We see this book as an outcome of a collective endeavour in three respects. First, although much of the research and drafting process for the book was done individually, the end product was built on constant dialogue and various moments of creative agreement and disagreement. Indeed, the chapters we are most proud of are those where our collaboration -in terms of research, discussion and drafting -were most intensive.Second, this book covers a roughly 600-year time span, and stretches geographically from Indonesia, along the Indian Ocean littoral, through the Middle East to Europe, West Africa, and across the Atlantic to the Americas. Such is the sweeping nature of the project that we have, out of necessity, deferred to and critically engaged with specialists in numerous areas of expertise beyond our own. We have also, out of necessity, selected and bracketed certain historical events, actors and processes from our narrative -gaps that we hope will be the source of further scholarship and critique for future researchers to follow up. As such, we appreciatively recognise that this book would not have been possible were it not for the extensive and important work carried out by the scholars xii acknowledgements we draw on. We hope that in writing this book, we will have done justice to these specialists, and hope to have made a humble yet critical contribution to the fields they work in.Third, we are indebted to the wider network of personal, moral and scholarly support that has undergirded ...

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British Public Investment, Government Spending, Housing, and the Industrial Revolution: A Study of Governmental and Social Surplus Absorption

Lambert

2024

Journal of Economic Issues

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When it comes to the British Industrial Revolution of the 18 th Century, much of the mainstream economics literature has tended to focus on how property rights, limitations on the crown or government, and changes in agricultural and manufacturing techniques have caused a great transformation in the nation's economic formation. Marxian and other heterodox economics views acknowledge these developments but also emphasize the enclosure movement and the development of a class of people that becomes an exploited proletariat. Both sets of views acknowledge the role of the British government in facilitating the Industrial Revolution, but in doing a review for this paper, there is only a small amount of literature on how government investment and spending and the housing of workers may have helped to spur on or exist simultaneously with the revolution. This is especially true within heterodox schools of thought, and this paper aims to add to the heterodox economics literature by discussing how government investment and spending, and investment in housing, dramatically assist with surplus absorption during the Industrial Revolution, which in turn helps the British economy to achieve greater heights. Datasets that have been developed over the last 15 years or so can be used to illustrate this. Finally, by using the concept of the Baran Ratio, it can be shown that a significant portion of the nation's economic surplus is absorbed by government spending and investment and housing investment, and much of this in turn would have helped private business investment and spending in absorbing as much of the surplus as possible.

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The Birth of Capitalism

Cited by 6 publications

References 54 publications

Racialized capitalism: An account of its contested origins and consolidation

Racialized capitalism: An account of its contested origins and consolidation

How the West came to rule: the geopolitical origins of capitalism

British Public Investment, Government Spending, Housing, and the Industrial Revolution: A Study of Governmental and Social Surplus Absorption

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