Special Edition, 7/11/26

I was on What’s Left on Thursday, 7/9/26, in what became Part I of a presentation/discussion regarding The Origins of Capitalism.

The Myth of the Free Market, and the Real Origin of Capitalism (Part 1). What’s Left? 7/11/26, an hour and 20 minutes.{Click on the graphic above or watch on You Tube}

“Jeff Strahl joins us to talk about the Origins of Capitalism based on work done by Ellen Meiksins Wood. (See readings in the description below). Check us out!”

I used this edited version of a comment by me in response to Josh David’s first appearance on What’s Left? a couple of weeks ago as a jump off point

“The three of you What’s Left? people, did not even raise questions about some crucial matters which Josh presented an analysis of, something which requires my elaborating on my previous short post regarding historical foundations. Unless certain perspectives are at least held to be questionable, saying nothing implies agreement. Josh takes after people like Hayek, Rothbard and other exponents of the “free market,” and they do indeed presuppose capitalism as historically arising the result of the free choice of human beings. They make its essence to be the setting of prices in the naturally-existing market (which has always been around, allegedly) rather than “the government,” as if that institution is a pre-given.

The factual historical record shows otherwise. Merchants in ancient cities did use means of exchange to acquire items in one area and sell them in another. But these markets were nothing like current markets. A very small part of the population was involved in their operations. And there was no real competition between sellers, as arrangements were made between buyers and sellers based upon traditions. They were tightly controlled by the guilds. The merchants and bankers survived within very tight parameters. The late historian Ellen Meiksins-Wood discussed this well in her book “The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism,” the key chapter of which, which shares the same name, can be found online (Summer 1998). She furthermore discussed how actual capitalism began, i.e. enterprises which self-reproduce themselves in the form of value (represented as money) at ever greater levels of worth. It began in a very small part of the world, at a very specific time, rural England in late medieval times. The dominant social system was feudalism, meaning landlords provided protection to subsistence farmers functioning on hereditary plots, with the landlords confiscating whatever surplus material product arose out of the work of the farmers, using that for their own survival needs. And some times, even appropriated product when there was no surplus, making sure they survived.

At a certain point, some of the landlords decided to pursue enlarged production, based on cash crops rather than subsistence food, and figured out they could simply use their command of force (noble knights and the like) to drive the peasants off their hereditary plots. They did so, and added these lands to their existing estates, putting fences around these estates to keep out the dispossessed, which meant that those driven out no longer had any way to obtain survival needs. The landlords also started doing so with the Commons, lands which no one owned and everyone was entitled to for hunting and gathering, No more. These enlarged estates then functioned to produce maximized surpluses, offering some of the dispossessed peasants work on the estates in return for a wage, meaning a better chance of survival. These were the first genuinely capitalist enterprises, operating with the purpose of making a profit, and seeking those with money for investing some of it in their operations, putting an emphasis on increasing productivity. The wage workers were organized into a primitive production line, which is what led to boosted “productivity.” This led to increasing efforts to boost production by improvement in the tools, then in the materials for these tools, into the use of harnessed energy for power, ….. all the way to the Industrial Revolution. Who worked in these factories? Why, dispossessed peasants, who in large numbers still had no way of survival other than self-sale for a wage.

This new system completely ruptured and destroyed the elaborate system of mutual relations and obligations established between social classes. It was enabled from the start by the nature of the English state, which followed a unique pattern of development. This was the first modern state. It emerged together with capitalism, joined at the hip, and the link continues to this day. The state thrived via taxes on the enterprises, and provided them with the means of violence, which it had a monopoly of, as well as increasingly organizing the process so as to make it less chaotic. Capitalism spread from parts of rural England to take over England, then Wales and Scotland, then Ireland (back then a single unit controlled by the UK), then the rest of Europe, and then the rest of the world. And this took the coercive form in every single case. Nowhere was capitalism implemented as the result of the free choice of the populace, as Josh and the people he bases his perspective upon contend, as when he proposes that Andy and his people could have a socialist arrangement like free sharing while others “choose” capitalism and the “free market.”

Capitalism is not about the market setting prices, It is a system whose dominant social relation of production is capital, a certain amount of money, as well as means of production and materials which are treated as the equivalent of value (represented by money) and used together with human labor power bought with the money for the purpose of producing goods or services intended for sale on the market, with the aim being the creating of a greater amount of money or is equivalent, i.e. capital accumulation. Socialism is not about the government setting prices. It’s about society sharing equally in the means of production and using them collectively to sustainably produce the subsistence needs of the population, with everyone getting an equal voice in deciding how this is done.”

Regarding the work of Ellen Meiksins-Wood, i used (and will use for Part II) these two amply as source material.

The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism. Ellen Meiksins-Wood, 7/1/98.

and
Another article by Meiksins-Wood, Less detailed but wider view regarding overall world history, as to how that segment of English history fits into the mosaic, then and since.

Eurocentrism and Anti Eurocentrism, Ellen Meiksins-Wood, May-June 2001.

A couple of short items on the subject, both regarding Michael Perelman’s excellent book from 2000 about the emergence of capitalism, “The Invention of Capitalism.” First, Yasha Levine, known for his fairly recent (late ‘10s) book “Surveillance Valley,” about the military origins of the Internet, social media,…..

The Invention of Capitalism: How a Self-Sufficient Peasantry was Whipped Into Industrial Wage Slaves, Yasha Levine, 1/30/13.

And “Not Bored”, on Adam Smith and his key role in The Enclosures, discussing Perelman’s book as well.

Mass Murder and Slavery: The Invention of Capitalism. “Not Bored,” July 2001.

Also see Midnight Notes, The New Enclosures, originally posted in 1990, reprinted in September 2001.