Theory as History

Banaji, Jairus

doi:10.1163/ej.9789004183681.i-406

Cited by 184 publications

(23 citation statements)

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“…Piggybacking off this framing, the conceptual context and purpose for employing 'agrarian capitalism'typically for dating and locating the sui generis technological dynamic characterizing capitalist developmentcontinues to set the terms on debates centred on the birth of capitalism (Anievas & Nisancioglu, 2015;Banaji, 2010;Heller, 2011). Serving as something of a necessary intermediary between pre-capitalism and fully fledged capitalist social relations, agrarian capitalism conveniently 'explains' the uniqueness and immanent features of the rise of British industrial dominance.…”

Section: Most Cogently Developed Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cacao capitalism in coastal Ecuador: Production processes and accumulation in non‐transitionary agrarian capitalism during the long 19th century

Fenton

2020

Journal of Agrarian Change

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Histories of agrarian capitalism have often been constrained by the implications of Robert Brenner's work on the subject. This essay, employing archival and secondary research on Ecuador's long 19th century experiences with cacao capitalism, argues that production processes and localized forms of accumulation, rather than class structure and legal relations, should be included in our definition of the concept. By focusing on how fixed capital in cacao trees and the production of the yearly cacao commodity responded to global demand and local material conditions, I propose amplifying the concept of agrarian capitalism, as well as a rethinking of coastal Ecuador's history of capitalist development. I highlight how both absolute and relative forms of surplus value generation coexisted in coastal Ecuador's cacao haciendas, while demonstrating how financial instruments used for extending the cacao frontier undermined the prospects for long‐term growth.

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Section: Most Cogently Developed Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cacao capitalism in coastal Ecuador: Production processes and accumulation in non‐transitionary agrarian capitalism during the long 19th century

Fenton

2020

Journal of Agrarian Change

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“…So antebellum slavery involves slaves performing wage-labour, but lacking full control over their labour power. That is, antebellum slavery provides a presumptive counterexample to the orthodox view (for a wealth of similar cases, see Banaji 2010). Consider, further, merchant and usury capital, the forms dubbed ‘antediluvian’ by Marx (1976: 266; 1981: 728).…”

Section: Definitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capital Without Wage-Labour: Marx’s Modes of Subsumption Revisited

Vrousalis¹

2017

Economics and Philosophy

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Abstract:This paper argues that capitalist social relations do not presuppose wage-labour. The paper defends a functional definition of the capitalist relations of production, in terms of what Marx calls the ’subsumption of labour by capital’. I argue that there are at least four modes of subsumption, one transitional to and one transitional from the capitalist mode of production. Unlike the capitalist mode of production, capitalist relations of production are compatible with the absence of a labour market, and even with the absence of workplace authority relations. The ambit of capitalist domination is therefore broader than typically thought.

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“…Hence, the self-expansion of merchant capital entailed much more than the simplistic formula of 'buying cheap and selling dear'. 309 Rather, under particular circumstances, merchants could act in ways that altered and eventually transformed the direct production process, thereby reconfiguring their relations of production in a capitalist direction. 310 This is precisely what took place on the plantations, where merchants were singularly responsible for accumulating slave labour that was then put to work for exclusively commercial purposes.…”

Section: Conclusion: Colonies Merchants and The Transition To Capitamentioning

confidence: 99%

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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Theory as History

Cited by 184 publications

References 0 publications

Cacao capitalism in coastal Ecuador: Production processes and accumulation in non‐transitionary agrarian capitalism during the long 19th century

Cacao capitalism in coastal Ecuador: Production processes and accumulation in non‐transitionary agrarian capitalism during the long 19th century

Capital Without Wage-Labour: Marx’s Modes of Subsumption Revisited

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

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