Transition From Feudalism to Capitalism

The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism

The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism R. J. Holton

Macmillan Education

© R. J. Holton 1985 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1985 978-0-333-34013-4

All rights reserved. For information, write: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Published in the United Kingdom by Macmillan Publishers Ltd First published in the United States of America in 1985 ISBN 978-0-333-34014-1 ISBN 978-1-349-17745-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17745-5

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Holton, R. J. The transition from feudalism to capitalism. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Social history. 2. Social change. 3. Feudalism. 4. Capitalism-History. I. Title. HN8.H65 1985 303.4 84-17805 ISBN 978-0-312-81454-0

To Sandra

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction

XI

1

PART I THEORIES OF THE TRANSITION TO CAPITALISM 1

2

The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism

11

Feudalism The emergence of the concept of economic society, and the restructuring of the concept of feudalism

13

21

Economic Theory and the Emergence of Market Society

29

Adam Smith and the theory of the emergence of market society Market society and the historical emergence of individualism Who or what unbound Prometheus? Some post -Smithian perspectives on the emergence of market society North and Thomas Conclusions 3

Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism

Marx and the transition from feudalism to capitalism The 'exchange relations' perspective The endogenous 'Marxist' property relations perspective Anderson's 'eclectic Marxism' Conclusion

34

37 46 51

62

64

65 74 79 91 100

viii 4

Contents

Max Weber, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Weber and the spirit of capitalism Weber, the 'Protestant Ethic' and the spirit of modern capitalism Conclusions 5

Max Weber and the Transition to Modern Capitalism

Weber and modern Capitalism Weber, rationalisation and the explanation of modern capitalist emergence Conclusions

103

103 105 123 125

128 128 140

PART II TOWARDS AN EXPLANATION OF THE TRANSITION TO CAPITALISM IN EUROPE

6

Introduction

145

The Place of Feudalism in the Transition to Capitalism

147

Europe before AD 1149 and the problem of transition to capitalism The place of feudalism in the transition to capitalism 7

149 157

The Post-Feudal Polity and the Emergence of the Nation-State

169

The post-feudal state and the transition to capitalism Spain France England and Holland Prussia Conclusion

170 172 173 176 181 185

Contents

8

9

ix

Landed Society

188

Landed society in post-feudal France England Prussia The state, the land and the development of industrial capitalism

192 197 200

Endogenous and Exogenous Aspects of the European Transition to Capitalism

203 206

Conclusion

219

Bibliography

223

Index

232

Acknowledgements I should like to acknowledge a particular debt to two people who influenced the course of my thinking well before the idea of this book emerged. The first is Sydney Checkland. His abiding interest in the economic and social evolution of the modern world encouraged me to devote an increasing proportion of my research and teaching energies at the University of Glasgow to the investigation of long-run processes of social change. The second is Ivan Szelenyi. In 1978 I" moved from the Economic History Department at Glasgow to the Sociology Discipline at Flinders University of South Australia. It was here that the two of us began a dialogue across a wide range of issues in historical sociology, not least of which was the legacy of Max Weber's work to an understanding of the development of European capitalism. It was this dialogue that eventually produced the present study. In this endeavour I received further assistance from many other colleagues at Flinders including Bryan Turner, Constance LeverTracy and Anna Yeatman. I should like to thank both the Outside Studies Committee of Flinders University for the period of leave and financial assistance which enabled me to commence writing this book in 1982, and the Council of the University of Sussex, whose invitation to a Visiting Research Fellowship provided me with a stimulating intellectual environment to continue this work. Previous drafts of various chapters of this study were delivered at the Universities of Tasmania, Sussex, Wisconsin-Madison, and Northern Illinois, and at the Fifth Max Weber Symposium held at William Paterson College of New Jersey in October 1983. I should like to thank all those who participated in these discussions. Michael Mann was largely instrumental in encouraging me to organise this book in the form that it now appears. His editorial assistance, together with that of Steven Kennedy is very much appreciated. Heather Bushell word-processed the greater part of the MS, with skill and patience, for which I am very grateful. Thanks are also due to Chris Gradolf for her assistance with word-processing. Glenelg

February 1984

R. J.

HOLTON

Introduction We live, so it is said, in a 'modern' world different in its characteristic social structures and mentalities from what went before. Yet the nature of 'modernity' and the reasons for social transition from 'past' to 'present' continue to be matters of profound interpretative disagreement. Such questions have, of course, been richly and provocatively contested within a major tradition of scholarship, linking figures such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Max Weber with current practitioners of historical sociology, development economics and social history. Recent landmarks in this debate include studies by Fernand Braude! (1967, 1979), Perry Anderson (1974a, 1974b) and Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980). Yet for all this, understanding of the dynamics of social change connecting 'past' with 'present' and 'present' with possible 'futures', seems to have become both more complex and more elusive over time. This complexity is partly the result of a dense accumulation of data and hypotheses spread across many different disciplines, and often presented within rather dissonant methodological and conceptual frameworks. But it is also the result of the uncertain dialogue between social thought and social processes themselves conducted through the medium of political action. Assessments of the nature and causes of social change have evidently been central to the articulation of political options and in the execution of policy decisions ever since humankind came to believe that the fate of society was amenable to purposive human intervention. Such connections between thought and action may be seen, for example, in the links between Enlightenment rationalism and the French Revolution, between Marxist theories of history and the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, and between 'modernisation theory' and post-1945 US development policies towards the Third World. Yet the grip that political action has exerted upon social change has proved to be a rather loose one, especially in those instances where events have confounded theoretical expectations and policies have produced unintended outcomes. This might perhaps be seen simply as a challenge to improve our

2 Introduction

understanding of social change. It does, however, raise the additional possibility that there are limits to what can be expected from any theory of social change. These limits are of two kinds. The first concerns the high degree of predictive imperfection that attends any attempt to analyse the 'future' in terms of the relationships that appear to link 'past' with 'present'. The second involves problems with our capacity to reach a 'scientific', 'objective' or 'comprehensive' understanding of the causal forces determining any historical process of social change. This book, which contains a critical review of certain important interpretations of the origins of the modern Western world, is also concerned with the second of these problems. As such it deals not only with many substantive issues of historical interpretation but also with the logical and philosophical characteristics of social change theory itself. Of particular interest here is the issue as to whether it is possible to construct a general theory of social change which provides the key to all particular instances of development, as most of the nineteenth-century evolutionists seem to have believed. There has, in recent years, been a considerable shift away from grand evolutionary theory towards 'middle-range' theories of social change and towards analyses of particular 'conjunctures'. General evolutionary theory, based in the main on an organic endogenous approach to social change has been criticised on a number of counts. On logical and philosophical grounds it has been attacked for its reliance on 'untestable' ontological and teleological assumptions, dealing (respectively) with human nature and the 'inherent' directionality of the historical process (Nisbet, 1968). Particular exception has been taken to the equally 'unobservable' metaphorical representation of history as the unfolding of an organic process of growth and development (Hobhouse, 1924, pp. 305-6; Nisbet, 1968, pp. 24(}-.55; Giddens, 1976, p. 720). This focus on endogenous and organic sources of social change has led to the neglect of 'exogenous' and contingent explanations of development. Such criticisms have considerable force especially when applied to the intellectual character and aspirations of the nineteenthcentury evolutionary theory. Two aspects of the critique seem particularly important. The first is the objection to the highly deterministic character of most evolutionary theory. In this human

Introduction

3

agency, intention and thought is typically assimilated to some necessary teleological scenario in which the end-points of 'history' are seen as somehow immanent from the outset, representing a 'purpose' which must be fulfilled, and to which humanity must 'adapt'. The second is the objection to the possibility of constructing some general unilinear theory of social change embodied in a sequence of social forms through which all societies must pass, as if through some inner all-embracing logic. Certain other features of the anti-evolutionist case are, however, less secure. In the first place, it is not at all clear that any theory of social change (even of a particular conjunctures) can subsist without some reliance (explicit or implicit) upon assumptions about human nature. Implicit presuppositions of this kind may be found even amongst those explicitly committed to a thoroughly contingent approach to historical explanation. Max Weber's work (as reviewed in Chapters 4 and 5 below) provides a striking example of this point. The ubiquity of ontological presuppositions, even in such cases, seems to reflect the importance of discourse about history as a source of cultural meaning and legitimation. Most social and historical observers, it seems, shrink from a thoroughly contingent and patternless view of the course of social change. In spite of certain major difficulties with social evolutionary theory, therefore, patterns continue to be identified in 'history', and hierarchies of causal agencies remain a matter of debate. The record of 'history' is still invoked in the search to understand the nature of humanity, and in the quest to determine what 'potential' or 'fate' the future may hold. Secondly, while 'empirical validation' of hypothesis is necessary in order to separate 'knowledge' from 'belief', the powerful challenge made by philosophers of science to both 'inductive' (Popper, 1934, 1957) and 'falsificationist' (Lakatos, 1970) modes of empirical testing has produced no secure procedure in which such validation processes may be grounded. There are no grounds, therefore, to support the confidence of writers like Nisbet that social change theories embodying 'unobservable', 'untestable and metaphorical elements' can be replaced by alternative theories, based entirely on testable hypotheses whose empirical validation is, in principle, unproblematic. Such ontological, teleological and metaphorical elements can in fact be interpreted in a more positive manner than Nisbet suggests.

4

Introduction

Rather than seeing them as 'unscientific' prophetic or dogmatic significance, they can be viewed as assumptions which guide and structure 'research programmes' composed of sets of interrelated hypotheses. In the present state of debate in the philosophy of science, it may be possible to do no more than establish the plausibility (or otherwise) of the various hypothetical components of such 'programmes'. This procedure cannot in any way amount to the validation or verification of ontological and teleological postulates. It does nonetheless suggest that the assumptions which Nisbet finds inadmissible, can be regarded as more or less fertile in the light of the degree of empirical plausibility of the hypotheses which they help to generate. Such questions assume a direct importance as a result of the powerful challenge to the historical analysis of pre-capitalist 'formations' and the transition from feudalism to capitalism, recently mounted by Hindess and Hirst (1975). In their view a 'science of history', or indeed any meaningful encounter between theoretical hypotheses and empirical data, is seen as utterly impossible. This position is founded on the epistemological consideration that the supposed 'facts' of 'history' are not 'given' prior to theory, but are 'produced' in the light of differing social and political ideologies. This epistemological argument is certainly a valid reminder of the difficulties of the naive empiricists' view whereby the facts are seen as speaking for themselves. There is, however, a distinction between empiricism in this sense and what E.P. Thompson (1978, p. 196) has called the empirical mode of investigation. The latter is founded on the assumption that some kind of meaningful confrontation is possible between hypotheses and empirical data. Debates about social change are not then to be viewed as 'potentially infinite' solipsistic 'productions' of historical 'facts'. Rather they may be seen as intellectual encounters in which it is possible to discern and analyse the interplay between nonobservable postulates (e.g. concerning the nature of 'humankind') which derive ultimately from value positions, and analyses of empirical data. Max Weber recognised long before Hindess and Hirst that this kind of procedure certainly does not dispose of all epistemological problems. It does, however, offer a counter to their nihilistic position that 'history is inaccessible to knowledge' by specifying in

Introduction

5

what terms one can be said to have 'knowledge' of history. As Weber also recognised, the perception that 'history' contains a potentially infinite number of meanings and is constantly being rewritten is no adequate reason for abandoning the project. Instead it calls for a close scrutiny of the relationship between 'philosophical' and 'scientific' elements in historical analysis. To the extent that philosophical postulates are embedded in any kind of social analysis, we should not expect to find an 'objective' answer to the reasons for the emergence of modern Western society. We may, nonetheless, hope to explain on what grounds scholars have offered different interpretations of this problem and which aspects of such interpretations are open to empirical discourse. There are, of course, many alternative ways of conceptualising the nature of Western society as it has developed in the last 200 years, and hence many different notions the phenomenon whose emergence social change theory has to explain. The particular aim of this book is not to provide a comprehensive evaluation of all theories of the emergence of 'modernity', but to analyse a limited set of theories which may be seen to bear on the emergence of 'capitalism' as a modern type of social system. To focus on the emergence of 'capitalism' is not to deny difficulties involved in unravelling the complex tangle of meanings

that have become attached to the term. Nor is it meant to suggest that all who use it are in agreement as to its decisive characteristics. There is indeed some truth in Gustav Schmoller's sceptical view that the term is so 'vague, ambiguous, unclear, and able to put on all colours' as to be more serviceable as a journalistic catchword than as a major scholarly concept (cited Hilger, 1972, p. 444). The many disputes that exist over the definition of capitalism should not be necessarily seen as trivial semantic issues, symptoms of intellectual confusion, or rival attempts to invoke moral pathos for political purposes. There are two reason~ for this. In the first place, such debates raise very important issues as to what may be regarded as the decisive features of modern Western society whether they be seen in terms of markets, free wage-labour or an international division of labour. As such, debates about the definition of capitalism represent enquiries as to the nature of the

6 Introduction 'present'. In the second place, contested definitions play an important part in guiding research and analysis. For as Wright Mills (1959, p. 34) has pointed out, one of the purposes of definition 'is to transform argument over terms into disagreements about fact', and thus open 'arguments to further enquiry'. This study does not then commence with an ex cathedra ruling as to the nature of 'capitalism'. Chapter 1 begins instead with an attempt to identify the main conceptual options associated with the use of this terminology. This discussion is followed by a critical analysis of three major theoretical approaches to the historical problem of the emergence of capitalist society. Chapter 2 deals with the work of economic theorists, seeking in the tradition of Adam Smith, to account for the emergence of 'commercial' or 'market' society. Chapter 3 deals with Marxist theories of the transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production, while Chapters 4 and 5 discuss Max Weber's interpretation of the development of modern capitalism in the West. To speak of the emergence of, or transition to, capitalism does raise another important question, namely, is it possible to specify a general antecedent form of society which capitalism is seen as replacing or succeeding? Many writers, especially those within the Marxist tradition, have seen feudalism as the principal antecedent form of this kind. Certain problems with this and other uses of the concept of feudalism are reviewed in Chapter 1. The drive to stretch the concept of feudalism to include virtually all agrarian-based, non-slave societies before the emergence of capitalism has come in for particular criticism. The absurdities of forcing a diverse range of non-capitalist societies (European, Asian and African - nomadic, pastoral and agrarian) into the category 'feudal' are now being largely abandoned in favour of a more multilinear approach to social change. Although the conceptualisation of feudalism remains fundamentally contested, most now refuse to accept the deployment of this term as a universal pre-capitalist stage in social evolution. Instead it has come to be regarded in a more circumscribed way, as an appropriate term for the particular configuration of juridical, military and economic institutions characteristic of medieval Europe (and possibly Japan) but not necessarily to any other part of the globe. In this way the notion of transition from feudalism to capitalism has come to be associated with one particular

Introduction

7

pathway of social change, rather than any general unilinear pattern. In the light of these important developments the present work is limited in spatial emphasis. The problem of the 'transition from feudalism to capitalism' is considered, in the main, in relation to the history of Europe, especially Western Europe. It should be emphasised that this procedure differs from certain other senses in which the concept of 'transition to capitalism' has sometimes been used. The two most significant of these are, as Wallerstein (1976) points out, the process of incorporation of non-European regions into an expanding international capitalist economy by means of territorial control, and the extension of the proletarianisation of labour and commercialisation of landed relations within the world economy. With the abandonment of a unilinear theory of social change, however, it no longer seems useful to insist that the latter two processes be seen as aspects of some general worldwide transition from feudalism to capitalism - at the level of each individual nation-state. This does not mean that developments in the world beyond Europe are irrelevant to the present study, since Western European history cannot be regarded as a self-contained development immune to exogenous influences. The relative importance of exogenous non-European and endogenous European influences on European capitalist development remains a question to be assessed in the light of empirical evidence. While the place of feudalism within some global evolutionary framework has been successfully challenged, surprisingly little critical attention has been given to the equally evolutionist assumption that feudalism contained within itself the basis for the transition to capitalism in Western Europe. Many of the analysts reviewed in Part 1 of this study have adduced powerful arguments in support of some connection of this kind. It remains debatable as to whether the experience of Western feudalism can be regarded as projecting Western society on a historical trajectory leading necessarily to capitalism. The discussion in Part 2 firmly rejects the evolutionary assumption that the development of capitalism may ultimately be regarded as a unilinear process governed by the operation of a causal prime mover. Emphasis is therefore given to certain multilinear features of the transition process within various European nation-states, and to the need for a greater measure of

8 Introduction causal pluralism in the explanation of capitalist development. At the same time, certain general supranational features of the transition process are identified. These are sufficient to justify the retention of general conceptions of transition to capitalism as a European phenomenon rather than a set of discrete national case studies. Chapter 6 examines the importance of both the pre-feudal and feudal epochs of occidental history to the emergence of European capitalism. Particular emphasis is placed on the weakness of theories linking the experience of feudalism with the emergence of capitalism. This brings into question the Marxist organising framework which speaks of a transition from feudalism to capitalism. In Chapters 7 and 8 an alternative case is sketched in favour of the proposition that successful transition to capitalism depended on the emergence of certain post-feudal institutions and practices. Particular emphasis is placed on developments in state organisation and within landed society. This focus brings into question the conventional 'Anglo-Saxon' explanation of the emergence of capitalism in terms of the twin forces of individualism and the bourgeoisie. Finally, in Chapter 9 certain limits are suggested to the adequacy of an endogenous nation-state framework for the analysis of 'transition'. The development of European capitalism is seen as requiring a combination of endogenous and exogenous levels of analysis. In terms of methodology, this study is intended as a synthesis of existing secondary accounts of the historical processes which are believed to have brought about the emergence of modern Western capitalism. No new primary research materials are introduced, and in this sense the author lacks the undoubted insights that accrue to historians working directly on such sources. This book is concerned, nonetheless, to combine a critique of the logical structure and coherence of the various general theories discussed, with an evaluation of their explanatory power in relation to bodies of empirical data, and to commentary not primarily concerned with theory construction. In this sense it is hoped that further inroads may be made into the often cursory and naive historical stereotypes of developmental processes that abound in sociological discussion, and into the resistance to explicit conceptual definition and theoretical discourse that remains prevalent among those described as 'empiricist' historians.

PART I

THEORIES OF THE TRANSITION TO CAPITALISM

1

The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism The concept of 'capitalism' emerged in the mid nineteenth century as one of a number of key concepts designed to characterise the changing nature of Western European society. In company with such concepts as 'industrial society' as used by Saint Simon and Spencer, 'contract' as deployed by Maine, and 'gesellschaft' as elaborated by Tonnies, the term 'capitalism' possessed two important features. First, all such notions entailed a sense of qualitative change in the character of entire social systems (or wholes) not simply in some particular sphere of social activity. Second, they focused on the overwhelming importance of changes in economic life in the shaping of nineteenth-century society. In both these respects, the character of nineteenth-century Europe was seen as marking a significant shift away from the 'feudal', 'militaristic' status-bound and communitarian concerns felt to be characteristic of the European 'past'. For many this shift was also associated with two fundamental episodes of revolutionary change, namely, the French Revolution, where the forces of reason struggled against the 'feudal' ancien regime, and the Industrial Revolution, by which a self-sufficient agrarian economy was replaced by a dynamic industrial system. It is useful to consider the particular provenance of the concept of capitalism in relation to two associated concepts, namely, 'capital' and 'capitalist'. These latter terms emerged, in their modern meanings, between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries (See, 1924; Williams, 1976, p. 42). 'Capital' meaning a stock of productive wealth developed amongst 'political arithmeticians' well before 1750, though the concept subsequently became a central feature of political economy. Much of the dynamic character of nineteenth-century Europe became attributed to the expansive character of 'capital'. For the German economist Rodbertus, 'capital is movement itself. It possesses the

12 Theories of the Transition to Capitalism power to transform itself into all forms, to transcend all national boundaries' (cited Hilger, 1972, p. 447). Meanwhile the concept of 'capitalist', as a social actor deploying 'capital', and hence functionally differentiated from the landed interest, emerged among a range of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century social observers such as Arthur Young and Samuel Coleridge (Williams, 1976, p. 42). It was not until the 1840s that the notions of 'capitalism' and 'capitalist mode of production' emerged as means of depicting an entire social system dominated by 'capital' and 'capitalists'. The appearance of these terms within French and German social reform and social revolutionary literature reflects their scope not merely as technical economic terms but as means of linking the character of economic life with what were seen to be relationships of power and exploitation (Hilger, 1972, pp. 442-8). In the process, the notion of 'capitalism' not only became inserted into the vocabulary of radical politics but also emerged as an influential designation of the epochal historical significance of contemporary changes in nineteenth-century Europe. Most of the major social changes encompassed in the use of 'capitalism' in this epochal historical sense, such as the development of social relations between wage-labour and capital, the rise of the factory system, and the emergence of a world-market, were certainly well advanced by 1850. It was not until the turn of the twentieth century that the notion of 'capitalism' became accepted on a widespread basis. Most English and French economists of the late nineteenth century, for example, ignored it (Dobb, 1947, p. 1). There is, therefore, much truth in Schumpeter's observation that the term was not widely used before 1900 'except by Marxists and writers directly influenced by Marxism' {Schumpeter, 1961, p. 552). This situation was transformed in the early decades of the twentieth century as a result of the publications of the German historical sociologists, Werner Sombart {whose Moderne Kapitalismus appeared in 1902) and Max Weber, whose influential articles on the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism were published in 1905. Such works, over the next forty years or so, became important reference points in a wide-ranging debate over the origins of modern Western society, a debate in which Marxists and non-Marxists alike increasingly came to think of capitalism as

The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism

13

the phenomenon whose historical emergence was to be explained. This is reflected in the appearance of such important studies as R.H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, first published in 1926, Henri See's Modern Capitalism in 1928, and Armando Fanfani's Catholicism, Protestantism and Capitalism in 1934. In spite of continuing reservations as to the vagueness, political colouration, and holistic nature of the term its scholarly use was by now irreversible. From its inception the concept of capitalism has come to be associated with systems of economic acquisition or appropriation by private interests possessing capital. Beyond general statements of this kind, there remain many points of continuing debate and disagreement. First, are all forms of private economic acquisition included or only some, and if so how and why are boundary lines to be drawn? Second, are the determinants of capitalist acquisitiveness a matter of the mentality and voluntaristically preferred forms of action of individuals, or are they to be located as structural imperatives operating at the level of systems of relationships? Third, what role does capital play within capitalism? Is it to be regarded as a stock of resources available to be deployed, or rather as a component of some distinctive pattern of social relationships characteristic of capitalism? Underlying all such questions is the problem of the general characterisation of capitalism. Is it to be regarded primarily as a mentality, a system of exchange relations, a system of production relations, or some combination of these? These four areas of debate require further elaboration since all such problems of conceptualisation have very considerable bearing on the framing of empirical and historical analysis. In the case of the form of private economic acquisition, debate centres on two main issues. The first involves the problem of whether it is more illuminating to define capitalism in terms of private acquisition in general or in terms of some more limited kinds of acquisition. The historical implications of these two options are very different. If capitalism is seen as private acquisition in general then almost all epochs of human history might seem to qualify as capitalist to a greater or lesser extent. A more limited definition - excluding certain forms of acquisition such as plunder or piracy based upon coercion or stressing certain kinds of calculative rationality on the other hand - produces a more

14

Theories of the Transition to Capitalism

selective emphasis on particular kinds of economic activity and the chronology of their historical emergence. Capitalism may, of course, be defined in any manner one pleases. Underlying these two particular options, however, are issues of a more metatheoretical or philosophical kind. What is effectively at stake here is the question of whether capitalism is to be regarded as a basic feature of human nature and thus effectively age-old, or alternatively whether it is to be seen as a product of social change within previously non-capitalist societies. A second issue pertaining to the form of economic acquisition involved, concerns the centrality of the private individual to the constitution of the capitalist order. Is capitalism necessarily connected with individualism? Put another way, this question asks how much corporate or state involvement is seen as consistent with the presence of capitalism? Is the historical analysis of capitalist emergence coterminous with the development of civil society conceived as the sphere of activity by individuals acting autonomously from the state? Or is the relationship between capitalism and individualism a contingent rather than a necessary one - a relationship characteristic of some phases of capitalist development and not others? The responses to such questions clearly have considerable bearing on the choice of framework within which historical analysis of the transition process is conducted. For some, the problem of capitalist emergence is seen as largely coterminous with the origins of individualism (Macfarlane, 1978). For others, the concern is rather to locate those forms of state organisation and political structure sufficiently strong and interventionist to establish and protect private property rights (North and Thomas, 1973; Wallerstein, 1974, 1980). A further set of debates surrounds the problem of how the determinants of capitalist acquisitiveness are to be understood. At least three possible kinds of explanation are involved here. The first links individual economic acquisitiveness to psychological drives or propensities. In so far as these are seen as irreducible to social determination, acquisitiveness takes on a 'natural' or 'ahistorical' character and as such becomes inaccessible to sociological enquiry. In the second place, acquisitiveness is understood in terms of some form of structural determinant such as the Marxist emphasis on the logic of capital accumulation. Finally,

The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism

15

there is a further option, which explains acquisitiveness in terms of a 'spirit' of social action irreducible to purely structural imperatives, yet social rather than psychological in origin. This latter option has been set forth by Max Weber (1904--5). The nature of 'capital' and its role within 'capitalism' is also a matter of considerable debate. Two broad options are commonly set forth. In the first, capital is defined as a stock of resources or factors of production which the individual capitalist combines with other factors such as labour, thereby exercising 'entrepreneurship'. This option tends to reaffirm the notion of the individual as the unit of action under capitalism. It nonetheless leaves open two possible ways of explaining success as a capitalist. The first is simply voluntaristic. Samuel Smiles' moral homilies on successful nineteenth-century businessmen rest on just such an emphasis. It is not governmental action nor legislation which explains success, but self-help expressed through 'individual industry, energy and uprightness' (1897, p. 3). The second type of explanation is structural emphasising the pressure of demand or market forces in the making of entrepreneurs successfully able to deploy capital. Successful entrepreneurial decision-making with respect to capital investment and even successful invention have been interpreted in this way (Schmookler, 1966). Alternatively 'capital' may be seen - as in Marxist political economy - as founded on a social relationship between capitalists who have private property rights over the means of production, and wage-labourers, who have nothing except their labour-power to sell in the market. In this case it is the historical emergence of such 'relations of production' which becomes crucial to understanding the development of capitalism. 'Capital' in this approach is not then a 'factor of production' but a key component of a social relationship. This relationship does, however, exert structural imperatives on individual capitalists to follow certain patterns of behaviour irrespective of their personal proclivities. For example, under competitive conditions between capitalist enterprises, Marxists see the need for a constantly renewed process of capital accumulation to be one such structural imperative which must be followed if capitalism as a social relationship is to be reproduced. There remains the issue of whether capitalism is to be viewed primarily as a mentality, a system of exchange relations, or a mode or system of production relations. To opt for any of these is not to

16

Theories of the Transition to Capitalism

deny that capitalism requires both 'production' and 'exchange' to take place through the activities of individual social actors. What is at stake is how these functions articulate and which if any may be seen as of primary causal significance. One way of illustrating the implications of these options is to consider the place of the market and market relations within the economy and society. For those who emphasise the centrality of 'exchange' or 'distribution' to the constitution of society, capitalism is seen as that system of exchange which relies on market exchange of commodities through the price mechanism. Capitalism is thereby distinguished from other systems of exchange, such as barter or the administrative direction of distribution by the state. One important function of this approach is to highlight a distinction between capitalist 'exchange' relations based on markets, and socialist 'exchange' relations based upon the state allocation of resources. Where market exchange is associated with 'individual freedom' and socialist direction with coercion such definitions also serve moral philosophical purposes. In any event, the most important effect of defining capitalism in terms of market exchange, for the present study, is that it ties analysis of the historical emergence of capitalism to the appearance of free market transactions between private interests. The relationship between society and the market principle can, however, be viewed in an alternative way. Thus capitalism may be seen as entailing not simply markets for its products but also markets for its labour-force. Such labour markets are viewed as constituted by the institution of wage-labour. In such accounts wage-labour is not seen as optional to capitalism but rather as a fundamental constituent component. This argument implies that the 'exchange relations' view of capitalism does not succeed in encapsulating the main dynamic forces responsible for the transformation of the Western world. If the concept of capitalism is to be used to illuminate this transformation process, it must be founded on the 'commodification of labour' and hence the institution of wage-labour as embodied in wage-labour capital relations. This in turn shifts historical analysis away from a concern for market exchanges and commerce towards changes in the relationship between labour and the social organisation of production. Neither the 'exchange relations' nor the 'production relations'

The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism

17

perspective necessarily excludes a concern for capitalism as a 'mentality'. What is of more significance is the view held as to the power of structural relationships in producing social changes. While many economic theorists and Marxists are prepared to accept the relevance of changes in 'mentalities' as component parts of the transition to capitalism, few of them appear to regard 'mentalities' in a Weberian manner as possibly of 'primary' significance in this process. Weber, of course, regarded the spirit of modem capitalism as a unique feature of Western history, a proposition whose plausibility required the comparative historical investigation of a wide range of different world-views and mentalities. Even Weber, though, was inclined to view modern capitalism as a combination of mentality (or spirit) and form. This conceptual pluralism had the advantage of encouraging historical analysis of the interrelationship between mentalities and forms, in a way that proponents of a more structural conception of capitalism have rarely entertained. The foregoing analysis not only indicates the formal grounds upon which existing conceptions of capitalism differ, but also suggests some of the variety of functions that the concept of capitalism has been intended to serve. The search for a concept which illuminates the nature of the social transformations experienced by Western Europe in the period leading up to the nineteenth century is only one such function. Others include the desire to emphasise certain supposedly universal features of human nature, to delineate 'free' activities from those based on coercion, or to produce a means of distinguishing between the kinds of industrial society that emerged in nineteenth-century Europe, and the 'socialist' industrial societies of the twentieth century. The remainder of this study is primarily concerned with the coherence and utility of the concept of capitalism in so far as it illuminates the emergence of modern Western society. The intention at this stage is not to reproduce the methodology of Maurice Dobb, who, in his celebrated Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1947, p. 3), assumed from the outset 'that there must be one definition [of capitalism) that accords with the actual shape which historical development possesses and others which by contrast with it are wrong'. The method adopted here is to accept the integrity of the general conceptions of capitalism outlined

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Theories of the Transition to Capitalism

above, as alternative specifications of the phenomena, whose historic emergence has to be explained. The overall aim is then to investigate the explanatory power and empirical richness of the range of hypotheses that have been generated within this proliferation of conceptions of capitalism. This exercise, however, requires some further attention to the concept of 'feudalism', as the form of society which capitalism is seen as succeeding. Feudalism

The notion of a feudal order (or feodalite) emerged within European thought from the sixteenth century onwards, first within legal and then political discourse (Pocock, 1957; Kelley, 1970). For sixteenth-century French jurists such as Dumoulin, Cujas and· Hotman, the notion of 'feudal' referred to a system of law- the 'jus feudale' - centred around the medieval institution of the feudum, a term derived from the old Frankish term 'feud', whose literal meaning is cattle-owned. On the basis of earlier texts, notably the twelh-century Lombard Libri Feudorum, this legal system was seen as comprising a form of jurisdiction over landed territory and landed dependents. Jurisdiction was exercised by vassals who held land in the form of fiefs, granted on the condition that military service be provided to some superior power, originally that of the warrior chief. Within his own domain the jurisdiction of the vassal was in most respects sovereign. A fundamental feature of the feudum is that it entailed a divided system of property rights. 'Ownership' of the land by a military chief or some other superior power among the Frankish and other Germanic societies around the year AD 1000 was thereby separate, in both legal theory and for a while in fact, from the property of the chief's military follower who received rights of tenure over parcels of land. 'Cattle-ownership' (from which derives the term chattels) is thereby indicative of the property rights of those who, at least in theory, occupy land on conditional tenure. Property (e.g. cattle) is thereby deployed over the land rather than the land itself being owned outright, and thereby being freely heritable and alienable. Although the notion of 'feudal' was at this stage primarily juridical, it should be emphasised that legal analysis of feudal law whether in France or amongst seventeenth-century English commentators such as Sir Henry Spelman was by no

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means narrowly technical. As Pocock (1957, p. 251) points out, legal discourse was at this time the medium whereby questions of political order and legitimate political sovereignty were debated and fought out. The particular conflicts within which the notion of a historically discrete feudal order emerged were between those who upheld the sovereign claims of kingship and those who defended the 'privileges' or 'liberties' of other estates or social groups. The juridical scholarship of Hotman was, for example, directed to establishing that the French monarchy had usurped the jurisdictional rights of the French magistrates. In answer to the question as to who was sovereign and on what basis, jurists had originally attempted to assert the consistency of feudal law with the prestigious legal authorities of the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome. As a result of close textual analysis, however, Renaissance legal scholars became convinced of significant contrasts between ancient and feudal forms of law. Feudal law could not simply be explained as an outgrowth of Roman law, since it contained institutions such as vassalage, entailing military service, which were not to be found within Roman law. Such evidence testified to the impact of Germanic 'military' institutions on feudal law. It also suggested that Roman law was the product of a society rather different from that evident in medieval Europe, and could not, therefore, be used as a universal model to settle conflicts of juridical rights and political sovereignty- that is, a source which claimed equal competence in the present as in the past. A further crucial implication was that the origins of any particular system of law, such as the feudal, could not be accounted for by recourse to some mythical age-old origin. They required instead historical analysis of changing human institutions and practices, alongside which law itself changed. In the case of feudal law, for example, this required consideration of the relative importance of Germanic and Roman elements with feudal institutions. Two general features of this work are noteworthy. In the first place, a central thrust of the Renaissance French jurists was to erode any sense of immemorial ties between 'past' and 'present' rooted in some divine source. In the second place, their acceptance of a qualitative contrast between the feudal and pre-feudal worlds helped to secure a characteristically modern sense of

20

Theories of the Transition to Capitalism

historical periodisation between pre-feudal and post-feudal epochs. During the eighteenth century, the political implications of the notion 'feudal' were extended. In the work of Count Boulainvilliers, and that of Montesquieu, the 'feudal' became equivalent to a phase in the development of the European 'polity'. Such political connotations intensified in the late eighteenth century, more especially under the impact of the French Revolution. In the process, large elements of confusion were injected into the meaning of the term. This is particularly true among the revolutionary opponents of the ancien regime who used the notion of feudalism 'as an umbrella category for all perceived aspects of oppression inherited from the past'. It was this kind of usage which informed the famous decree of the French National Assembly of 11 August 1789 which 'totally abolished the feudal regime'. As Marc Bloch has gone on to point out with some irony, 'How could one thenceforth deny the reality of a system which it has cost so much to destroy' (1939-40, vol. 1, p. xviii). Thenceforth, feudalism as Bloch again points out became 'a rather awkward label for a type of social structure which was itself rather-ill-defined'. This is largely because of the conftation of two distinct types of social system. The first type (as reflected in the earlier precise juridical definitions) was based upon the social dominance of a warrior aristocracy organised through the dependent ties of vassalage. The second more generalised definition was based upon the existence of seigneurial relationships whereby peasants were subject to a set of exploitative customary dues and taxes exacted on behalf of a landed aristocrat or proprietor. This conftation is particularly dangerous according to Bloch, because it ties the notion of feudalism to the very widespread yet multiform phenomenon of peasant subjection, rather than the more precise and historically delimited phenomenon of a settled, originally warrior aristocracy exercising jurisdiction through institutions such as vassalage. In this process, feudalism loses specificity and becomes a vague symbol for exploitative landed relationships inherited from the past. Such a politically potent yet conceptually imprecise image of feudalism is still with us according to Bloch, in so far as we use feudalism as a label with which to characterise widely different types of oppressive landed, aristocratic and militaristic societies of the past. Within such negative

The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism

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images of feudalism there is, of course, a counter-myth of imminent revolutionary liberation. For as Bloch also points out, when we picture feudalism 'there is always a reflection of the firing of chateaux during the summer of 1789' (1953, p. 172). The emergence of the concept of economic society, and the restructuring of the concept of feudalism Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writers from Adam Smith to Saint Simon and Marx undoubtedly played an important role in shifting attention from juridical and political approaches to society towards a greater emphasis on modes of subsistence and production. By 1850, moreover, with the consolidation of industrialisation, especially in Britain, the centrality of the 'economic' as a self-subsistent and transformative domain had become far clearer to those seeking to understand and influence processes of social change. This was reflected in St Simon's influential deployment of the notion of 'industrial society', in comparison with the 'feudal society' which had gone before, and in Marx's conception of the 'capitalist mode of production' as the successor to the earlier feudal epoch. As the shape of post-feudal society became clearer, so the practice of constructing a notion of feudalism as the antithesis of 'modern society' became more widespread. Within the increasingly evolutionary idiom of nineteenth-century social thought, the concept of feudalism was not only defined in relation to earlier constructions of the nature of modern economic society but also regarded as a historical 'stage' leading up to the 'present'. In the process, an even wider range of discrete phenomena became associated with the concept of 'feudalism'. This notion now came increasingly to serve as a negative symbol of all those features of the European past, whether military prowess, vassalage, chivalry, seigneurial privilege or quite simply landed power, against which a new set of 'urban', 'industrial', 'democratic' or 'reforming' movements could rally. In this sense one can speak of the myth of 'feudalism' as symbolic of all that is 'reactionary' or 'archaic' acting as a foil to the modern evolutionary counter-myth of 'progress'. One important consequence of this symbolic or metaphorical use of the notion of feudalism was eventually to be its extension beyond Europe to a wide range of pre-capitalist, landed

22

Theories of the Transition to Capitalism

settings. In this way 'feudalism', as a very general form of social system, became integrated into a unilinear model of evolutionary change. An important problem remained, nonetheless, in all attempts to integrate the 'economic dimension' into dichotomies between past and present, and into stage theories of social change. The problem is this: Is economic society a distinctive feature of modernity itself, as contrasted with what went before, or is economic activity to be regarded as a central and transformative characteristic of all forms of human society? There is, in other words, a dichotomy between those like Saint Simon and Tonnies who see economic society genetically, that is, as characteristic only of one form of society, namely, modernity, and those like Adam Smith, Marx and the German historical economists who believe it to be possible to analyse all human societies in terms of the centrality of some generically constituted notion of economy. In the former case, 'economic' concepts of modernity, like the notion of 'industrial society' or Tonnies' 'Gesellschaft', are contrasted with non-economic characterisations of the past, such as 'feudalism' or 'Gemeinschaft'. In the latter case, by contrast, a concept such as Marx's notion of 'mode of production' is seen as characteristic of all human societies, including those unable to conceptualise the 'economic' as a distinct domain. The problem faced by those who argue in this way is whether feudalism can be fitted into an economic interpretation of history. For many of the nineteenth-century German historical economists, it appears that the concept was so loaded with juridical and political connotations that it could not serve as a developmental stage in its own right. Thus Bruno Hildebrand, writing in 1864, conceptualised economic development as passing through a sequence of 'natural economy' characterised by barter, through 'money economy' to 'credit economy' (cited Hoselitz, 1960, p. 208). However, since feudalism as a juridical institution was in his view indissolubly linked to natural economy, so every nation having had to evolve through the latter must have also known the former. Karl Bucher's stage theory, developed in the 1890s, is also similar to Hildebrand's in that it posits an evolutionary schema composed of different 'economic' forms, in this case from household economy through town economy to national economy (Hoselitz, 1960, p. 211). Each is defined in terms of the nature of

The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism

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exchange. The epoch of Western European feudalism is then subsumed under the notion of a society still within the household stage, characterised in general terms by the absence of 'an institutionalised system of market exchange', and a high degree of self-sufficiency. This was seen as contrasting with the 'autonomous' late medieval cities, whose trading dynamic ushered in a transition to the 'town economy'. While feudalism continued to be seen primarily as a juridical form it could scarely make a prominent appearance in economic theories of social change, that is, as a discrete stage in the evolution of human society. An alternative option was to restructure the notion of feudalism itself by turning it into an economic concept. This approach is especially evident among Marxists. Thus from a juridical and political concept stressing phenomena such as 'vassalage' and 'political authority', feudalism within the Marxist perspective became an economic concept- a mode of production in which serfdom and property forms became paramount and institutions such as vassalage receded in significance. This process is evident in the work of Marx, who, while emphasising the strong element of extra-economic coercion constitutive of feudalism, nonetheless focused his discussion on production relations 'between lord and serf rather more than on juridical and tenurial relations between lords and vassals (Marx, 1894, chapter 47, especially p. 791). This conversion of feudalism into a form of economic society is a reflection of the characteristic tendency of evolutionary thought to consider 'the past' simply as a 'stage' leading up to the 'present'. 'The last form', as Marx himself pointed out, 'considers its predecessors as stages leading up to itself and always perceives them from a single point of view' (Marx, 1941, p. 356). The conversion of 'feudalism' into a primarily economic concept can be demonstrated not only in relation to the Marxist notion of capitalism as a 'mode of production' but also in relation to the two other general views of capitalism outlined above. In the case of the exchange relations perspective, the conception of the capitalist 'present' as a system of private profit-making through market exchange, tends to prescribe a view of feudalism as a self-sufficient or 'natural economy' lacking in markets. Feudalism has, in this respect, been associated with the manorial economy (e.g. North and Thomas, 1973, pp. 9-11). Similarly, where capitalism is seen

24

Theories of the Transition to Capitalism

as a mentality characterised by acquisitiveness and profit-seeking, 'feudalism' has been construed as a form of traditionalism dominated by mentalities such as custom and/or communitarianism. The conception of feudalism as a form of economic society has come under increasing criticism in the last seventy years. This challenge has arisen both as a result of the impact of legal historiography on views of the European 'past' and, more recently, on the growing sense of unease among Marxists as to primarily economic accounts of pre-capitalist societies. Marc Bloch's celebrated study of 'Feudal Society' (La societe feodale), which first appeared in two volumes published in 1939 and 1940, may be seen as an important statement of the case against an economic conceptualisation of feudalism. He sees the feudal system rather as a type of society in its own right, a 'totality' in which discrete patterns of material life, modes of feeling and thought, social relations of dependence, obligation and power, social classes and political organisation are to be found. Within the feudal 'totality' Bloch places special emphasis on 'mentalities'. These are not regarded as 'superstructural', 'derivative', or 'epiphenomenal' but as vital to the constitution of the social structure. Bloch therefore devotes considerable attention to religious and cultural beliefs, intellectual self-consciousness and folk memory, and man's attitude to nature and time. This emphasis on society as constituted by mentalities and embodied in dependency and obligation relations, probably reflects the influence of Emile Durkheim's sociology upon Marc Bloch and the first generation of French Annales historians (Rhodes, 1978). Bloch's purposes are primarily those of the historian who sets himself the task of establishing, through detailed empirical analysis, that Western European society between the ninth and thirteenth centuries exhibited a discrete character. It is on this basis that Bloch finally arrives at an elaborated conception of the nature of feudalism, whereby the general character of this epoch may be illuminated. This conception involves the following fusion of elements: 'A subject peasantry, widespread use of the service tenement (i.e. the fief), the supremacy of a class of specialised warriors, ties of obedience and protection which bind man to man, and fragmentation of authority' (1939-40, val. 2, p. 446). Although this formulation clearly parallels the methodological

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25

fusion of economic, military, juridical and political elements found in Maitland (1909) and Hintze (1929), the role of the 'economic' within this complex unity is rather more limited than that of these other scholars. Unlike Hintze, Bloch makes no attempt to identify feudalism with some kind of natural 'economy' or phase of economic self-sufficiency. 'Let us beware', he writes, 'of applying too facile a formula' - the 'closed economy' to this epoch. This cannot be applied to the small farming operations of peasants since they often marketed produce, in part to pay money dues. As to the supposed 'autarchy of the great manors', Bloch argued that if true 'this would have meant that their masters had gone without arms or jewels, had never drunk wine (unless their estates produced it) and for clothes been content with crude materials woven by the wives of tenants'. Bloch's point is not only to dispute the theory of 'natural economy', rather it is to show that feudal society, 'while not unacquainted with either buying or selling', did not live by it. Monetised exchange relations were, in other words, irregular and unsystematic. The coherence of feudal social relations rested instead on an 'extra-economic' basis, in essence upon authority and dependency relationships. Feudalism does not, therefore, appear to Bloch as a mode of production but as a means of ensuring social cohesion. The conditions under which it emerged are linked both to the erosion of the blood-relations of kinship and to the erosion of 'regalian' and centralised state power during the high Middle Ages. Thus 'while the characteristic relationships of personal subjection retained something of the quasi-family character of the original compagnonages, a considerable part of the political authority exercised by innumerable petty chiefs had the appearance of the usurpation of regalian rights' (Bloch, 1939-40, vol. 2, p. 443). Bloch's reassertion of an extra-economic conception of feudalism is paralleled in the very recent 'discovery' by certain Marxist historians of the inadequacy of the 'economic' characterisation of feudalism as a 'mode of production'. Anderson (1974a, 1974b) and Hilton (1983), for example, have built on certain allusive comments by Marx (1894, chapter 47) to produce a notion of feudalism in which political and juridical aspects of 'surplus labour' extraction take precedence over such phenomena as seigneuralism and serfdom. In both cases the reconceptualisation

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Theories of the Transition to Capitalism

of feudalism flows from a reappraisal of the empirical evidence of social relations in medieval Europe. On the basis of an extensive review of secondary literature in many languages, Anderson is now convinced that extra-economic forces enter into 'the constitutive structure of the mode of production' in pre-capitalist societies. It therefore becomes impossible to define the nature of such modes of production (feudal included) 'except via their political, legal and ideological superstructures'. This then leads Anderson to a politico-legal conceptualisation of feudalism. Thus 'the singularity of feudalism was never exhausted merely by the existence of seigneurial and serf classes as such. Rather it was their specific organisation in a vertically articulated system of parcellised sovereignty and scalar property that distinguished the feudal mode of production in Europe' (1974b, p. 408). Rodney Hilton, on the basis of extensive primary research in late medieval English history, claims that 'there was a good deal more to feudal society than the exploitation of peasants by landowners' (1983, p. 167). In this way he brings in the 'existence form' of landed property, the fief (a topic he believes to be 'rather neglected by Marxists'), and also the institution of vassalage embodied in the lord-vassal relationship. These institutions, furthermore, were central to the juridical and political character of feudalism, which not only enveloped landowners and peasants but also lords and vassals. Feudalism for Hilton is then broader than serfdom and broader than some notion of mode of production. Rather it represents a social form in which 'power was exercised by and large through jurisdiction'. In this way 'jurisdiction was politics, so that one could say that the means by which landowners extracted surplus from peasants was political rather than economic'. The widespread reaction against viewing feudalism as a 'mode of production' has also been associated with moves to abandon the term as a general concept depicting peasant subjection to landlord authority. What these two critical lines of argument share in common is a wish to stress the historical specificity of that set of pre-capitalist societies based on political-juridical institutions such as fiefdom and vassalage (possibly in combination with systems of labour-rent such as serfdom). One of the main problems with the wider definition of feudalism

The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism

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-or the feudal mode of production- as 'peasant subjection' is that it prejudices analysis of social change in favour of a unilinear evolutionary theory. For the vaguer the notion of feudalism, the easier it is to posit as a universal stage of social evolution, evident in the world beyond Europe as well as Europe itself. In the hands of the Soviet theorist Bukharin (1915, pp. 159-98), similar kinds of social 'subjection' warranted the inclusion of a vast range of societies including ancient Greece, Egypt and Babylon, pre-nineteenth century China and Mexico, as well as medieval Europe as 'feudal'. Looked at in this simplistic and banal manner, the universality of the transition process virtually becomes true by definition. Even where such extravagant arguments are resisted, it is doubtful whether any evolutionary schema built upon a generalised conception of feudalism as peasant subjection does any more than encourage the systematic torture of historical data to fill a set of a priori conceptual boxes. In the process all trace of specificity in regional patterns of social change, and any possibility of causal contingency becomes suppressed as 'transition from feudalism to capitalism' takes its historically necessary and universal course. It is, of cout\e, important to keep open the possibility that something approximating to the Western European experience of feudalism may have been evident elsewhere, as, for example, in Japan. Lattimore (1957, pp. 49-57), in a cautious and non-evolutionary manner, has raised the general possibility that decentralised 'feudal' polities stressing land tenure in return for military service and bonds of vassalage may arise in the aftermath of warfare and land transfer associated with periods of migration. For Lattimore there is value in a term like feudalism, providing it is both 'sufficiently inclusive' and 'sufficiently precise'. In the context of the European transition debate, there is a good deal of merit in delimiting the concept of feudalism, though not so narrowly as to restrict it to a technical legal term for fiefdom. A 'sufficiently inclusive' and 'precise' conception would embrace that range of juridical, political and economic institutions - namely fiefdom, vassalage and serfdom - characteristic to a greater or lesser extent of a particular epoch of medieval European history. This procedure leaves open for debate the relative importance of certain clearly defined institutions for the transition to capitalism. In specifying more closely what is and what is not regarded as 'feudalism' it also avoids foreclosing on a possibility not consid-

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Theories of the Transition to Capitalism

erect by most evolutionists, namely, that the experience of feudalism was of little importance to the European transition to capitalism. This then allows the possibility that it is to pre-feudal, or quite simply non-feudal institutions that one must turn in order to locate many of the most significant aspects of the emergence of capitalism. In this way the organising framework that speaks of 'the transition from feudalism to capitalism' is itself left open to possible challenge. It is scarcely possible to place such important questions on the agenda for discussion while the concept of feudalism is defined in so general or so vague or so promiscuous a manner as to be virtually synonymous with pre-modern landed society itself.

2

Economic Theory and the Emergence of Market Society The interest of economic theorists in problems of dynamic historical change has fluctuated considerably since Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations in 1776. The pioneers of 'political economy' like Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and J.S. Mill clearly demonstrated a strong concern for the nature and causes of economic change, and the 'rise and fall' of economic systems. This concern is also to be found in the German school of 'historical economics', whose protagonists included Roscher, Schmoller, and Sombart. The emergence of neo-classical economic theory during the latter part of the nineteenth century, however, represented a fundamental shift of emphasis away from questions of long-run change towards equilibrium analysis with its focus on short-run adjustment. This shift did not, of course, occur without a profound methodological appraisal of the nature of economics, and the terms of its application to history. Debates of this kind were particularly intense in Germany, where exchanges between historical economists like Schmoller and neo-classicists such as Menger became known as the 'methodenstreit'. (Marshall, 1982, pp. 28-30). Among the issues at stake in this controversy was the applicability of the abstract deductive and naturalistic methods of conventional economic theory to the analysis of economies and cultures vastly different from those of nineteenth-century industrial Europe. Schmoller, in the tradition of German historical economics, argues especially forcefully against the 'theorists" presupposition of rational economic man based on an 'egoistic psychology' which ignored the non-economic (or cultural) context in which economic action took place. In spite of the personal interest of certain neo-classical theorists like Alfred Marshall in issues of long-run economic change (Marshall, 1890), the result of these methodological conflicts left

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Theories of the Transition to Capitalism

the mainstream of economic theory dominated for the next fifty years or so by problems of static equilibrium, short-run adjustment and change. Within this framework, a market-based economic system dominated by private enterprise and 'free' individual actors were assumed as 'given' elements within Western economic theory. The problem of the historical emergence of the market economy and of private enterprise was left either to the emergent discipline of economic history (a discipline Marshall had done much to encourage - Clapham, 1971, p. 58) or to historically minded sociologists. The net effect of the Keynesian challenge to neo-classicism developed in the 1930s was to reinforce rather than undermine the static and market-based characteristics of conventional economic theorising as it had developed since the late nineteenth century (Harrod, 1948, p. 10; Rostow, 1952, p. vi). The consequent reinforcement of the division of labour between economists and historically minded social scientists finds powerful expression in Samuelson's influential theoretical textbook on Economics. Here analysis of the replacement of 'feudal' and 'pre-industrial' conditions by 'free private enterprise' and 'competitive capitalism' is reserved for historians rather than economists (1951, p. 39). Prior to the post-war epoch, therefore, only a few individuals, such as Joseph Schumpeter, chose to address problems of long-run social change from within the mainstream of economic thought (1926). And even Schumpeter regarded explanation of the 'given' parameters of economics, namely, 'private property', 'free competition' and the 'division of labour' as beyond the scope of economic theory (1926, p. 4). Many of the insistent demands for a 'dynamic' economic theory that have been heard in the post-war period can be seen in similar fashion, as calls to explain processes internal to the pre-existing capitalist system, rather than as attempts to explain the problem of capitalist emergence itself. Schumpeter's theories of economic development and of business cycles were nonetheless addressed to qualitative changes in rates of economic performance. In this way he posited distinct cycles in the history of entrepreneurship and innovation within the capitalist firm and the wider economy. Much post-war economic growth analysis has, by contrast, been concerned with the problem of why it is that modern economies experience secular increases in aggregate levels of output or income over time (Harrod, 1948;

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31

Domar, 1952; Hicks, 1965). The empirical focus of this theoretical concern is, of course, primarily quantitative, involving changes in measurable economic aggregates. In work of this kind the process of 'growth' and the performance of growth rates has been analysed in terms of a range of economic forces, such as rates of savings, accumulation and population growth, and in terms of a range of inputs into the production process, such as increases in applications of capital and labour and improved human capital resources. The mechanisms by which these economic forces are constituted and by which they are applied to the production processes generally assume market exchange and private property as 'givens'. This is illustrated in the assumption that rates of savings reflect the propensities of individuals in possession of economic resources, and in the assumption that capital and labour represent mobile elements in the economic process dependent on the existence of capital and labour markets. In spite of such assumptions, it may well be that certain elements of the apparatus of growth theory have 'Generic' significance for the analysis of economic development in any historical or social context. The 'allocation' of resources between current consumption, investment and savings would seem to be a major influence on the course of economic life in any society. This would include non-market societies who reckon economic resources in terms of physical magnitudes and exchange through barter, and socialist societies where growth is measured in terms of 'prices' and made subject to state-controlled processes of planned allocation. Soviet and Eastern European economists have been just as concerned to theorise and explain the 'growth process' as their Western counterparts (see for example Kalecki, 1963). At the same time, most theorists of 'growth' - in the sense of long-term secular increases in output and income measured in price terms- have given little indication of how their work may be applied generically outside the context of a pre-existing capitalist or socialist economy. Nor has much attention been given to the possible connection between growth theory and phases of social transition from one type of society to another. Even where growth theorists such as Kaldor (1960, pp. 226--32, 259-300) have commented on the historical problem of capitalist emergence, this issue has remained distinct from the provenance of the 'theory of economic growth' itself.

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Alongside this body of economic thought, there exists a further set of studies explicitly designed to analyse long-run processes of qualitative change. Much of this emerged in the post-war period as a result of certain major difficulties faced by Third World countries in securing successful economic development. The challenge of establishing effective 'growth' strategies for the Third World led many economists (in the company of other social scientists) to re-examine how it was that the first phase of capitalist or Western development had originally come about in the initially non-market societies of Western Europe. The post-war revival of a historical concern to analyse the emergence of modern economies is reflected in such important works (arranged in chronological order) as: W.W. Rostow, The Process of Economic Growth (1952); W.A. Lewis, The Theory of Economic Growth (1955); W.W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960); J. Hicks, A Theory of Economic History (1973); D. North and R. Thomas, The Rise of the Western World (1973); W.W. Rostow, How It All Began (1975); and D. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (1981). What is initially striking about this group of historically directed studies is the confident retention of organising concepts and theoretical presuppositions derived from the mainstream of economic theory. Each, for example, takes the phenomenon whose historical emergence has to be explained to be the rise of the market economy with its capacity to sustain high long-term rates of per capita income growth. This economic criterion is seen in turn as representing the essential character of modern Western society -its 'affluence' (North and Thomas, 1973, p. 1) or 'high mass consumption' (Rostow, 1952, p. 323). Put simply this involves the assumption that the market economy produces a market-oriented society. No other qualitative change in the character of social relationships is presumed except for the emergence of a new pattern of exchange relations. A further, and somewhat unfortunate legacy of the use of organising concepts derived from economic theory is the manner in which the essentially quantitative concept of economic growth has come to serve not only as an index of aggregate economic performance in a market economy, but also as a designation for the qualitative process of social change involved in the transition to

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capitalism. Both Supple (1960, p. 553) and Fishlow (1965, p. 119) have pointed out the inapposite character of this latter usage. It is for this reason that many have preferred the more qualitative concept of 'development, to the notion of 'growth'. In this way, it has become more explicitly recognised that the theoretical analysis of economic change cannot be confined to the question of why aggregate output increased between year x and year y. Another feature of conventional economic theory taken over within many of these studies is the conception of 'economic' life as characterised by the setting of 'scarce' means to reach 'given' ends. In this way, a veil tends to be drawn over the character of the 'ends' that motivate, inspire or legitimise 'action'. In so far as any further assumptions are made about 'ends', they are either assumed to be 'random' and particular to the individual's 'tastes', or alternatively conceived of in terms of a self-interested concern for utility-maximisation. Thus for North and Thomas, the historical actors involved in the rise of the Western world are already presumed to prefer 'more to less' (1973, p. 1). Thereafter the apparatus of rational choice theory is brought into play to explain how and why various 'means' are chosen. Homo Oeconomicus is not generally regarded as a historical product whose emergence has itself to be explained. It appears rather as an ontological assumption about humanity. Rational choice strategies between 'scarce' means thereby become compatible with any type of 'ends' whether set within 'modern', 'traditional', 'capitalist' or 'feudal' society. A long line of critics have pointed both to the ahistorical character of such assumptions (e.g. Marx, 1847; Polanyi, 1944, 1977) and to the failure of utilitarian economic theory to concern itself with the determination of the ends of action, as expressed in values and norms (e.g. Durkheim, 1893; Parsons, 1934-5). For the early Parsons, following both Durkheim and Weber, the defining characteristic of sociology, as a species of action theory, was precisely its claim to deal with that part of the 'means-ends chain' outside the purview of economics, namely that which involved 'ends' and their relationship with 'means' (1934-5. p. 662). 'Ends' could not be left either as 'given', or as manifestations of utilitarian self-interest, for to do so ignored the problem of how and why any kind of normative order was possible in society. For Parsons, therefore, it was left to sociology to provide a

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theory of culture and the relationship between culture, economy and society. This not only served to address the problem of order, however, but was also germane to the explanation of social change itself. Cultural phenomena, such as values and norms, embodied change itself. Culture, as Weber pointed out, was an indispensable and autonomous feature of social life, without which any social action was meaningless. It follows that cultural phenomena, such as values and norms embodied in ideologies and world-views, can neither be left as unexplained 'residuals' as in conventional economic theory, nor treated in a reductionist manner as in Marxist views which assimilated culture to material interest. The theoretical force of this general critique of economistic assumptions applies in large measure to the group of historically informed studies reviewed here. Having said this, it remains a notable strength of the work of writers like Rostow and Nmth and Thomas to have attempted to extend the existing range of applications of 'rational choice theory' beyond market phenomena, into the very heart of those 'extra-economic' matters conventionally regarded by economists as beyond the scope of their theoretical framework. These include the important issues of 'property rights', 'power' and the structure of the state, and 'ideology', involving the legitimation of innovatory practices. Such extensions draw both upon innovations in recent economic theory including the analysis of transaction costs, and upon a growing awareness, especially on the part of North (1977 and 1981), of the critique of economistic assumptions by Karl Polanyi and Max Weber. This shift in awareness can equally be interpreted, however, in terms of aertain continuities between writers like Rostow and North, and the problems of long-run social change that engaged Adam Smith. It is to the substantive contribution of the 'Smithian tradition' to the problem of 'transition' that attention now turns. Adam Smith and the theory of the emergence of market society

The work of Adam Smith is usually regarded as a major foundation for all subsequent attempts by economists to explain the historical development of the market. It was Smith, after all, who first introduced in a systematically elaborated way an explanation of the functioning and emergence of 'commercial

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society'. In this approach Smith conceived of economic life and the 'wealth of nations' in terms of the desire by individuals to better their condition. This desire was expressed in the propensity of human nature 'to truck, barter and exchange'. 'Every man lives', according to Smith 'by exchanging or becomes in some measure a merchant' (1776, p. 25). This is the means whereby standards of life are secured and improved over the course of history such that 'society grows to be what is properly a commercial society'. This stage, evident in eighteenth-century England and North America, was reached through the slow and gradual progression of society from hunting and pasturage through agriculture to commerce. The historical development of exchange is seen at a very general level as being dependent on an increased division of labour and economic specialisation. This process is seen in turn as requiring increases in the capital stock. These Smith argues arose through saving, which was largely dependent on the exercise of parsimony by individual economic actors. However, while self-betterment and parsimonious behaviour expressed the 'will' of such actors, Smith argued that the development of the division of labour and 'commercial society' should be regarded as unintended consequences of such behaviour. Considered simply within this 'economic' frame, Smith appears to be offering a theory of the immanent emergence of commercial society. While he points out that economies could be static (as in eighteenth-century China), or even in decline (as in Bengal), the development of 'commercial society' in the West is seen in terms of the progressive realisation of a system of 'natural liberty' achievable through free market relations. Smith may therefore be interpreted as offering a teleological reading of history as the unfolding of the free market exchange principle. This is grounded ultimately, not within a theory of capital accumulation, but rather within the ontological assumption of the 'trucking propensity'. 'Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature of which no further account can be given, or whether, as seems more probable, it is a necessary consequence of the facilities of reason and speech it belongs not to our present subject to enquire' (1776, p. 25). It is, nonetheless, quite clear that Smith regards this propensity not as a historically contingent feature of certain societies but rather as a basic postulate about humankind.

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The vision of immanent market emergence certainly represents a very powerful feature of Smith's economic thought. In this respect it is not too difficult to appreciate how Smith's work has often been treated as a form of utilitarian thought based upon some fairly simplistic notion of rational economic man. Marx, for example, argued that 'According to Adam Smith, society is a commercial enterprise. Every one of its members is a salesman' (cited T. Bottomore and M. Rubel, 1963, p. 179). Such comments distort the overall thrust of Smith's thought by treating his 'political economy' in isolation from the other features of his system. As Ignatieff (1981, p. 345) points out, Smith aimed at 'not simply a model of the laws of market equilibrium, but also a history of civil society, a historical sociology of the growth process, a theory of government in its relation to the laws of civil society, and a theory of fiscal and economic policy'. Smith's theory of society was then far from utilitarian (Mcfie, 1967, p. 63). It did not limit itself to a concern for the rationality of means by which individuals sought to achieve some given 'end'- assuming 'ends' to be beyond analysis. Smith also concerned himself with the problem of normative order, that is, of the moral principles which would prevent a war of selfish individual interest so as to cement society together. Without 'moral sentiments' such as justice and propriety, in particular, Smith saw society degenerating into a 'scene of bloodshed and disorder, every man revenging himself at his own hand whenever he fancied he was injured (Smith, 1759, p. 340). Such sentiments could not, however, be regarded as grounded in self-interest, but were autonomous features of social life. It should be emphasised that alongside Smith's concern to explain social change through economic processes, such as capital accumulation and the division of labour, can be found an equally strong concern to demonstrate the importance of 'moral sentiments' in the emergence of commercial society. Smith's 'sociological economics' (the label is that of Riesman) is evident in the emphasis he gave to developments such as the protection of property by systems of law (such as contract law) and national defence. Of these two legal equity or justice 'Is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society ... must in a moment crumble into atoms' (1759, p. 86).

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When Smith's theories of economic life and moral sentiments are combined it is evident that the successful transition to 'commercial society' depends not only on 'capital ... silently and gradually accumulated by ... private frugality', but also on 'good conduct of individuals' protected by law (1776, p. 345). Such emphases are not consistent with a purely economistic interpretation of Smith's views on social change. Nor do they accord with the intellectual division of labour which sees economic history as dealing with the 'causes' of change, leaving 'social history' to deal with the human consequences. Since the late eighteenth-century many have followed Smith in taking the emergence of market society to be crucial to the development of modernity or capitalism. The 'economic' and 'sociological' aspects of his work have been differently evaluated to produce two distinct theories of the historical emergence of market society. In the first case, the 'market' is seen as an evolutionary force (identified above all else with trade and the division of labour) which successfully corrodes the restraining influence of institutions such as custom or arbitrary government upon economic life. In the second case, by contrast, the positive role of the state, or some other form of institutional intervention is seen not only as necessary but as quite crucial to the eventual creation of a market society. Let us look more closely at these two options. Market society and the historical emergence of individualism

The classical Smithian picture of market expansion corroding traditional restrictions on trade is closely associated with those theories that stress a close relationship between economic individualism and capitalist or modern industrial expansion. This approach is evident in the works of such important writers as Herbert Spencer and Alfred Marshall. Spencer's concept of industrial society is similar to that of Smith's notion of commercial society. Thus Spencer emphasises the importance of economic individualism whereby sovereign producers enter into exchange with others 'without the direction of society as a whole' (1874-5, p. 538). Such arrangements are secured by the guarantee of life, liberty and property, which in turn creates a settled society where 'agricultural, manufacturing

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and commercial organisations form the chief part of society'. In this way 'industrial society' is contrasted with the 'militant' corporate and warrior-based societies of the past. In explaining how such changes came about, Spencer also takes up Smith's conception of the slow but steady impact of expanding exchange and trade, a force which leads to the gradual development of economic specialisation and the transformation of 'primitive' forms of barter into markets. Alfred Marshall, the leading late nineteenth-century English economist, adopted a similar approach to that of both Smith and Spencer. The nature of modern Western society is characterised in terms of the predominance of 'free industry and enterprise'. 'Modern industrial life' is for Marshall characterised above all else by 'economic freedom' based on 'forethought' and 'deliberate and free' choice. In this respect, he went beyond the conventional utilitarian assumptions underlying economic theory. For Marshall, it was not enough to treat 'wants' as a 'given'. For the study of 'economics' is as much a matter of the analysis of 'man's character', as of the utility-maximisation process. To speak of 'character' is, in turn, to introduce moral phenomena into the scope of economic analysis. Marshall's 'free enterprise' is not then simply a matter of competitive economic individualism, but rather an activity bound by ethical norms of 'uprightness' and 'honesty'. 'Moral sentiments' in the Smithian sense are thereby built into the heart of his conception of that type of modern society whose emergence economic historians (if not economic theorists of market relations) have to explain. In this respect, there is much insight in Parsons' interpretation of Marshall, not simply as a major neo-classical innovator in the field of utility theory, but also as an exemplar of a sociologically informed economics involving analysis of 'ends' as well as 'means' (Parsons, 1937, pp. 129-77). Such morally inflected economic qualities are contrasted with the sluggish and passive character of traditional society. The emancipation of 'economic freedom' from custom, while not without certain setbacks, is conceived as a continuous process whereby action comes increasingly to approximate to individual economic rationality. Analysis of the nature of the initial barriers to such activity thereby becomes less important than the understanding of what it is that undermines them. The assumption is that given the removal of the barriers economic freedom (or 'capitalism')

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becomes established of itself. This position, as Talcott Parsons (1937, p. 157) pointed out, implies that capitalism 'needs no specific propelling force - if it consists merely in rational conduct why should it'. This he regards as the 'orthodox Anglo-Saxon view of economic history'. There are a number of serious problems with this approach. One of the main difficulties is the lack of any close historical connection between the development of market exchange and the development of capitalism at a societal level. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that trade for profit organised through markets has been a significant feature of a wide range of societies in the last 3000 years, including the Chinese civilisations, the 'ancient' Mediterranean societies of Greece and Rome, and, more recently, of the Islamic world. At the same time, the development of societies dominated by such relations has been both geographically limited to the West and extremely gradual and subject to spectacular reverses. This is graphically demonstrated in the case of ancient Rome, and in particular the collapse of the Roman Empire. The character of economic life in ancient Rome, and the periodisation of important phases within its development remain matters of complex scholarly dispute. There can be little doubt that the economic history of the Roman Empire provides no striking evidence in favour of the theory of immanent market development. At certain periods, trade, handicraft production, technical advances in areas like civil engineering, and a lively urban culture have been taken by many as indices of a potential breakthrough to the kinds of 'modernity' associated with contemporary Western or capitalist society. The Roman Empire was very far from being dominated by economic self-sufficiency, in spite of the existence of a large agrarian sector whose productivity was low (Duncan-Jones, 1982, p. 1). Yet, for all this, no successful transition eventuated. Instead from at least the third century onwards commercial economic life in the Western part of the Empire contracted. For Rostovtzeff (1926) this raised the very real problem as to 'why capitalistic development, ... which prevailed in large portions of the ancient world ... yielded ultimately to more primitive forms of life (p. 538)?. Why, in other words 'was the victorious advance of capitalism stopped, why was machinery not invented', etc (1926, p. 538). The case of ancient Rome provides

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little support for those who wish to posit a continuing evolutionary thrust through Western history towards types of society dominated by free market exchange or 'free enterprise'. It might still be conceded, of course, that the limited economic developments of the ancient world, however gradual and reversible, may still be seen as an early stage in the long-term emergence of capitalism. It is possible, for example, to speak of two 'transitions' or stages in the development of capitalism. Thus as Hicks (1973, p. 7) maintains, 'There is a transformation antecedent to Marx's Rise of Capitalism, and which, in terms of more recent economics, looks like being even more fundamental. This is the Rise of the Market, the Rise of the Exchange Economy. It takes us back to a much earlier stage of history.' There are, however, further problems with this kind of reasoning. The first general objection is to its highly evolutionist character. The end-point of social change - market society - is thereby presented as a necessary outcome of historical development, the achievement of which, however slow or gradual in historical terms, is nonetheless inevitable. The stages through which market society emerges are therefore represented as the unfolding of this necessity. Evolutionary accounts of this, or any other kinds, rely on the assumption that the directionality of history is somehow implicit or immanent from the outset. The underlying objection to this (or any other similar) procedure is epistemological. There is simply no way of securing knowledge, either of history as the unfolding of a unitary process of evolution or of an end-point towards which history is thought to be necessarily moving. Theories of immanent market emergence are no more vulnerable or disprivileged in this respect than any other evolutionary theory dependent on teleological assumptions. A second set of problems arises in considering the function of market exchange within the wider social setting. This line of argument has been taken up in a powerful and influential way by Karl Polanyi (1944, 1957, 1977). Polanyi's critique is directed, in particular, at those economic theorists and economic historians who wish to emphasise the continuity between 'market' phenomena observable in the ancient, medieval and modern worlds as evidence of the gradual long-term emergence of market society. He links this to the practice of regarding 'trade', 'money' and 'markets' as necessarily co-existent and interdependent features of

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a range of historically observable societies. Thus 'where trade was seen, markets were assumed, and where money was in evidence, trade was assumed and therefore markets' (Polanyi, 1977, p. 41). On the basis of comparative research by anthropologists such as Malinowski (1922) and Thurwald (1916), work by ancient historians such as Rostovtzeff (1926), and Polanyi's interpretation of classical authors such as Aristotle (Polanyi, 1957), such assumptions seem highly dubious. Some kinds of trade (e.g. administered Imperial transfers) and some uses of money (e.g. as a store of treasure) clearly pre-date the development of markets. And where market relations are evident from the first millennium sc onwards, the function of prices in such markets remains largely distinct, according to Polanyi, from that evident in modern free market mechanisms. This is because 'prices' might be set by tradition or central authority so as to remain stable for many years in spite of external fluctuations both in the volume of particular goods entering into exchange, and in expressed 'wants' for them. In general terms then, such findings suggest that what may appear as 'economic' transactions recognisable to modern observers, are rather to be seen as transactions 'embedded' within non-market relationships. And this is as much a point of the structural characteristics of non-market societies, as it is a matter of the cultural meaning ascribed to exchange. Exchange is, therefore, to be set within wider structures and cultural systems of custom, kinship, religion and the state allocation of resources. From this Polanyi concludes that 'the market pattern is never traceable to the mere desire of individuals to truck, barter and exchange' (1957, p. 42). Polanyi's strictures against the Anglo-Saxon theory of immanent market emergence offer a very powerful challenge to those views which would see 'trade' and 'money' relations in the ancient world as unambiguous indicators of the inexorable rise of a modern market or capitalist economy. This has been recognised by Douglas North, the American economic historian, whose initial work on transition leaned heavily towards the resources of neo-classical economic theory (e.g. North and Thomas, 1973). North's attempt (1977, 1981) to counter much of Polanyi's challenge by reasserting the relevance of 'wealth-maximising objectives' and 'voluntary contractual exchange' outside price-setting markets has not succeeded in deflecting the force of Polanyi's

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critique. This is primarily because North, while critical of certain neo-classical assumptions in certain circumstances, still remains unwilling to integrate the analysis of 'ideological' ends with the analysis of the means used to achieve them. North evidently agrees with Polanyi that different 'ideological' ends are an important element in the understanding of social change. He nonetheless continues to assert the relevance of rational 'economising' behaviour to a range of contexts in the ancient and medieval worlds, without feeling obliged to examine the cultural values and norms that existed in such cases. In the face of a vast range of anthropological and historical evidence to the contrary, 'wealthmaximisation' organised in terms of 'rational' choice between 'scarce' means is projected as the logic underlying economic relationships through history. Much of the empirical terrain on which North attempts to counter Polanyi's critique of the theory of immanent market emergence concerns the ancient and classical worlds of Babylon, Greece and Rome. Far less attention is given to the implications of Polanyi's argument for the problem of transition from feudalism to capitalism in the post-classical world. The empirical evidence concerning the relationship of economy and society in Western Europe around the late medieval period (e.g. AD 1000-1350) is certainly not easy to interpret with respect to Polanyi's categories. Markets certainly existed both for moveable property and for land (Postan, 1973, p. 110; Hatcher, 1981, p. 9). There is also some evidence that land use patterns by certain landed estates followed' price fluctuations for various types of commodities (Duby, 1962, pp. 136, 158, 165). Money was in widespread use as a medium of exchange while trade extended internationally linking Western Europe with the East and with the Baltic, Scandinavia and Russia. Feudalism cannot in other words be regarded as a social system completely dominated by traditionalism. The possibility of 'rational' marketrelated economic activity within a feudal context has thereby been seen as a matter of degree (Kula, 1962, p. 167). It is not ruled out simply by virtue of the 'embedded' character of economic relations within wider social structures. An alternative interpretation advanced by Macfarlane (1978) is that the evidence of markets for land and commodities in late medieval England indicates that in this society at least capitalism

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rather than feudalism now predominated. This is evidenced above all by individualism. 'The majority of ordinary people in England from at least the 13th century were', according to Macfarlane 'rampant individualists' (1978, p. 163). According to the definitional criteria of Marx, Weber and 'most economic historians', 'England was as capitalist in 1250 as it was in 1550 or 1750 (1978, p. 195). For Macfarlane the transition to capitalism cannot be explained in terms of conventional factors such as Protestantism, towns or the expansion of world trade. Its origins are much earlier. Not, however, in the Roman Empire - and here the drift of his argument is consistent with earlier writers like Rotman and Montesquieu - but rather in the 'Germanic' system of 'absolute individual private property' observed by Tacitus in the first century AD and later (presumably) exported to England by successive waves of Germanic settlers. Thereafter continental Europe, under a system of Roman Law which backed the inheritance system of primogeniture, is seen as going its own way, leaving England to pioneer the development of economic individualism and capitalism. In the case of Macfarlane, one might conclude that the 'peculiarities of the Germans' became transmuted into the 'peculiarities of the English'. Macfarlane's strong statement of the presence of capitalist individualism in late medieval England is liable to a number of serious criticisms. In the first place he subordinates his interesting arguments about the emergence of capitalism to the task of rebutting the notion of late medieval and early modern England as a 'peasant society'. The type of peasant society whose presence he wishes to challenge is seen as constituted by family property and the use of family rather than wage-labour. The household is thereby the principal unit of production and consumption, and kinship within extended families is the crucial element of the social structure. Macfarlane's energies are therefore devoted to the attempt to claim individual rather than family-based ownership, and commodity-oriented rather than kinship-oriented economic behaviour. Such evidence as the presence of a land market and the practice of freely alienating land outside the family so that heirs might be disinherited are seen as confirming the individualistic/ commodity-oriented rather than the peasant model. Such practices are by no means irrelevant to arguments about

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the emergence of capitalism. However, Macfarlane's primary concern with rebutting the 'peasant society' approach leads him to devote remarkably little attention to important questions pertaining more directly to the emergence of capitalism. Three such questions stand out. In the first place, is family ownership necessarily antipathetical to capitalism? It has after all been argued that family-based partnerships remained the principal organisational basis for capitalist industrialisation well into the nineteenth century (Payne, 1974, p. 18). The issue of the family farm or firm is further connected with a second question, namely, the connection between capitalism and individualism. In particular, are individually-owned property units a necessary feature of a capitalist system? Macfarlane's portrayal of the unfettered individual economic actor certainly represents a widely accepted picture of the basis of economic individualism characteristic of a marketbased or capitalist society. Yet important problems remain in establishing just how closely this rational economic man set within an individual profit-seeking context is a necessary historical agent in the making of modern Western society. Such doubts are not only a matter of the family or corporate institutional context of many activities historically associated with the development of market-responsive private enterprise. For there are two further alternative ways of conceiving of capitalist development which deny any especially privileged role to economic individualism. In the first, the emergence of capitalism may be interpreted as the unintended consequence of social actions directed primarily at non-economic ends. In the second, capitalism may be seen as emerging very largely 'from above' through state initiative rather than from 'below' through free individual activity. The so-called 'Anglo-Saxon' pattern of transition to capitalism centring on private individual enterprise of this kind has, for example, been contrasted with continental European or 'Prussian' forms of development in which the 'state' and public enterprise play a central part. If such alternative patterns are possible, no special significance need necessarily be attached to the 'peculiarities' of English individualism as some kind of unique matrix for capitalist development. A third problem with Macfarlane's argument involves Polanyi's criticism of theories which interpret market exchange between private economic actors as a sufficient basis upon which to erect a

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picture of emergent capitalism. Macfarlane is liable to Polanyi's criticisms of conventional economic theory in so far as he provides no adequate discussion of the relationship between ostensibly 'individualistic' market activities and the wider social and cultural setting. Macfarlane's use of English rural 'individualism' as a critique of certain theories of peasant society in fact lacks any adequate theory of the relationship between economic life and culture. In this way such phenomena as serfdom, landlord-peasant relationships involving matters like enclosures and the common field system of agrarian organisation make little or no appearance in the book. There is a very real sense then in which Macfarlane's method represents a very simplistic version of the classic Anglo-Saxon theories of immanent capitalistic emergence, whereby market economy is seen as entailing market society. In addition, Macfarlane's discussion of individualism and the existence of a market for land far too readily assumes a 'commodity' orientation to land-holding on the part of individual economic actors. Faith (1980, p. 387), in particular, argues that land was bought by small producers in the late medieval period not in order to exchange it or resell it at a profit but rather to enhance both wealth and social position. Thus 'the concept of land being valued for its exchange-value rather than its use-value seems wildly out of place in the context'. Macfarlane does succeed in demonstrating that such small producers cannot be regarded as having a strong emotional attachment to 'land' as such. However, this is neither very surprising nor in itself indicative of capitalist individualism. This is primarily because the technical conditions of the prevailing open-field production in small strip units made such individual attachments inappropriate. A further general issue, touched on by Macfarlane, but of far more widespread concern is that of the chronological location of the first key phases in the development of market society. While for Macfarlane thirteenth-century English peasants were already capitalist-inclined and rampant individualists drawing on far older traditions, other writers, most notably Pirenne, saw the period from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries as the first decisive epoch in the social history of capitalism (Pirenne, 1914). As indices of capitalist development, Pirenne focused on marketoriented trade linked with the development of free cities,

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merchant capital, and the development of capitalist-inclined industry. While such developments are undoubtedly indicative of an expansion of market-oriented economic activity up until the fourteenth century, no smooth and direct transition to capitalism seems detectable as a result of this process. As in the case of the Roman Empire (though for different reasons), the trading expansion of late medieval Europe was followed by a period of crisis during the fourteenth century reflected in the recession of trade and demographic collapse. This involved a classic Malthusian subsistence crisis whereby population pressure on the land and food supply resulted in famine. This pattern was evident prior to the exogenous impact of the Black Death in 1345-7, which exacerbated an already difficult situation. There is, of course, a good deal more to be said about the existence of structural and cultural features in late medieval society, conducive to or inhibitive of the development of market society. However, the European experience of the fourteenthcentury crisis, together with the earlier collapse of the Roman Empire, provide strong prima facie reasons for regarding market development based on exchange for profit as incapable by itself of securing a transition to a market-dominated society. In neither case did market expansion lead either to the development of a social structure dominated by free enterprise, or, as Rostow points out, to 'fundamental and regular changes in industrial or agricultural technology by private entrepreneurs' (1975, p. 14). The main conclusion that can be drawn from such criticisms of the theory of immanent market emergence is that the market cannot be taken as an explanation of the development of market society. In other words 'there is no natural or irreversible movement from commercial development to industrialisation' (Perkins, cited by Rostow, 1975, p. 205). It can neither be assumed that the trucking propensity is a universal social attribute nor that trade and private profit-seeking must necessarily break down all obstacles to their 'free' development.

Who or what unbound Prometheus? Some post-Smithian perspectives on the emergence of market society While a number of difficulties have been located in the theory of immanent market emergence, this has not led to a wholesale

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abandonment of the search for explanations of capitalist development consistent with conventional economic theory. For Rostow (1975) and North and Thomas (1973) what is required is a theory of 'economic growth' which is capable of explaining the interaction between market-based trade and a range of other economic and cultural forces. These range from demographic patterns, technological change and a 'scientific cast of mind' to the establishment of a stable, legal and institutional framework within which markets can be allowed to operate freely. Both Rostow and North and Thomas are agreed that certain decisive preconditions of this type are required before market society can emerge. They also suggest that the achievement of such conditions is by no means a matter of evolutionary certainty. In framing explanations in these terms, however, there is a clear intention either to draw on insights and assumptions generated within economic theory or at least to produce hypotheses which are not inconsistent with such assumptions. Rostow's substantive analysis is conceptualised not as transition from feudalism to capitalism, but from traditional society to the modern economy with a capacity for self-sustained growth. This transition process is characterised by a sharp qualitative leap or 'take-off', in which rates of capital formation increase dramatically in a short space of time. This process is further associated with a 'systematic regular and progressive application of science and technology to the production of goods and services'. Rostow then sets himself the problem of explaining why societies like those of ancient Greece and Rome, medieval Europe, or the great empires of China and India, while capable of some dynamic, failed to produce 'growth' of this kind. While initially disposed to 'economic' explanations consistent with economic theory, Rostow finds no suitable explanatory model. The first possibility is that plentiful cheap labour might make innovation unnecessary. This is rejected on logical grounds because historical evidence fails to produce any clear correlation between labour shortage and technological innovation. The second possibility is that capital in such societies was in short supply, thereby retarding innovation. This is also rejected since considerable capital accumulations are evident in many of the societies in question. In both cases, although Rostow does not say so explicitly, it is evident that supply and demand relation-

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ships based on assumptions of rational economic man do not fit. Rostow then moves to consider the effect of cultural phenomena, most notably prevailing systems of ideas concerning social behaviour on social development. Here he notes that 'avarice' was scarcely lacking amongst the kings, courtiers, bureaucrats and merchants of the pre-modern world. This form of behaviour was evidently not a sufficient base for modern economic activity. Rather, Rostow focuses on the decisive importance of a scientific world-view allowing the vision of man's potential mastery over nature through economic development. Pre-modern societies are seen to lack this crucial ingredient, being contained within world-views stressing passivity or fatalism. What then explains the successful emergence of this Promethean world of innovative scientific/technological vision? Market stimuli are for Rostow completely inadequate as an explanation. As we have already seen, the market expansions of the ancient or medieval worlds failed to call forth such a profound change in the trajectory of social development. Even the revival of international trade from the late fifteenth century onwards, associated as it was with the European voyages of discovery, cannot, he believes, explain it. Such trade may have increased real incomes and stimulated urbanisation, but it did not have a sufficiently great impact on industrial activity to stimulate technological change. Rostow also rejects an alternative line of explanation in terms of the supportive policies of early modern nation-states to European industry. The successful technological application of the products of new scientific world-views are then left virtually as independent variables in their own right. And Rostow himself sees this as highly problematic. This is because innovation is thereby left outside the mainstream of conventional economic theory. Economists 'from Adam Smith, through Marshall and Robertson to Samuelson and Kaldor' have consistently failed, according to Rostow, to integrate technological innovation adequately within economic theory (Rostow, 1975, p. 226). The only options available are either to explain such changes as functional to demand and investment levels, an explanation which Rostow rejects, or to see them as exogenous, which is to introduce a strong element of randomness into the explanation of transition. Is the emergence of capitalism to be explained then simply in terms of 'lucky breaks'?

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Rostow seeks to avoid a wholly contingent explanation by focusing on the factors that bring forth an adequate supply of entrepreneurs capable of applying scientific breakthroughs to practical economic activity. 'The key to successful invention' is a 'sustained process, involving many minds and hands, gradually translating a creative insight into a workable and economically profitable instrument' (Rostow, 1975, p. 174). This, in turn, throws explanation back once again on cultural influences. Given Britain's pioneering role in the transition to 'industrial society', Rostow locates the distinctive advantage possessed by Britain in generating a supply of such 'minds and hands' within the existence of Protestant Nonconformist groups - an argument which bears closely upon Weber's celebrated 'Protestant Ethic' thesis. Rostow's refusal to subsume technological change simply to scientific advance certainly enables him to make sense of the complex processes of technological development in both Britain and France between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. In both cases there was no smooth diffusion of new scientific insight into industry, but rather a time lag between periods of scientific advance and periods of technological change. In Britain, the flowering of scientific enquiry in the seventeenth century was not immediately followed by a sharp change in industrial practice. In France, the eighteenth-century scientific advances in fields like chemistry and engineering put her ahead of Britain, and yet 'market society' emerged only very gradually in France during the nineteenth century. Rostow explains this latter pattern in terms of the relative absence of a similar group of entrepreneurs and technological innovators to those that had played such a leading role in eighteenth-century Britain. This absence is related in turn to the inhibitive effect of the French social structure on the supply of entrepreneurial talent. At the same time the existence of such time lags between scientific advance and technological change also brings into question the existence of some kind of causal mechanism linking a new scientific world-view with technological change. Thus while it is possible to demonstrate a 'flowering of scientific enquiry in England in the seventeenth century leading up to the Industrial Revolution, it is difficult to establish how this connected with actual technological innovation in the work-place. This is because so many of the 'innovations' of this period consisted in incremental

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improvements in production techniques rather than in the adoption of entirely new large-scale inventions. New inventions such as the steam engine were, of course, important too, though not necessarily the product of scientific discovery (Mathias, 1972, pp. 87-8). Equally important were the activities of what have been called the 'practical tinkerers' (Landes, 1954, p. 8), constantly trying to make furnaces, steam engines or textile machinery more efficient and less costly to operate. It seems unnecessary to have recourse to Rostow's notion of a 'new conceptual vision' based on scientific enquiry to explain the initial stimulus to such 'practical tinkering'. There is, however, an even more general problem with any theory of transition (Rostow's included) which gives such a prominent place to technological change. This emphasis which can be found in Marx and many others has become associated with the Industrial Revolution, a concept developed by Toynbee. The qualitative transition in economic and social relationships implied in this term has become associated not only with rapid change but also with changes in industrial technology. This powerful emphasis, derived from the English case, has nevertheless come in for much criticism. Two problems stand out. The first concerns the issue as to whether 'transition' must be conceived as a rapid revolutionary process, such as Rostow describes in the concept of the 'take-off' into self-sustained growth. Critics have argued both that the British 'take-off' was rather more protracted than Rostow believes (Deane, 1961; Crouzet, 1972), and that other societies such as France need' not be regarded as 'backward' or 'less advanced' simply because their transition was a gradual affair (Roehl, 1976). This is primarily because qualitative changes in technology or economic organisation do not themselves necessarily represent optimum strategies for profit-maximisation in any contexts. It may be more 'rational' to avoid their implementation if capital is costly or labour plentiful. The latter point leads into a second consideration, namely, how central is technological change to the transition to market society and capitalism? To focus in a technologically oriented way on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution may divert attention from far longer-term sources of qualitative change. But it may also obscure the extent to which increased rates of economic growth may be achieved without

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technological innovation and outside factories. This latter issue has been explored through the debate around the phenomena labelled 'proto-industrialisation' (Kriedte, 1977). Rostow's contribution to the substantive analysis of transition is important both for its critique of the theory of immanent market emergence and for its emphasis on the importance of ideational and attitudinal changes to the emergence of market society. While the particular links he makes between the scientific world-view and technological innovation are not convincing as a decisive explanation of transition, his reference to changes in world-views is testimony to the inappropriateness of homo oeconomicus as the basic assumption underlying theories of economic growth. Rostow's more recent study How It All Began (1975) is far more explicitly sceptical of the utility of conventional economic theory in this respect than his earlier works such as The Process of Economic Growth (1952). Above all perhaps he points to the need to consider alternative interpretations of the changing world-views associated with transition, in order to understand how structural economic changes were mediated through various kinds of cultural mechanism. North and Thomas

Attempts to provide an alternative to the theory of immanent market emergence, while remaining consistent with conventional economic theory, have continued in the work of North and Thomas (1973) and North (1981). A central feature of their approach which differentiates them from Rostow is the belief that such phenomena as technological innovation (or capital accumulation) 'are not causes of growth'; (1973, p. 1). Unlike most analysts of transition, North and Thomas seek to make an analytical separation between the phenomenon which is to be explained, and the causes of that phenomenon. Technological innovation or market expansion cannot then be regarded as explanation of growth because both are part of the growth process itself. Accordingly North and Thomas' explanatory strategy is to search for the institutional prerequisites which, in their view, permit a market economy based upon private self-interest to operate. The most decisive institutional changes are considered by North and Thomas to be the establishment of secure private property

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rights. For in situations where such rights are poorly defined or prove difficult to enforce, it would appear that the cost of private economic initiatives is likely to exceed potential benefits. It is then only on the basis of well-defined and guaranteed property rights that a confident and efficient pursuit of technological change, economies of scale and the reduction of traditional market imperfections proceed. The key concept in this approach is clearly that of property rights. In emphasising their importance to an understanding of transition, North and Thomas see themselves as following in the tradition of both Adam Smith and Marx, who 'both saw successful growth as dependent on the development of efficient property rights' (1973, p. 157). Neither Smith nor Marx is viewed as offering an adequate general theory of transition. In the former case, this is because Smith is seen as failing to explore sufficiently the process whereby governments 'devise and maintain' property rights so as to secure growth. In the latter case, it is because Marx is believed to have held to a theory of evolutionary necessity which North and Thomas find unacceptable. Accordingly North and Thomas have turned to some post-war developments in market-based theories of economic and political behaviour (e.g. Baumol, 1952; Buchanan and Tulloch, 1962; Demsetz, 1967) in order to elaborate their 'property rights' framework. Such theoretical work undoubtedly takes rational economic man as a starting point for analysis, though it does not assume it to be universally valid for all analytical purposes. In explaining market economic behaviour and indeed 'transition', it presumes that some part of the population is individually acquisitive, such that 'the average individual when confronted with real choice in exchange, will choose "more" rather than "less"' (Buchanan and Tulloch, p. 18). Exchange relations are organised through rules entered into by sovereign individuals and arranged contractually, in so far as such individuals find it to their advantage to do so (i.e. where benefits exceed costs). However, as Demsetz points out, conventional economic theory tended to take market relationships as given rather than accounting for their emergence. To do this requires analysis on the way 'property rights' emerge as an 'instrument of society', expressed in law, custom and mores. It also must involve discussion of how property rights change, since private property rights cannot be seen as a social universal.

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In this way Demsetz connects the emergence of private property rights with historical analysis. However, the framework within which he conducts this analysis appears to reintroduce (somewhat contradictorily) the postulate of rational economic man, whose presence seemingly underlies in this view any form of property rights. Even historical forms of collective or communal property rights are then seen as founded on individual self-interest. The ostensibly universal form of rationality is connected with transition through the economists' concept of externality. This notion has been defined in various ways, but refers very broadly to those costs and benefits arising from an economic transaction (actual or potential) which are external to that transaction itself, and which are borne by or accrue to third parties. What interests Demsetz is that class of externality which inhibits a transaction from taking place. This arises where the cost of bringing the externality 'to bear on the decisions of one or more of the interacting persons is too high to make it worthwhile'. An example, pertinent to the historical emergence of market society, would be that of the costs of protecting a trading transaction from piracy or theft in the absence of clear and secure private property rights. Such transaction costs 'might be seen as too high as to prohibit the transaction going ahead'. Property rights thereby function to 'guide incentives' so as to internalise potential externalities. In this way costs become calculable, bearable and generally lessened, so that it becomes possible to initiate activities where the benefits from a transaction will exceed the costs. In applying this concept to the problem of 'transition', the question then becomes that of analysing how and why property rights change so as to internalise the potential externalities that arise from pre-modern forms of property rights. Transition, therefore, amounts to a process whereby society moves from a position of high transaction costs to a position where such costs are far lower. In taking up this concept of property rights, North and Thomas quite explicitly accept - at least for certain analytical purposes the assumption of individually rational economic actors. The presumption is that from the outset calculative individuals are poised, as it were, to take private economic initiatives, if only the 'lure' of sufficient incentive is provided. Such apparently universal calculative individualism - applicable to the feudal as well as the

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modern world - is encapsulated in the proposition that 'if the private costs exceed the private benefits, individuals ordinarily will not be willing to undertake the activity even if it is socially profitable' (North and Thomas, 1973, p. 3). As with so much economic theory, the calculative, rational individual is presumed rather than explained. And yet the emergence of market society itself is not to be accounted for in terms of such assumptions. Its emergence is seen as far more problematic since private property rights, as distinct from individual utilitarian propensities, are not seen as universally present from the outset. There is then no steady historical evolution towards market society. Instead institutional intervention is required in order to create such rights. The main institutional agency for securing private property rights is seen as the state. This has the advantage in terms of legal, fiscal and coercive power to define and enforce property rights at a lower cost than voluntary groups. The essence of North and Thomas' historical analysis of transition is contained in the proposition that 'the differential success of European economies after the demise of feudalism depended on the relationships between the nation-state's fiscal policies and property rights (North and Thomas, 1973, p. 97). Given their emphasis on the decisive importance of institutional innovations in property rights as the pre-condition for capitalist emergence, it is not surprising that North and Thomas focus their analysis not upon the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution and its immediate context, but rather on the far earlier period from 900 to 1700. It is during this period that they seek to locate the nature and causes of the breakdown of feudal property rights which did not recognise or secure private ownership, and the transition towards new institutional arrangements which did. Within this period there is no smooth evolutionary passage from feudalism to capitalism but rather a phase of 'widely divergent experiments and false starts'. Thus in contrast to theories of the immanent emergence of market society, North and Thomas stress the precarious nature of economic development. Such difficulties are explained by integrating demographic considerations into the economic analysis of transition. The post-war integration of demography and economic theory within the historiography of European social development stems

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from the important work of Postan (1950, 1966) dealing mainly with England, and LeRoy Ladurie (1966) based on France. The approach of these analysts combines themes from the early nineteenth-century work of Malthus and Ricardo as subsequently elaborated by Abel. The argument is that pre-modern economies faced periodic subsistence crises followed by periods of expansion, which eventually ended in renewed subsistence crises, unless some kind of breakthrough to capitalism had in the meantime been achieved. Crises arose when the natural tendency for population to increase ran up against diminishing returns from available land, in a context of low levels of agriculture productivity. Such crises produced demographic collapse which acted over the long term to correct over-population, and hence produced a renewed base of demographic and economic expansion. This model involves cyclical long-swings in medieval and early modern European history with expansion between 1000 and 1300 being followed by crisis and collapse in the fourteenth century, followed eventually by renewed expansion in the sixteenth century, and crisis for many areas of Europe again in the seventeenth century. Such long-swings in turn effect movements in other economic indicators such as prices and incomes. For rising population entails rising prices and rising agricultural profits, while a falling population means the reverse. For many economic historians the cyclical dynamic of this model has replaced the 'rise of the market', both as the main explanation of the economic contours of pre-modern society and as the main obstacle that had to be overcome for a successful transition to capitalism to take place. For North and Thomas, history is interpreted in the light of the Malthusian model as a struggle to overcome population pressure on resources. This may only be brought about by creating institutional mechanisms which allow relatively inefficient manorial production methods to be replaced by a more efficient market mechanism. It is only in this way that it becomes possible for output growth to outstrip population increase. For North and Thomas, the chronology of the decisive change of demographic and economic trajectory is best seen in two phases. The first is that between 900 and 1500 which witnesses a classic Malthusian expansion, crisis, and down-swing in population. The second, between 1500 and 1700, witnesses the successful establishment of

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private property rights as the basis for the subsequent economic 'take off' in eighteenth-century England built upon the avoidance of Malthusian subsistence crises. In the first place, population growth (viewed as an exogenous influence) is seen as the decisive reason for the expansion of trade and agriculture in the years up to around 1300. Feudalism and manorialism, though originally designed as institutions to restore social order to a highly unstable region, thereby proved to be far from static or founded totally on self-sufficiency. They were indeed capable of expanding production and responding to market opportunity - but only up to a certain point. In the longer term, North and Thomas believe such responses led to an 'irreversible' weakening of feudalism. This is evidenced by the growing practice of permitting serfs to commute their compulsory labour services for money payments, money obtained by marketing goods. This is seen as undermining feudalism by allowing market relationships to penetrate what they regard as an essentially non-market system. The gradual erosion of feudal institutions by market relations was, however, overtaken by the profound fourteenth-century crisis. It was at this point that population expansion was checked by the increasing scarcity of land, and demographic collapse was hastened by the Black Death, food shortage and famine. This crisis whose effects lasted for around another century was to produce profound changes in economy, polity and society. These included first of all, a major collapse- at least in Western Europe - of serfdom since the labour scarcity created by demographic collapse increased the 'bargaining power' of serfs relative to lords. Secondly, feudal revenues from land-rents fell heavily. These two developments are seen as fatal to the socio-economic basis of feudalism and manorialism. They were also part of a changing political relationship between feudal lords and central government. It is true that feudal lords and monarch's were alike beset by fiscal crisis in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The monarchs own 'feudal' revenues had, of course, declined like the rest, requiring new sources of supply. However, contemporary changes in military technology - such as the advent of the pike and later of the cannon - helped to transfer control of coercive power away from the feudal lords and into the hands of more centralised monarchical nation-states. The pike, for example, weakened the effectiveness of the armoured

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feudal cavalry in the face of disciplined infantrymen, while the cannon made the feudal castle militarily obsolete. The continued effect was to strengthen the shift towards the centralisation of military power in the hands of nation-states employing either standing armies or specialist mercenaries. And yet such military innovations did nothing to solve the fiscal crisis of the European states, they only made them worse. How then to meet the fiscal demands? This question forms the bridge into the second phase of North and Thomas' analysis. For it is precisely between 1500 and 1700, or so they claim, that many property rights stressing 'tradition' and 'custom' were undermined by monarchs and princes seeking to solve the fiscal crises of the emergent nation-states. New fiscal strategies could take many forms from confiscation, through the granting of monopoly rights in return for tax revenues, to the use of those powerful 'vassals' who still remained to extract revenue from the peasantry. Alternatively there was the option of creating 'open markets' and taxing transactions within them. In all such cases, the state was effectively granting property rights or guaranteeing their protection in return for revenue. It is North and Thomas' case that the forms of property rights developed in certain areas- notably the Netherlands and England -were largely responsible for their successful 'economic growth' in comparison with more inhibitive property rights evident in France and Spain. Thus it was that the Netherlands and England succeeded for the first time in overcoming the recurrent Malthusian crisis of population and resources, while France and Spain did not. By what specific mechanisms then did fiscal policy relate to changing property rights? In the former two cases positive encouragement was given tD free market development and economic efficiency. In the Netherlands, for example, the Dukes of Burgundy and certain subsequent Hapsburg rulers discouraged monopoly privilege and raised revenue instead by promoting unfettered trade and industry. These policies, characteristic of the early period 1400 to 1550, were later taken up by the newly independent United Provinces after their successful revolt against the demands of later Hapsburg rulers for increased taxes to meet the costs of dynastic warfare. The encouragement of secure private property rights begun by the Burgundians and continued under the United Provinces, in North

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and Thomas' view, enabled the Dutch to better exploit the market opportunities for increased international trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the case of England serious conflict with the monarchy was to occur before the securing of similar property rights. This is associated by North and Thomas, above all, with the seventeenthcentury parliamentary struggle against the Crown. This sought, amongst other things, to place private property rights beyond arbitrary government and especially arbitrary taxation powers. The Tudor system of industrial regulation was also effectively challenged at the same time leading to greater scope for private individualism. Hence, according to North and Thomas, 'The stage was now set' by 1700 'for the Industrial Revolution', since 'the institutional framework of England provided a hospitable environment for growth' (1973, pp. 155--6). In the latter cases, by contrast, development was 'throttled', according to North and Thomas, by an adverse government fiscal policy, made all the worse by the absolute powers held by French and Spanish monarchs over taxation. In France, for example, revenues were raised both by internal tariffs which separated regional markets, and by the sale of guild privileges. These enabled guild monopolies to regulate product markets to their own sectional advantage. Thus although land was alienable and labour -in the absence of serfdom- formally free, the French state had nonetheless failed to 'develop an efficient set of property rights' (p. 127). In Spain, the establishment of secure private property rights was also retarded either by arbitrary policies of property confiscation or through forms of taxation like the Mesta. In return for a guaranteed revenue to the state, this gave sheep producers absolute rights to drive sheep across private lands. It was also secured by the state's deliberate refusal to accept the private enclosure of communal land for purposes of arable production (p. 130). North and Thomas' account has been outlined at length because it represents one of the most elaborated and theoretically sophisticated attempts to explain the emergence of capitalism as 'market society'. There is some credence in the criticism that North and Thomas still rely to a considerable extent on assumptions of individually rational economic actors engaged in bargaining transactions with each other - whatever the historical context.

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Such assumptions are especially ahistorical and anachronistic when applied to the nature of pre-modern societies such as feudalism. This social system is taken by North and Thomas to be founded on contractual relations between individuals. Such a view is certainly plausible when applied to relations between lords and vassals, but far more dubious when applied to relations between lords and serfs. Certain freemen did 'contract' themselves as serfs to a feudal lord in return for protection, at least at the outset of the feudal period. However, many did not, either being coerced into a servile status or being born into it. And once servile status was assumed, any sense of a free contractual relationship between lord and serf disappeared, since the serf was bound juridically to the lord's estate. This is not to say that all serfs lived under a regime of unmitigated repression since lords felt themselves bound in certain cases to customary practices (Hatcher, 1981). These mitigated any sense of a unilateral power relationship between lord and serf. And yet the point remains that serfs were juridically constrained by the lord's 'justice' until their servile status was abolished. The failure of North and Thomas to appreciate this is reflected in their treatment of the practice of commutation whereby serfs could commute their compulsory labour services for money payments under certain circumstances. North and Thomas see this as the intrusion of the non-feudal logic of the market into social relations, as if such arrangements represented an irreversible erosion of serfdom and immanent arrival of market relations. This interpretation is not born out of historical data, primarily because commutation remained a practice contained within feudal social relations. It was usually lords who took the initiative in allowing it as a means of increasing revenue when labour was plentiful as it was in thirteenth-century England (Hatcher, 1981, pp. 15-17). Yet the serf remained a serf such that commutation could at least in theory be reversed to compulsory labour services, while the full weight of other feudal dues and taxes was in any case maintained. The example of North and Thomas' treatment of feudalism indicates. that assumptions of rational economic man remain embedded within certain features of their analysis. And yet when it comes to their overall explanation of transition such assumptions recede. Neither commutation of labour services nor market expansion leads directly to capitalism. And whereas population

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expansion and its stimulus to market demand plays a central role in their earlier explanations of growth (1970), their later, more elaborated studies, focus squarely on the necessary mediating role of states to ensure transition (1973). Since state action is not explained in terms of activities of homo oeconomicus, it seems clear that their main explanation of transition does not rest on this assumption. The most that can be said is that the argument is internally inconsistent. This may well reflect the impossibility in principle of providing an explanation of transition that is consistent with neo-classical economic theory. North and Thomas, however much they may wish to retain it, seem to end up with an explanation that does not appear to require it. The challenging implications of the earlier study for the neo-classical framework are made far more explicit in North's more recent study Structure and Change in Economic History, published in 1981. In this important work, North not only seeks to extend the substantive and historical scope of his previous analyses to pre-historic and ancient times, but also strives to locate the limitations of neo-classical theory within historical analysis. The key to North's account of such limitations centres on the issue of transaction costs. In this respect the neo-classical world is seen as 'a frictionless one in which institutions do not exist and all change occurs through perfectly operating markets. In short the costs of acquiring information, uncertainty and transaction costs do not exist' (1981, p. 5). Such neo-classical conceptual fictions are valuable because they highlight certain 'taken-for-granted' assumptions, which, according to North, deserve more explicit attention. These assumptions involve an 'incentive structure' to encourage private economic action and the protection of property rights. Such rights extend both to 'new knowledge' that can be profitably exploited, and to the securing of a positive rate of return to private savings. A further 'silence' in neo-classical theory concerns demographic behaviour. The assumption here is that the private and social costs of having children were identical, implying that fertility decisions were subject to human control and adjustable in the short run to changes in the social costs of higher population levels. None of these matters can be taken for granted in the analysis of economic and social change through history. In the light of such fundamental limitations in neo-classical economic theory, North moves away from the resources of

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economics towards alternative social scientific perspectives. He appears no longer able to tolerate a situation where the neo-classical model leaves unexplained such 'large residuals' as the character of state policy, culture and demography. Rather than having direct resource to the theoretical recourse of sociology or political science, however, he prefers, like so many other critics of neo-classicism in the United States, to regard the nature of such an alternative as a 'theory of institutions'. Such a theory would incorporate 'a theory of property rights', dealing with incentives, a 'theory of the state', the agency that specifies and enforces such rights, and 'a theory of ideology' to explain 'how different perceptions of reality affect the reaction of individuals to the changing 'objective' [sic!] situation' (1971, pp. 7-8). This latter terrain involves questions of values and normative order, whereby individuals use yardstic~s such as 'justice' or 'fairness', and in so doing deviate from individualistic 'rational' choice theory. This theoretical agenda represents one of the most radical challenges to the provenance of conventional economic theory in dealing with the emergence of the market system and 'market' society. While North still retains the utilitarian assumption of wealth-maximisation alongside these newly elaborated interests in property rights, state forms and ideology, this in some ways merely parallels Adam Smith's 'dualistic' view of human society as constituted both by passions such as self-love and the trucking propensity, and by 'moral sentiments'. North's concerns place the extra-utilitarian features of institutions at the heart of the explanation of transition. In this way a range of historical influences, such as changes in military technology affecting state power or conflicts over property rights (as between kings and parliaments), have begun to be systematically integrated into an analysis of the rise of the Western world. The main interest of Structure and Change is therefore theoretical rather than substantive. It indicates the insuperable theoretical problems attending the transfer of much conventional economic thinking to a long-run historical context, and as such promises to build upon certain earlier glimpses of what 'sociological' economics might look like, as reflected in the work of Adam Smith and Marshall. Substantively, however, the study adds comparatively little to the analysis of North and Thomas (1973). With the exception of a 'speculative' chapter on 'the first economic revolu-

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tion' involving the shift from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, the main substantive developments occur in attempts to indicate examples of the inapplicability of neo-classical reasoning to problems of transition. The issue of the place of serfdom within feudal society is a case in point. Here the earlier characterisation of serfdom as a voluntary contractual relationship to maximise utilities, serfs having the protection of lords in return for labour, is now regarded as a coercive relationship. The lords as a 'warrior class', are seen as 'analogous to the Mafia in extracting income from the peasantry' (1981, p. 130). No further implications are drawn from the coercive and presumably conflict-ridden character of this relationship for the analysis of social change. At a more general level, North (1981) reproduces the fundamental emphasis of North and Thomas (1973) on the differential impact of state policies with regard to property rights on the rise of the 'Western world'. 'Ideology', in fact, plays a very limited role in this process, until appropriate property rights are seen as established. It is only after 1700, when these incentives and guarantees are in place, that historical phenomena such as the legacy of the Protestant Reformation and 'Scientific Revolution' of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are seen to influence economic development in a fundamental manner. 'Ideology' and 'culture' in this respect play a very muted role in North's theory of transition. Conclusions

The economic theorists' VISion of the immanent emergence of market society has not stood up particularly well to recent attempts to apply economic theory to the problem of the historical origins of the modern Western world. Nor does the mainstream of conventional theory appear, with one notable exception, to have generated many insights into this problem either. North and Thomas (1973) and North (1981) have, however, successfully applied the concepts of 'property rights' and 'transaction costs' to the analysis of the emergence of market society. The main attraction of this approach is its refusal to accept that market-responsive individuals can be used to explain the emergence of market society itself. This position is shared by North and Thomas and other post-war writers such as Rostow. A further

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strength of North and Thomas is their emphasis on the prima facie importance of the modern state, and variations in state policy for the development of capitalism. At the same time, no general explanation is offered for the divergence in state policies, except in terms of the contingent historical peculiarities of the respective nations and governing classes or elites. This reliance on contingent reasoning represents a significant break with those theories which assume the evolutionary 'necessity' of the emergence of market society or capitalism. Two main weaknesses remain in North and Thomas' account. The first concerns the abbreviated analysis of 'property relations' and power. This is restricted to the level of the state, rather than the conditions of existence within civil society. The latter is still presumed to be inhabited by rational individual actors maximising utility. Such a presumption not only rules out the significant social conflict between classes for an explanation of transition, but also effectively suppresses any concern for culture. The second weakness is precisely this, that culture, or in North's terms 'ideology', remains an under-explored component of social relationships. This neglect seems especially damaging, moreover, in so far as analytical attention is given to phenomena such as the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution as significant constituents of the process of social change. In the following chapter, various Marxist theories of transition will be analysed to ascertain whether they can meet such problems.

3

Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism The contribution of Marx and writers in the Marxist tradition represents one of the most influential attempts to understand the nature and origins of the modern Western world. The distinctiveness of the legacy of Marx - who collaborated especially closely with Engels in his historical studies- centres on the understanding of the dynamics of modern Western society in terms of the capitalist mode of production. The central organising frame for explanations of the emergence of European modernity focuses on the transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production. This legacy has often been taken to represent a more satisfactory alternative to the work of Adam Smith and his successors, concerned to analyse the historical emergence of 'commercial' or 'market' society. The nature and adequacy of Marx's legacy to subsequent analyses of the transition process is, however, fundamentally problematic. One symptom of this is the remarkable degree of interpretative divergence among recent analysts seeking to explain the emergence of capitalism within some kind of 'Marxist' or 'historical materialist' framework. It is arguable that such divergences depend not only on the vast accumulation of empirical data pertaining to the 'transition' problem since Marx's day, but to certain areas of logical incoherence, ambiguity, or shifts of emphasis within Marx's own work on social change (Baechler, 1971; Holton, 1981; Giddens, 1981). This chapter advances four main arguments. First, it is argued that Marx's comments on social change in general and the transition to capitalism in particular are far from unitary or unambiguous. Second, that divergences in recent Marxist interpretations of transition relate not only to difficulties in Marx's work, but also to the use of contrasting ontological and teleological assumptions pertinent to the analysis of social change.

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Third, that certain Marxist accounts of the transition to capitalism offer far richer and more powerful insights into the changing nature of property rights and power relations than is evident in the work of those oriented towards conventional economic theory. Fourthly, certain weaknesses in the Marxist account of transition are located. These centre on the inadequacy of Marxist accounts of the place of culture, and in particular of ideological systems that eitl~er legitimate or prescribe certain varieties of economic action.

Marx and the transition from feudalism to capitalism

Marx's account of the developmental trend of nineteenth-century European society is founded on the notion of the capitalist mode of production. This notion, as represented in Marx's central theoretical work Das Kapital, involves a significant shift of emphasis away from the Smithian discussion of exchange relations within commercial society. For Marx, the social relations of production constitutive of capitalism structure the operation of exchange as well as the workings of production. What distinguishes the capitalist mode of production from all other modes, according to Marx, is the centrality of wage-labour. The relation between wage-labour and capital has a twofold character. In the first place, the worker is free to sell his labour-power as a commodity with an exchange value like any other commodity. In the second place, the capitalist is able to purchase labour-power and use it in such a way- at least according to the labour theory of value - that the value imparted to production by labour is greater than that which is returned to labour as wages. The extraction of this 'surplus value' from wage-labourers under conditions of competition between capitalists, is what constitutes the fundamental dynamic of the capitalist system. At the same time, this process also involves a systematic source of exploitation of labour by capital since commodities are socially produced but privately appropriated. Capitalism is thereby indicative not of 'natural liberty' in the market-place, but of exploitation, conflict and power relations within the sphere of production. From this overall conception of the capitalist mode of production,

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two major questions are posed for those who wish to understand its historical emergence. The first concerns the origin of capital in the hands of capitalists capable and ready to buy labour-power. This question cannot be answered except by reference to a second question, namely, the historical origins of 'free' wage-labour and labour markets. Marx's conception of capitalism has been extensively evaluated both at a theoretical level concerned with the coherence and adequacy of his political economy, and at an empirical level concerned with the applicability of the model in various nineteenth- and twentieth-century settings. For the present purposes, what is perhaps most striking is the robustness of Marx's account of the sociological characteristics of the capitalist mode of production, even for those disposed to criticise many other features of his thought (Giddens, 1981). In emphasising the importance of the separation of labour from ownership of the production process and the compulsive imperative of capital accumulation for the capitalist, Marx is taken by many to have accurately identified a 'watershed', distinguishing modern Western society from what went before. There are many who regard this focus as a more powerful alternative to those theories which identify the emergence of the modern Western world in terms of changes in exchange relations associated with the development of the market. Hence whatever difficulties there may be in applying the Marxist concept of the capitalist mode of production to contemporary Western societies, there still remains widespread support for its continuing deployment in analyses of the historical emergence of the Western world. The main difficulties with Marx's framework are not so much connected with his account of the phenomenon whose emergence is to be explained, but rather with the substance of his explanations. The first set of problems concerns the nature of Marx's comments on social change in general, comments which might be assumed to be central to an understanding of particular instances of social change, such as the transition from feudalism to capitalism. One of the difficulties here is that Marx, while disposed from time to time to offer comments on general social change theory, nonetheless shifted his position using different lines of argument, emphasis, or allusions in different texts. In the 1840s, for example, Marx and Engel's discussion of the

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material conditions of change worked within a conceptual framework close to that of classical political economy. This is evident in the pioneering statement of 'historical materialist' method contained in the German Ideology (1932). Here Marx and Engels present social change in terms of the progressive development of economic 'intercourse' (verkehr), often translated as 'exchange'. In this 'Smithian' formulation neither causal autonomy nor causal primacy is given to the sphere of 'production'. By the late 1850s and 1860s, however, Marx felt himself to have moved beyond this framework. In Capital (1867), and the Grundrisse (1941) notebooks which served as a preparation to it, Marx had not only recast the 'classical' labour theory of value, but had also developed the concept of the 'social relations of production' to emphasise the primacy of 'production' over 'exchange' (for further discussion see Walton and Gamble, 1972, pp. 171-94). This in turn produced analyses of social change in terms of the progressive transformation of production relations. Shifts of this kind can, of course, be interpreted simply as a matter of Marx's growing independence from the legacy of classical political economics. Other shifts or ambiguities in Marx's comments on social change are far less easily interpreted in this manner. This raised the possibility that Marx's general view of social change is profoundly ambiguous. This problem can be demonstrated with respect to the key concept of 'productive forces' (sometimes rendered as 'productive power' or 'productive faculties'), which occupies a position of causal primacy in many of Marx's comments on social change. Typical formulations include the following: 'A change in men's productive forces necessarily brings about a change in their relations of production' (Marx, 1847, p. 107), and 'The social relations of production, change, are transformed with the change and development of the material means of production, the productive forces' (Marx, 1849, p. 160). Yet for all this, the precise meaning of 'productive forces' is difficult to pin down, with some textual references entailing a technological connotation, and others implying a far broader emphasis embracing social consciousness, even class consciousness. Compare the comment: 'Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation

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of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them' (Marx, 1867, p.372, n3) with 'Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself' (Marx, 1847, p. 151). In addition to ambiguities of this kind is the further problem that Marx left no completely consistent indication in his work as to the causal primacy of different orders of social phenomena, such as 'productive forces' (on whatever meaning) or social relations of production. Textual references vary from a seeming 'productive force' determination at one extreme, to a complex 'dialectical' interaction between productive forces and social relations at another. Here class struggle occupies a crucial role in resolving contradictions and crises. In The Communist Manifesto (1848), for example, Marx and Engels clearly point to the historical function of class struggle producing 'either a revolutionary re-construction of society at large or the common ruin of the contending classes' (p. 34). As such, class struggle appears as a means of resolving situations where existing property relations become incompatible with the 'already developed productive forces' (p. 39). In so far as Marx aimed at a general theory of social change, there would seem to be at least four possible variants which might be legitimately inferred from his work. (a) Change resulting from the progressive universalisation of the division of labour and 'exchange relations' (as manifest in The German Ideology) (1932). (b) Change in terms of technological determinism - as reflected in the celebrated aphorism in The Poverty of Philosophy: 'The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill society with the industrial capitalist' (1847, p. 95). This variant, it should be emphasised, is not merely a simplistic interpretation devised by anti-Marxist commentators. (c) Change in terms of a more broadly based productive-force determinism, embodying skills, knowledge, and experience, as well as material artefacts such as technology. This reading seems more faithful to The Poverty of Philosophy taken as a whole. (d) Change in terms of internal contradictions between productive forces and social relations of production, resolved through class conflict. This view is particularly marked in The Communist Manifesto and the historical sections of Capital (1867, Part 8). Up to this point the assumption has been that Marx consistently aimed to develop a general theory of social change. Such an

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objective is generally seen as characteristic of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought working on the basis of a universally operating causal 'prime mover'. To leave the matter here is to neglect certain tensions within Marx's work concerning the scope and limits of a general theory of change. As with Sahlins' (1960) analysis of the work of another nineteenth-century evolutionist, Herbert Spencer, there is evident in Marx tension between an interest in the 'general' evolution of human society as such, and the 'particular' evolution of individual societies or regions, such as England or Europe. In the case of Marx, there is a distinction to be made between general or 'generic' theorising and the genetic analysis of particular modes of production. Such works as The Poverty of Philosophy or the Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy have been seen as offering programmatic formulations which appear to present generic theories of society (the 'base-superstructure' model) or generic theories of change (the 'handmill gives you society with the feudal lord ... etc.'). Yet in other texts such as Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, Marx may be seen elaborating a set of generic concepts, for example, property, conditions of production, to be applied in different ways to particular 'genetic' forms of society, and particular instances of social change (1941). Amongst other things this allows the possibility of a multilinear theory of social change as societies 'succeed' or 'fail' to secure some kind of dynamic transition beyond various forms of 'communal' property rights. Such divergent multilinearity, as reflected in the contrast between 'stationary' Asia and the more dynamic Western transition through slavery and feudalism to capitalism, clashes with any simplistic notion of a universally operant causal 'prime mover'. The relationship between generic theorising and genetic analysis of particular historical configurations is further influenced by the important role played by teleological and ontological assumptions in Marx. Marx and Engels in The German Ideology argued that the premises of historical materialism were 'real individuals, their activity and the material conditions of their life ... premises [which] can thus be verified in a purely empirical way (1932, pp. 36-7). This innocent empiricism is not consistent with the strong philosophy of history evident in their views about social change. A powerful teleological tone is to be heard at many places in such

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work, not least in those formulations which imply that the 'fetters' that periodically constrain 'productive forces' must eventually burst asunder to produce further phases of social progress. Humankind is thereby seen as struggling towards the realisation of certain immanent capacities, identified within its 'species being'. In contrast with Smith's emphasis on individual trucking propensities and the immanence of the free market, Marx stresses the growing capacity of humankind to act as free 'producers' unfettered by natural or social limits. This teleological vision in Marx, while ultimately refractory to empirical validation, is nonetheless indicative of an underlying unity in his orientation towards social change. Even if Marx's general comments on social change remain ambiguous and sometimes contradictory, he assumes an evolutionary unity in history beyond the play of complex processes of social change. There are parallels to the shifting and ambivalent character of Marx's general theory of social change in the episodic, uneven, and yet often highly insightful comments that Marx and Engels made on the specific historical problem of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Such comments range from the bald propositions of The Communist Manifesto, through the highly suggestive notes contained in that section of the Grundrisse published as Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, to the sustained discussions of 'primitive accumulation' and 'merchant capital' in Capital. As Jean Baechler (1971, pp. 7-26) has pointed out, such comments, though highly suggestive, are far from definitive commentaries free from ambivalence. Baechler notes in particular the shift from an emphasis on world market expansion in the German Ideology, to an emphasis on 'the expropriation of the rural population', the genesis of wage-labour and of 'the capitalist farmer' in Capital. Marx's ambivalence can also be illustrated with respect to the much quoted passage from volume three of Capital where Marx speaks of 'two ways from feudalism to capitalism': (a) 'the producer becomes merchant and capitalist ... the really revolutionising path', and (b) 'the merchant establishes direct sway over production' - i.e. the merchant becomes industrialist (1864, pp. 334-5). In the first case, analytical attention is directed to the pre-conditions which would allow producers (industrial or agrar-

Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism 71 ian) to become capitalists; e.g. the growth of a propertyless 'wage-labour' force. It is this option that Marx advances in Capital, Vol. 1, specially in the discussion of 'primitive accumulation' (1867, part 8). The second way, by contrast, seems to direct attention more to the origins of mercantile activity and the growth of towns and trade. In terms of the chronological development of Marx's thought this second 'path' represents the earlier tendency of his thought, consistent with the 'Smithian' emphasis on exchange relations. At this time, Marx rehearsed the conventional association between cities, civilisation and urban merchant capital made by writers like Smith. It was this association which inclined Marx to speak of the capitalist class as 'the bourgeoisie'. Such emphases are present both in The German Ideology and in such texts as Marx's letter of 1854 to Engels, dealing with the role of free urban communes in the rise of capitalism (cited Avineri, 1968, pp. 154-5). Such documentation has been sufficient to persuade a number of recent commentators of the predominantly 'urbanist' bias of Marx's theory of transition (Lefebvre, 1972). Yet Marx himself had come, by the 1860s, to doubt the developmental significance of urban merchant capital, not so much because it was 'urban' but because it remained mercantile and generally outside the sphere of production. He certainly believed that merchant capital had the effect of turning the products of labour into commodities. Yet for capitalism to emerge he saw it as necessary not simply for products to assume a commodity-form, but also for labour itself to take on the nature of commodity, i.e. to become saleable as labour-power. Such a development which required the separation of those who had hitherto been direct producers from control over the products of their labour - the 'primitive' or 'primary' accumulation process - could not be adequately explained by Marx in terms of the spontaneous impact of merchant capital and market forces. In the case of England, for example, the conversion of peasants into proletarians was a far more intractable process. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English history indicated for Marx that the creation of wage-labour depended on power struggle, violence and political coercion. As a result, Marx was disposed to argue that merchant capital 'Is incapable by itself of promoting and explaining the transition from one mode of production to another' (1894, p. 327).

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It is arguable that Marx's critique of the role of merchant capital to the transition process also amounts to a critique of some simplistic kind of technological or 'productive force determinism'. In Capital, causal emphasis quite clearly shifts away from some form of exclusive reliance on the pressure of productive forces, bursting through outmoded relational fetters. Instead Marx draws attention to a range of causal influences serving to produce changes in 'feudal' social relations of production, so as to permit the further development of the productive forces. The causal influences that led to the dissolution of serfdom, the undermining of the direct producer on the land, and the creation of wage-labour are linked to a mixture of coercive political processes and 'contingent' events. These include 'the spoilation of the church's property [in the sixteenth-century dissolution of the monasteries], the fraudulent alienation of the state domains, the robbery of the common lands, and the usurpation of feudal and clan property' (1867, p. 732). No serious attempt is made to explain these processes by reference to the development of the productive forces. Rather Marx believes that the emergence of the capitalist mode of production and the consequent expansion of the productive forces through the epochs of 'manufacture' and 'modern industry' depended upon pre-existing processes of primitive accumulation. In the case of England, primitive accumulation had proceeded sufficiently far by the sixteenth century to warrant the announcement of the beginnings of the capitalist era. Even then, the main 'productive force' set free by primitive accumulation- at least until the eighteenth century - was the division of labour rather than 'machinery' (1867, 348). At first sight Marx's shift away from 'productive force determinism' as an explanation of the transition from feudalism to capitalism seems to conflict with many important economic and social trends observable in the period from around 1450 to 1700. These include the discovery of the Americas, the international expansion of European trade, and the development of inventions such as the printing press, the compass, the clock, and improved fire-arms. The period from 154(}-1640 has been identified by Nef as a phase of revolutionary change in the technical basis of the English economy, creating a decisive thrust towards capitalism (Nef, 1934). While such developments were clearly important, there remain

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valid doubts both as to the scale and impact of such 'market' or 'technical' forces on the development of European society. Many economic and social historians tend more to the view of Sella (1974, p. 354), who has argued that for all such changes 'Europe's industrial sector as it stood in 1700 bore far greater resemblance to its medieval antecedent than to its nineteenth-century successor'. Neither international market expansion nor technological change seem acceptable as 'prime movers' of the transition process. In addition to their general comments on the transition problem, Marx and Engels also left behind them a number of more fragmentary but interesting comments on particular historical developments pertaining to this process. One important example concerns the nature of feudalism. While Marx's interest in this question was subordinated to the problem of the historical decline of communal property rights, Engels was more interested in the history of the rise and decline of feudalism as a distinct social order (Hobsbawm, 1964, pp. 52-3). To this end he produced some analyses on the development of feudalism in Germany in an appendix to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific called 'The Mark'. Engels also made some briefer comments on the connection between developments like science and Protestantism with the rise of capitalism (1892, pp. 383-7). Comments of this kind were neither systematically integrated into the general materialist conception of social change nor into the thrust of Marx's discussion of 'primitive accumulation'. In this way the role of cultural change in the transition to capitalism is left as something of an underdeveloped 'residual' problem. Prior to the post-war period, it was only in Russia that the problem of the transition from feudalism to capitalism assumed a central place in Marxist debate. Here the issue was raised as to whether Russia with its 'Asiatic' or 'non-Western heritage' might be expected to follow a 'Western' path of transition from feudalism to capitalism, and eventually to socialism, or whether alternative routes to socialism by-passing the capitalist stage might be possible. The issue injected the possibility of multilinear approaches to the general problem of social evolution. In Lenin's important study 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia', first published in 1905, two alternative lines of transition out of the Russian 'feudal landlord economy' were posited. In the one route, 'the old landlord economy is broken up by revolution, which

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destroys all the relics of serfdom and large landownership', whereby a rapid transitional phase of capitalist development leads to a socialist reorganisation of society. In the other route, 'the old landlord economy bound as it is by thousands of threads to serfdom is retained and turns slowly into a purely capitalist Junker economy' (Lenin, 1905, p. 32). In characterising the latter route as the 'Prussian' road to capitalism, Lenin's study moves beyond Marx's account of the transition to capitalism based upon the English experience. Instead of a revolutionary bourgeoisie, the 'Prussian' road relies on the agency of Junker landowners. A much more elaborated Marxist debate over Western patterns of transition was stimulated after the Second World War with the publication of Maurice Dobb's Studies in the Development of Capitalism, in 1947. This debate developed in the early 1950s in and around the journal Science and Society. Paul Sweezy vigorously challenged Dobb on a wide range of interpretative issues, provoking Dobb to defend his position, engaging the attention of several British Marxist historians including Rodney Hilton and Christopher Hill, and stimulating further international contributions. Thereafter intermittent discussion continued until a renewed burst of debate during the 1970s. This has centred on Immanuel Wallerstein's The Origins of the Modern World System (1974, 1980), Perry Anderson's two volumes, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Lineages of the Absolutist State (both published in 1974), and more recently Robert Brenner's three extended articles in Past and Present (1976, 1982} and Ne'W Left Review (1977). Within this divergent body of analysis at least three general positions are detectable. These will be referred to as: (a) the 'exchange relations' perspective- reflected in the work of Sweezy and Wallerstein; (b) the 'property relations' perspective - associated with Dobb, Hilton and Brenner; (c) 'Marxist eclecticism'- associated with Perry Anderson.

(a) The 'exchange relations' perspective The 'exchange relations' perspective, articulated in somewhat different ways by Sweezy and Wallerstein, sets out from the notion of capitalism as a system of production for profit through market

Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism 75 exchange. The expansive characteristics of this system are expressed through an international trade-based division of labour. Capitalism is founded on the capacity to generate exchange values, a process which in turn depends upon capital accumulation. For Wallerstein this also implies that wage-labour is not a necessary feature of 'capitalist' social relations. Drawing on Frank's (1969) studies of imperialism and underdevelopment in Latin America, Wallerstein refuses to accept that capitalism can be defined in terms of a 'mature' set of social relations of production evident within nation-states. Instead he defines capitalism as a world system. In contrast to the older world empires (e.g. ancient Rome) tied together by political relationships, the capitalist world system is articulated through the international division of labour, and a tendency to universalise market exchange relations. This 'world' system involves 'national' units in so far as there exists a power hierarchy between strong 'core' states, and weak 'peripheral' states. This hierarchy functions to enforce and maintain an 'unequal exchange' of commodities in favour of the core states. Thus for Wallerstein 'capitalism involves not only appropriation of surplus value by an owner from a labourer, but also an appropriation of surplus of the whole world-economy by core areas' (1974, p. 401). Wage-labour is dominant only in the core areas of the system. Elsewhere various forms of 'unfree' labour are utilised, as in the 'slave plantations' within the Americas and the Caribbean in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, or the Junker serf-labour estates of Eastern Europe operating at the same period. Each of these regions played an intrinsic part in the development of the capitalist world system, through international trade and product specialisation. It follows from this that the problem to be explained in any theory of capitalist emergence does not involve the emergence of free wage-labour in particular national settings in Europe. It centres instead on the reasons for the expansion of the international division oflabour. For Wallerstein, this not only involves an account of the interplay between Western Europe and other regions of the world economy, but also embraces the origins of powerful national polities able to create conditions suited to the pursuit of profit-making on an international scale. In contrast to the dynamic view of capitalism as an expansive

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system of exchange relations dominated by the international division of labour, Sweezy and Wallerstein see feudalism as a system of production for use. This implies a relatively low division of labour and a relatively limited development of trade. For Sweezy, the manorial system, while not entirely static, was 'fundamentally inefficient' and unsuited to market production. 'Techniques were primitive and the division of labour unwieldy ... sooner or later new types of productive relations and new forms of organisation had to be found' (1950, p. 145). Wallerstein's comments on feudalism as 'A series of tiny economic nodules whose population and productivity were slowly increasing' (1974, p. 20) is rather similar. In the light of the sharp contrast drawn between capitalism and feudalism, Sweezy and Wallerstein tend towards an explanation of the transition to capitalism through forces external to the operation of the feudal system. Although they recognise the existence of internal conflicts within feudalism (e.g. between trading towns and a predominantly self-sufficient agricultural system, or between lords and serfs over the distribution of the surplus), such conflicts are not seen as possessing sufficient momentum by themselves to undermine feudal production for use and cause capitalism to emerge. Sweezy and Wallerstein differ markedly, however, in their detailed explanations of transition. For Sweezy, influenced strongly by the Belgian historian Pirenne (1925), primary emphasis is placed upon trade and towns whose character extends from long-distance trade in feudal 'luxuries', to middle and short-distance trade in food and manufactured goods, thereby creating a division of labour between town and country. Feudalism declines, in other words, through the dynamic of expanding exchange relations whose logic is external to feudal 'production for use'. Wallerstein's explanation of the emergence of capitalism is at first sight more complex. Given his 'world system' rather than nation-state perspective, it is not surprising that considerable emphasis is placed on the changing character of market relationships. This centres in particular on the pressure of growing commodities and profits. In this mode of argument Wallerstein virtually assumes the pre-existence of the capitalist world system as a means of explaining the differential economic performance of various regions and nations. For such differentials are explained

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precisely in terms of the mode of integration of such units into the emergent world system (1974, chapter 3). This kind of reasoning seems very close to tautology, since the world system is invoked to explain its own emergence. There is a second mode of argument whereby Wallerstein emphasises the fundamental political context in which the world system emerged. Here, the capitalist world system is not explained as the spontaneous product of market forces, but is rather dependent on the establishment of strong 'core' states in the European metropolis. In this line of argument the world system cannot be presumed to exist until 'unequal exchange' relations are established between a strong 'core' and a weak periphery. However, when asked to explain why the strong 'core' states first emerged Wallerstein falls back again on economistic reasoning, emphasising again international market forces. Although the Sweezy-Wallerstein emphasis on exchange relations reflects a major element in Marx's early work on transition (especially within The German Ideology), it is also interesting to note in turn how closely this emphasis in Sweezy-Wallerstein (and in Marx) reproduces Adam Smith's approach to the analysis of eighteenth-century European economic expansion. Smith, whose Wealth of Nations was written in the 1770s before the advent of the large-scale capitalist factory and factory-based wage-labour, focused precisely on the relationship between market development and the division of labour. This similarity has been further developed by Brenner, who sees Sweezy and Wallerstein as representing a 'Smithian' form of Marxism (Brenner, 1977). The key to their explanation of capitalist expansion is seen in terms of an underlying tendency of humankind to 'truck, barter and exchange' in pursuit of individual self-interest. When faced with the question why there should have arisen an expansive force for capitalist development external to the logic of feudalism, Sweezy and Wallerstein seem to rely (at least implicitly) on the Smithian 'hidden hand' of economic self-interest to provide the teleological force to resolve problems created by the relatively 'static', 'undynamic' character of feudalism. Although Wallerstein has himself attacked 'Smithian' interpretations of the rise of capitalism, such as that provided by North and Thomas (1973), his own account seems liable to the same kinds of

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criticism that may be levelled at the theory of immanent market emergence. For Wallerstein it is not the market but the world system whose emergence is regarded as so powerfully immanent as to be used to explain its own emergence. In this respect Wallerstein's account is far less adequate than North and Thomas in so far as he appears to disallow autonomous 'political' or 'military' causes of the development of the strong European nation-states. In common with North and Thomas, Wallerstein fails to explain the origins of that kind of calculative rationality that underlies the activities of individual capitalist actors within the world system. Skocpol (1977, 1979) has noted that Wallerstein relies on such notions of rationality in developing his argument that capitalists choose forms of labour control - whether free wage-labour or slavery - in terms of profit-maximisation criteria. Where the cultural commitment to such criteria comes from, Wallerstein fails to reveal. Aside from certain logical problems in Wallerstein's argument, there are several general criticisms that may be levelled at the Sweezy-Wallerstein 'exchange relations' perspective. Above all else, it still remains as unclear that trade based upon merchant capital and an international division of labour can be regarded as an autonomous 'prime mover' of the process of capitalist development. Marx's argument that 'merchant capital' is incapable by itself of promoting and explaining the transition from one mode of production to another' (1894, p. 327) seems to apply with particular force to the 'exchange relations' theorists of transition. Such theorists not only underestimate the extent to which trade and economic expansion is compatible with feudalism, but also exaggerate the extent to which international trade in the early modern period was of sufficient scale to produce a transformation in the structure of Western European societies. Recent studies by Bairoch (1974) and O'Brien (1982) indicate quite clearly that Wallerstein's 'world system' concept based on unequal exchange between core and periphery is not sustained by empirical evidence on the structure of European and world trade. As late as 1790, it has been calculated that only around 4 per cent of Europe's gross national product was exported across national boundaries. Nor did the profits of core-periphery trade make much contribution to capital formation (O'Brien, 1982, p. 4). O'Brien concludes as a result that 'to reify the international

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commerce of the mercantile era into a "world economy" is to misapply a contemporary concept which really has relevance only for our own times. Throughout the early modern era connections between economies (even within states) remained weak, tenuous and liable to interruption. Except for a restricted range of examples, growth, stagnation and decay everywhere in Western Europe can be explained mainly by reference to endogenous forces' (O'Brien, 1982, p. 18).

(b) The endogenous 'Marxist' property relations perspective

An alternative 'endogenous' 'Marxist' account of the transition to capitalism may be found in the work of a second group of contributors to the post-war transition debate, notably Dobb, Hilton and Brenner. While differing on a number of points of substantive interpretations, these writers are united in choosing a definition of capitalism based on the social relations of production, rather than exchange relations. The capitalist mode of production is defined in terms of wage-labour and processes of capital accumulation dependent on the commodification of labour-power. This conception of capitalism avoids those difficulties associated with the view that it is changes in exchange relations which mark a decisive historical watershed in the development of the modern Western world. The emergence of trade, commerce and an international division of labour is subsumed instead within various forms of property relations. This property relations focus is further reflected in the discussion of feudalism. Unlike protagonists of the exchange relations approach who view trade conducted through profit-oriented market exchange as contrary to feudal production for use, writers like Dobb allow feudalism a rather greater compatibility with commerce. Trade, especially international trade, is seen as an integral part of feudal life, serving in the main to satisfy the luxury consumption demands of the feudal lords. Dobb, therefore, regards most medieval towns, not as centres of (proto-)capitalist entrepreneurship, but as feudal foundations and in some cases 'feudal-commercial republics' (1947, p. 83). Urban merchants in this system are to be seen more as parasites on the feudal order as courageous 'free' burghers aspiring towards a new capitalist

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system. This interpretation has recently been consolidated by Merrington (1975). Nonetheless, for all this, feudal relations of production are regarded as ultimately 'inefficient' and incapable of satisfying the material demands placed upon them. Brenner (1982, p. 17) follows Dobb in this respect, interpreting feudalism as a 'socialproperty system' whose characteristic production relations 'were incompatible with the requirements of growth', and thus 'led to economic stagnation'. Although both Dobb and Brenner emphasise the forms of extra-economic coercion, such as serfdom, constitutive of the feudal mode of production, their conceptualisation remains predominantly economistic centring on the success or failure of the system in meeting material demands. Hilton (1983) has recently given more emphasis to the 'political' 'juridical' and 'cultural' aspects of feudalism by stressing the centrality of institutions like vassalage which tied lords together in relations of obligation and dependence. This feature of feudalism is not closely integrated into his account of the transition from feudalism to capitalism which relies on an analysis of economic processes and conflicts contained within feudal 'property relations'. By freeing the characterisation of feudalism and capitalism from the question of the presence or absence of a trade-based division of labour, Dobb clearly generates a far different framework for the analysis of transition than those subsequently developed by Sweezy and Wallerstein. There are two distinct aspects to this. First, the nature of the problem to be explained, i.e. the capitalist mode of production, shifts from a predominant emphasis on trade, towns, and the international division of labour to the conditions for the emergence of wage-labour in turn connected with agrarian society. Second, it cannot be assumed that the feudal mode of production was relatively static, and hence corroded by forces such as trade and towns, conceptualised as external to its inner logic of production for use rather than exchange. Given that trade and towns cannot be simply identified with the new capitalist social order - though they clearly became important components of it- Dobb shifts attention to internal contradictions within feudalism, resolved by conflict between classes defined by the feudal mode of production. Dobb then sees a prime mover for feudal decline within feudalism. This centres on a fundamental

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contradiction between the expanding demands of the feudal ruling class for revenue (for such purposes as warfare, luxury consumption, etc.) and the relative inefficiency of feudal production in continuing to meet such needs over the long term. In explaining how this kind of contradiction was resolved, Dobb does not assume any pre-existent capitalist rationality. In this respect he challenges Sweezy's assumption that the pressure of luxury demands on the part of feudal lords induced such lords to develup the productive forces towards a comprehensively market-oriented economy, i.e. capitalism. Dobb on the contrary saw no compulsion for lords to act in this way as 'proto-capitalists'. Rather, consumption needs could and were met very often by increasing the burden of feudal exactions on the serfs (Dobb, 1947, pp. 45-50. See also Kosminsky, 1955, pp. 12-36). Increased trading opportunity simply encouraged the lords to intensify their controls, in a manner thoroughly alien to capitalist rationality. The contradictions of feudalism were not then resolved by a thrust towards capitalist entrepreneurship. They depended rather on the class conflict that ensued from the imposition of greater material demands on serfs. This conflict resulted in at least some areas in the freeing of serfs and the creation of a complex rural social structure composed of peasants and small commodity producers. Further social differentiation then occurred within this 'transitional' form of society, leading to a polarisation between owners and non-owners of capital (Dobb, 1950, p. 164). A final point of contrast between the 'exchange relations' focus and the 'property relations' perspective exemplified by Dobb concerns the nature of the ontological and teleological presuppositions on which the two approaches rest. In contrast to the 'neo-Smithian Marxism' of Sweezy and Wallerstein with its emphasis on the immanent emergence of rational economic man, Dobb, like the later Marx, emphasises a historical teleology, in which humankind is seen as striving to overcome the fetters of unmastered nature and alienating social relations. Both of these are seen as constraining humanity's rich creative potential realisable through production. Dobb's ontology is, therefore, far more firmly grounded in the notion of the 'free' producer, striving to attain freedom through class struggle. While Wallerstein in certain other writings seems to be aiming for such a historical outcome too, the assumptions underlying his historical analyses

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of transition give little explicit weight to it. Many of Dobb's comments on the role of class conflict and agrarian transformation (based on a synthesis from secondary sources), have been confirmed by Rodney Hilton's analysis of peasant society and peasant revolt in late medieval Europe, using primary sources. Hilton's substantive contribution to the transition debate centres on class conflict between lords and serfs in relation to the 'feudal crisis' of fourteenth-century Europe (1973). A particularly important aspect of this work concerns shifts in land tenure relations in late feudal society. Hilton shows that whether or not servile burdens were increasing in the late medieval period, serf resistance and revolt were endemic throughout the Middle Ages (1973, pp. 63-95). The long-term trend that resulted in part from this pressure was away from labour-rent (i.e. compulsory labour services) to money-rent (i.e. cash payments to the lord). The practice of commutation, whereby labour obligations were commuted to cash sums, however, was quite consistent with feudalism, for the overall judicial power of the feudal lords remained intact. This not only meant continuing control over the serfs' freedom of movement, but also gave the lord the power to terminate commutation arrangements and to restore the serfs' labour obligations if so desired (1969). Such empirical findings have in turn affected the characterization of feudalism, with Hilton arguing that 'Labour rent was not an essential element in the feudal relations of production' (1978, 15). Rather, it was merely one form of an enforced transfer of surplus (others being produce in kind or money repayments) compelled from serfs by feudal lords. Hilton has gone on to emphasise not simply the pressure of the lord on the peasant, but also 'the efforts of the peasants to retain for themselves as much of the surplus ... as was possible' (1978, p. 27). His study of the English peasant revolt of 1381 links the theme of endemic peasant resistance to feudal exactions, with the gradual development of free tenures, and the growth of a social structure differentiated between capitalist and wage-labourer. One of Hilton's most interesting contributions to an understanding of how these phenomena link together centres on the relationship between peasant 'class consciousness' and the development of ideologies of 'freedom'. Thus 'the concept of the

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freeman, owing no obligation, not even deference', is seen by Hilton as 'one of the most important if intangible legacies of medieval peasants to the modern world' (1973, p. 235). This argument is particularly controversial in so far as it challenges the widespread association of concepts of economic freedom with the emergent bourgeoisie. In this respect Hilton's point may seem similar to that of Macfarlane (see above). Hilton differs from Macfarlane in that the concept of the freeman is not systematically related to a notion of individualism that transcends kinship ties. It is thereby consistent with the institution of the family farm or business. Recent research in agrarian history has emphasised the importance of small 'free' peasant proprietors to the formation of a dynamic agrarian capitalist class in the centuries after the abolition of serfdom (Croot and Parker, 1978). Three important articles by the American historian Robert Brenner mark the most recent consolidation and extension of the 'property relations' focus. Brenner attempts nothing less than a critical synthesis of all existing theories of transition, embracing the conceptual and empirical basis on which they rest. Like Dobb and Hilton before him, he rejects both the characterisation of capitalism in terms of a trade-based division of labour and the emphasis on urban merchant capital as the dynamic for capitalist expansion. Brenner goes much further than Dobb and Hilton, however, in emphasising the decisive importance of class relations and class struggle to social development. Thus 'different class structures', specifically 'property relations' or 'surplus extraction relations', once established are seen as tending 'to impose rather strict limits and possibilities ... on a society's economic development ... [for again] ... class structures tend to be highly resilient in relation to the impact of economic forces ... [Further] ... It is in the outcome of class conflicts - the reaffirmation of the old property relations or their destruction and the consequent establishment of a new structure - that is to be found perhaps the key to ... the transition from feudalism to capitalism.' (1976, p. 31). Brenner develops such themes through two important exercises in comparative historical analysis. The first centres on the differential social development of 'advanced' Western and 'backward' Eastern Europe, after about 1450. Brenner rejects a number of leading interpretations of this divergence. First he criticises what he takes to be the widespread practice of demographic

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explanation. In the case of Western Europe, for example, the population collapse during the fourteenth century is often seen as placing serf labour in a far stronger bargaining position with feudal lords than hitherto, resulting in challenge and erosion of serfdom and contributing to the rise of capitalism. Brenner cannot accept this framework because a similar population collapse occurred in Eastern Europe, leading not to the abandonment of serfdom, but to its reimposition over succeeding centuries. In other words similar demographic trends produced dissimilar social outcomes. Second, Brenner rejects the explanation of West/East differences in terms of differential patterns of urbanisation. Many scholars have attributed the success of serf resistance to Western feudalism, as compared with the enserfdom of Eastern peasants, to the greater extent (and density) of 'free' urban development in the West. (Blum, 1957, pp. 833-5; Anderson, 1974a, pp. 251-5). For Brenner, such views fail to indicate the mechanisms whereby towns could act as 'free islands' of incipient capitalism, able and willing to challenge the landed nobility. Moreover, 'the historical record or urban support for the aspirations to freedom of the medieval European peasantry is not impressive' (1976, p. 55). Dobb and Hilton have tended to explain the West/East in terms of contrasts in the land/labour ratio. Thus in the East where labour was more scarce, 'the second serfdom' is seen as a much more workable solution to the problem of ensuring an adequate labour force to work the lord's estate than in the West, where labour was more plentiful in relation to the cultivated land (Dobb, 1947, pp. 54-6). Brenner, however, develops an alternative line of analysis. In particular he links differential social development to the differential capacity of serf or peasant resistance to landlords which is itself dependent on contrasts in rural social organisation and social structure. Thus, village organisation and communal traditions which could act as a basis for class conflict, are seen as both more organic and more widespread in the West than in the East. Landed estates in the East tended to be the result of large-scale and more deliberate colonisation by the lords, giving them a stronger hand over labour, which was scarcely in much of a position to develop common organisation and the capacity to resist (1976, pp. 57-8). While 'a one-to-one lord-to-village relationship was the norm in the east', Brenner argues that 'in the west there was quite

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commonly a lack of correspondence between village and lordship', leading to 'divided authority' and greater 'potential for manreuvre' by the peasantry (Brenner, 1982, p. 72). In such a way class relations and class conflict are seen as crucial determinants of the development of Western European capitalism as contrasted with Eastern European failure to consolidate capitalist property relations. Although Brenner does not speculate any further about the longer term implications of the West/East divergence, his argument is not inconsistent with the view of Konrad and Szelenyi (1979), that there are two alternative paths to 'modernity': the 'Western' path leading from feudalism to capitalism, and the 'Eastern' path leading through the 'second serfdoms' to state-socialist type societies. This kind of multilinear approach to social change is consistent with Brenner's refusal to accept a universalising tendency on the part of the emergent 'capitalist world economy' incorporating both Western and Eastern Europe as well as other extra- Europe 'peripheral' areas. Brenner's characterisation of capitalism in terms of the social relations of free wage-labour, enables him to recognise East/West divergences more clearly than the alternative 'exchange relations' characterisation of capitalism. In Wallerstein, for example, the Eastern serf-labour estates producing for profit on the market are seen simply as one component of the capitalist world system (1974, pp. 301-10). This approach, which ignores the limits serf labour placed on Eastern European Capitalist development (Brenner, 1977, pp. 5~0, 68-72), seems to have the serious disadvantage of collapsing two strikingly different alternative patterns of social change together under the immensely pliable notion of 'production for profit on the market'. Having said this, Brenner still has a further major problem in comparative history to explain, namely, differential developments within Western Europe. The most notable of these is between England, where agrarian capitalism could be said to be advancing from the sixteenth century, and France, where development was severely retarded by the persistence of peasant agriculture right up to the nineteenth century. Brenner's response to this problem reopens one of the most difficult problems faced by Dobb, the need to distinguish analytically between the decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism.

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In the case of Western Europe, Dobb argued that the process of feudal decline was not synonymous with the rise of capitalism. He thereby felt the need to distinguish an intermediary stage of social development between feudalism and capitalism - a stage he characterised as the era of a 'petty commodity production'. However, as Sweezy pointed out, this position requires a convincing link between the dynamic leading to feudal crises and the dynamic moving society onward from feudal crisis through the petty commodity production phase into capitalism (1950, pp. 47-53). Dobb, of course, believed that feudalism declined through internal contradictions between economic inefficiency and feudal revenue demands, expressed through class conflict. Nevertheless, as he further admitted, 'No one is suggesting that class struggle of peasants against lords gives rise in any simple and direct way to capitalism' (Dobb, 1950, p. 162). He argued, rather, that the ending of feudalism 'shakes loose' the small producer, thereby acting as a precondition for independence of action and social differentiation 'out of which capitalism is born'. Hilton followed this argument closely, arguing that 'peasant resistance was of crucial importance in the development of the rural communes, the extension of free tenure and status, the freeing of peasant and artisan economies for the development of commodity production, and eventually the emergence of the capitalist entrepreneur' (1978, p. 27). Brenner sets himself the task of explaining why such developments do not seem to apply universally throughout Western Europe, but only appear in an unambiguous form in England. This question is premised on a multilinear approach to transition in Western Europe, where there is no guarantee that the collapse of feudalism and serfdom will lead to the development of capitalism. Why then did England develop agrarian capitalism based on free wage-labour and large units of production in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at a time when the French social structure was still dominated by a peasantry, resistant in large part to the attempts by landowners to undermine peasant property rights and create large capitalist forms? Brenner rejects explanation in terms of the pressure of expansive market forces during the sixteenth-century increase in European population levels and food prices. This market environment

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was common to both countries, but the empirical evidence indicates that French landlords, even when willing, were not able to emulate their English counterparts in securing tenurial, organisational, and technical innovations so as to meet such opportunities (Bois, 197, p. 62). Brenner looks instead to the factors influencing the balance of class forces between lords and peasants. For in England landowners were effectively able to defeat peasant class resistance and undermine peasant proprietorship, while in France such attempts as were made failed. In an earlier article (1976, pp. 30-75) Brenner focused on contrasts in the role of the state as the key to this problem. In the case of France, the increasingly centralised absolutist state is seen as a force relatively independent of landowners. In this respect, Brenner follows Marc Bloch in asserting that the French state aimed 'to protect rural communities, ripe material for taxation, from intemperate exploitation by their landlords' (1976, p. 134). Such policies had the combined effect of maintaining the existence of a peasant class and retarding rural social differentiation, while at the same time extracting a considerable portion of the surplus from the peasantry. Since such revenue was utilised for essentially non-productive purposes, however, the peasants' capacity for capital accumulation was retarded without a sufficiently compensating input from the state in productive activity. In England, by contrast, Brenner feels that the state was far more closely associated with landlord interests in trying to promote orderly conditions for economic expansion. As such it was unprepared to protect the peasantry, which had previously won its freedom from serfdom. Instead it supported landlords in the policy of enclosure and consolidation of holdings which tended to undermine peasant property and to establish absolute private property rights. This in turn stimulated the development of a wage-labour force, and hence agrarian capitalism. This 'political' focus reappears in a far more muted form in Brenner's most recent work (1982, pp. 16-113). Here reference is made to the importance of 'political accumulation', defined as 'the build up of larger more effective military organisation and/or the construction of stronger surplus extraction machinery' (pp. 37-38). This process, which is linked with the development of a feudal ruling class is seen as proceeding far more powerfully in England than France. As a result England produces a far stronger

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class of landowners able to constrain the peasantry. Such constraints are of particular developmental significance in the period after the ending of serfdom, for it is at this point that the landlords' retention of 'feudal rights and powers' gives them continuing control over the land so as to be able to institute the consolidation of farms and freehold tenure. Such processes of 'political accumulation' were not developed in France leaving the tenurial security of the peasantry largely intact. In pursuing this line of argument, Brenner's earlier interest in the developmental influence of different 'state' structures recedes in the face of an increasingly confident economic determinism. In the English case, it is true, he refers to the way the sixteenth-century English monarchy centralised power out of the hands of the feudal ruling class while supporting private property rights and law-and-order (p. 88). At the same time he repeatedly asserts the determining role of the material class interests of landowners as the basic driving force of the transition to capitalism. Given suitable 'property relations', Brenner maintains that landowners were 'forced' or 'obliged' to institute agrarian capitalism as a means to further their material needs and secure their 'reproduction' as a class (see especially 1982, pp. 84, 88). Similarly the English peasantry, faced with the consolidation of landowners' property rights, is seen as having no choice (p. 91) but to become rational economic actors engaged in 'cost-cutting', 'specialising' and 'accumulation of a surplus'. In this way the necessity of securing material self-interest is asserted quite unproblematically as a structural compulsion on economic action. .For Brenner, existing cultural norms are virtually non-existent. Even the 'rentier' mentality of so many French landlords is interpreted simplistically in terms of a 'good and sufficient material basis', namely the profitability of rent-squeezing methods of surplus extraction in the face of endemic land hunger (p. 102). Brenner's argument has also received considerable empirical criticism. Two lines of attack on critical parts of his thesis may be cited as examples. First, Brenner's rejection of the Dobb-Hilton explanations of East/West differences, in terms of contrasting patterns of rural social organisation and peasant resistance between West and East, has been criticised as thoroughly overdrawn. In particular, his view of the Eastern social structure and rural communities as settlements dominated by landlords (i.e.

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Junker social control) seems to be poorly grounded empirically (Wunder, 1978). Clearly if Brenner is wrong about Eastern peasants' capacities for autonomous social organisation and resistance, then a good part of his comparative analysis of East-West social development in terms of contrasting 'class relations' fails. Second, Brenner's belief that the development of capitalist farming requires large-scale units of production also goes beyond Dobb's and Hilton's more cautious emphasis on the complex processes of rural social differentiation in which some small peasant producers often evolved over time into capitalist farmers. Croat and Parker in their critique of Brenner have argued that 'the real agricultural revolution was a long-continuing process of good husbandry' involving the empirical testing over time of new techniques and crops. In this respect 'the peasant far from being an obstacle to economic development, may actually have supplied its impetus by adopting new practices or new crops or just by showing landlords the profits that good husbandry could bring' (1978, p. 38). Brenner's rejoinder to this criticism, which cites the importance of large-scale units of production in many English regions (1982, pp. 97-8), does not altogether address the issue at stake. For Croat and Parker are talking of the gradualist origins of innovation among small producers, rather than the average scale of landowning units. In more general terms, there is much merit in Ladurie's comment that Brenner's analysis of agriculture and capitalist development is far too unilinear. There is much evidence to suggest that the transition to capitalism can occur without the disintegration of the peasantry or of small farming in the face of landlord thrusts towards 'modernity'. This is true both of Holland, Belgium, parts of France and Japan (LeRoy Ladurie 1978, p. 59). Here small farming 'contributed efficiently to provisioning a working population born of the new industrial capitalism' (1978). On the other hand, large-scale farming and the destruction of the peasantry on the 'English model' is clearly an alternative route to capitalist development. Ladurie's point is indicative of the striking limitation of Brenner's 'property rights' focus on the English pattern of transition. One of the main advantages of the 'property rights' framework over the Marxist 'exchange relations' perspective is that it offers a

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far more adequate analysis of agrarian relationships and agrarian transformation to the proess of transition. In the latter approach, agricultural development is simply regarded as one function of the progressive extension of the international division of labour. Neither serfdom nor slavery is seen as any systematic kind of obstacle or limitation to the development of capitalism. Within a property rights framework agrarian relationships, in societies still dominated by landed production and landed power, are seen as crucial to success or failure in achieving transition to capitalism. The development of agrarian capitalism is not only significant for the creation of a free wage - the creation of a potential industrial proletariat - but also for an increase in agricultural productivity leading to improved food supply and an expanding home market. The latter functions have been emphasised by recent Marxist writers such as Merrington (1975) and Brenner (1982, pp. 111-12), in addition to Marx's classic concern with 'primitive accumulation' involving the transformation of a peasantry into a proletariat. The property relations framework also promises to integrate class relations and class conflict over property rights into the analysis of transition in a far more adequate manner than those theorists concerned with capitalism as a system of 'exchange relations'. While Wallerstein is mainly concerned with the developmental significance of the 'exploitative conflictual' character of unequal exchange between 'core' and 'periphery' within the world system, Dobb, Hilton and Brenner are far more centrally concerned to chart the developmental consequences of class conflict within the 'core' r~gions of Europe. In this way certain plausible prima facie links have been made between conflicts such as the fourteenth-century peasant revolts in England and France, or the German peasant war of 1525 as social conflicts whose outcome had considerable bearing on issues such as the expansion or decline of serfdom, and the transition to capitalism. It is arguable that the merits of Brenner's deployment of the 'property relations' approach with its emphasis on class conflict as an autonomous variable are as yet unsubstantiated. This is not only a matter of substantive problems of empirical interpretation but also of problems in Brenner's methodological procedure. The latter involves, at least in part, an argument by elimination, where property relations and class conflict remain intact as explanatory forces, as a result of a successful critique of alternative explana-

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tions in terms of 'market' forces or demography. Brenner's awareness of other possible candidates for explanatory status to set alongside property relations is limited by a tendency to economic reductionism. This not only produces inadequate accounts of 'power' and 'culture' but also a neglect of the problem that historical development may represent contingent, unintended consequences of actions. Perry Anderson, in criticising Dobb's emphasis on class struggle, has developed another line of argument which might justifiably be levelled at Brenner also. This concerns the problem of structure and class struggle. Anderson's argument is that Dobb inflects 'Marx's theory of complex objective contradictions into a single subjective contest of class wills.' The resolution of structural crises in a mode of production, Anderson concedes, 'always depends on the direct intervention of the class struggle, but the germination of such crises may well take all classes by surprise in a given historical totality, by deriving from other structural levels of it than their own immediate confrontation' (1974a, p. 198). Anderson's own alternative analysis of transition provides a means of addressing this and certain other problems in the analysis of writers like Dobb and Brenner, by combining the insights of the Marxist property relations perspective with additional resources drawn from outside the orbit of Marxism altogether. (c) Anderson's 'eclectic Marxism' The third perspective on transition, offered by Perry Anderson, is especially interesting from a methodological point of view. Anderson adopts a far more eclectic relationship to existing scholarship dealing with transition than the other writers discussed so far. In particular he grants 'no special privilege' to Marxist historiography as such, but draws instead on a range of non-Marxist as well as Marxist studies. Eclecticism, if it means the repudiation of 'piety' or 'fideism' towards one theoretical tradition, is clearly a virtue not a vice. Anderson's analysis of transition also proceeds from a second important methodological premise, namely the need for a less generic approach towards the mode of production concept than that provided by most existing Marxist scholars. His argument (like that of Giddens, 1981) is that the concept 'economic', usually

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deployed by Marxists in a generic fashion to refer to the material 'base' of different modes of production, only truly makes sense in the conceptualisation of the capitalist mode of production. Here the mode of surplus extraction by the ruling class takes a purely 'economic' form centred on the commodified wage-labour relationship (1974b, p. 403). Precapitalist modes of production like feudalism, on the other hand, cannot be conceptualised by reference to such 'economic' criteria, since the 'economic' (i.e. material production) is so closely interwoven with the rest of social life, such as law, politics and culture. Anderson's characterisation of feudalism, therefore, depends on juridical, political and religious facets of surplus extraction relations, expressed through institutions such as the fief (i.e. compulsory military service by lords to feudal superiors in return for landed tenures), and serfdom (i.e. labour services for the lord compelled by law in return for legal and military protection by the lord). (Anderson, 1974a, pp. 147-53.) Anderson's explanation of the rise of capitalism, therefore, involves analysis of the development of purely 'economic' relations of surplus extraction characteristic of that particular mode of production. As such it refuses to take 'the economic base' for granted as a generic feature of all modes of production, within which the key to transition may be located in terms of a dialectic between 'material' productive forces and 'material' relations of production. In this way Anderson is enabled to transcend an 'economistic' construction of feudalism, a charge often justifiably levelled against Marxism by medieval historians. Anderson's methodology further benefits from a refusal to accept feudalism (the immediate precapitalist mode of production) as the necessary historical starting-point for the analysis of capitalist development. Unlike most other contemporary Marxists, he expands on Marx's fragmentary comment on feudalism as a synthesis of previous social forms, in particular those of classical Greece and Rome and 'Germanic' northern Europe (1974a, pp. 128--42). Thus for Anderson, the explanation of capitalist emergence is not couched simply in terms of a unilinear 'stage theory' whereby internal contradictions within one mode of production are seen as moving society onwards to the succeeding mode. Rather, capitalism is analysed as the outcome of a complex interrelationship between at least two previous modes of produc-

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tion, antiquity and feudalism. Within this interaction the legacy of classical antiquity is seen as particularly crucial. Anderson singles out a 'non-economic' factor, the 'parcellisation of sovereignty' within feudalism, as an important precondition for capitalist development. This refers to the fragmentation of authority between many different levels of interlocking sovereignties, each with a distinct socio-geographic base. In particular, he takes up the Weberian theme of the political fragmentation of feudal sovereignty, allowing growing-space for a revival of 'free' urban civilisation on the model of ancient Greece and Rome. The classical inheritance is crucial not merely in terms of a renaissance of urban life, but more specifically in terms of an increasingly dynamic development of 'producer-towns based on craft manufactures' and the 'social and juridical conception of an urban citizenry'. In contrast to Hilton's emphasis on the notion of a freeman generated within peasant resistance to feudalism, Anderson's longer historical time scale allows him to develop a parallel concept of free urban citizenry linked to an older classical inheritance. Anderson's argument that 'the classical past awoke again within the feudal present to assist the arrival of a capitalist future' (1974b, p. 422) is further buttressed by the association of capitalist notions of absolute property ownership with the 'classical heritage of Roman Law'. In particular, the Roman notion of quiritary ownership is represented by Anderson as an advanced form closely approximating absolute ownership, and is thus an important contribution to the development of security of ownership and the sanctity of contract protected by civil law characteristic of capitalism (1974b, pp. 424-5). The revival of Roman law during the European Renaissance was, moreover, only one of a series of revivals of classical thought, affecting the realms of astronomy, physics, philosophy, politics and jurisprudence. Up to this point Anderson's eclecticism is especially redolent of Weber's approach to Western development, not simply for the emphasis on the classical inheritance but also for the comparative approach to world history. This is reflected in the attempt to establish what is unique within the development of European towns and law. At the same time, Weber's celebrated interest in religion, especially Protestantism, is neglected. While aware of the poor record of Marxist scholarship in analysing Christianity, Anderson devotes attention more to its political than to its cultural aspects.

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Anderson's analysis ultimately seeks not to downplay the Marxist inheritance but rather to recast it, combining the foregoing quasi-Weberian framework, and indeed other non-Marxist insights, with more familiar Marxist motifs. Thus in addition to the classical legacy Anderson also refers to the 'spontaneous combustion' of the forces of production, such as technological change and international discoveries, as also being central to the process of capitalist advance. Such forces are, however, seen as being 'unleashed' only when the social relations characteristic of feudalism experience 'crisis'. In an explicit attack on productive force determinism, Anderson argues that 'the forces of production typically tend to stall and recede within the existent relations of production; these then must first be radically changed and reordered before [his emphasis] new forces of production can be created . . . In other words the relations of production generally change prior to the forces of production in an epoch of transition and not vice versa" (1974a, p. 204). Anderson, like most other authors, locates the onset of the feudal crisis within the fourteenth century - the century of the Black Death. However, unlike most other Marxists, he integrates an account of this crisis with the neo-Malthusian notion of an imbalance between population and food supply. Anderson is in fact very sceptical of Dobb's belief in an intensification of burdens on the serfs during the late feudal period leading to class struggle in which the serfs' chances of victory were enhanced by the demographic collapse of the Black Death (1974a, p. 198). Rather (like North and Thomas) he accepts Postan's view that a structural demographic crisis had already developed before the Black Death, as productive capacity ran up against the fetters of the prevailing social relations. For Anderson, feudalism thereby experienced crisis symptomised by population pressures on the food supply, subdivision of holdings, and a consequent check on population growth, a situation already well advanced before the coming of the Black Death. In other words, the genesis of the crisis depended on structural weaknesses within feudalism, which originated before the epoch of class conflict between serf and lord. Anderson has clearly emphasised that changes in social relations of production to resolve the feudal crisis must precede the vast dynamic expansion of productive forces associated with the rise of capitalism on an international scale. Yet like most other analysts

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before him, he sees the transitional period between feudal 'crisis' and capitalist consolidation as highly problematic. In this respect he is somewhat sceptical of Dobb's notion of a transitional phase of petty commodity production that is somehow post-feudal and yet pre- (or proto-) capitalist. Such an approach, according to Anderson, exaggerates the extent to which the ending of serfdom from the fourteenth century onwards represents the demise of feudalism itself. Even with the abolition of serfdom, it is clear that other feudal controls such as seigneurial taxation remained in place, often for several centuries. In other cases, Anderson believes that feudal controls were reshaped to meet new exigencies such as the freeing of serfs. The main example he gives is the greater centralisation of feudal state power associated with the absolutist state (1974b, pp. 16-42). As far as the characterisation of the transitional period is concerned, Anderson argues that the complex social formations of Western Europe between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the co-existence of two distinct modes of production- feudal and capitalist, with the latter gradually becoming dominant. Feudal social relations were expressed both within 'aristocratic agrarian property' and the absolutist state, while capitalist social relations were centred on the powerful expansion of an 'urban bourgeoisie' through a process of international capital accumulation. Moreover, by characterising the state as 'feudal', Anderson is able to conceptualise the revolutions against the Crown in seventeenth-century England and against the ancien regime in eighteenth-century France as 'bourgeois'. Anderson's analysis of absolutism as a 'redeployed and recharged apparatus of feudal domination . . . the new political carapace of a threatened nobility' (1974b, p. 18) is particularly controversial. It challenges two alternative Marxist views which see absolutism either as a direct agent of capitalist development (Marx, 1871, p. 516) or as a complex mediator between capitalist and feudal forces (Engels, 1884, pp. 320--1). Anderson certainly notes that absolutist policies of economic and legal centralisation benefit capitalist advance. He even refers to an 'apparent paradox' betwen absolutism's protection of 'aristocratic property and privileges' at the same time as this protection 'could similarly ensure the basic interests of the nascent mercantile and manufacturing classes' (Anderson, 1974b, p. 40). And yet the paradox is

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only apparent, for Anderson insists that absolutism was after all thoroughly feudal, and thereby 'constantly ended by frustrating and falsifying its promises for capital' (1974b, p. 41). There are two aspects to this argument. First, in so far as the absolutist state served, albeit indirectly, to further capitalist emergence, Anderson sees this as the product of an emergent capitalism 'already strong enough' to exert a pressure on the state from outside. Second, and more crucially, Anderson believes that in making feudal state power more absolute and less conditional on a complex hierarchy of semi-autonomous feudal lordships, agrarian property forms were themselves made more absolute and less conditional on military service. The net effect was not, however, to turn feudal lords into capitalist farmers. Rather, it led to a strengthening of 'aristocratic property' ownership, which in turn 'blocked a free market in land' and 'mobility of manpowers'. As such the separation of the immediate producer from the instruments of production was retarded, and the wage-labour/capital relationship not realised. Some of the problems with this analysis can be suggested by comparing Anderson with Dobb. Anderson's discussion of the absolutist state is in most respects very close to Dobb's, in so far as Dobb argued that the 'ruling class' under absolutism 'was still feudal', and that 'the state was still the political instrument of its rule' (Dobb, 1950, p. 163). Anderson's view of the rural social structure connected with absolutist state is far more rigid and more static than Dobb's. Anderson is in effect saying that the regrouping of feudal aristocratic property in a landed nobility, 'protected by state power', prevented any progressive development of agrarian capitalist relationships, except as a function of external urban capitalist pressures. In other words, absolutism 'protected and stabilised the social domination of the hereditary noble class in Europe until challenged by an ascendant urban bourgeoisie' (Anderson, 1974b, pp. 17-20). Such a view obscures the nature and significance of internal transformations of the rural social structure in Western Europe (especially England) in the centuries leading up to the eighteenthand nineteenth-century industrialisation. As Dobb and others recognise, the erosion of serfdom and the subsequent development of rural social differentiation had great significance for transition in terms of the spread of absolute property ownership in

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land, increase in land sales between owners, a turnover in land ownership to new owners without a feudal past, and the development of capitalist farmers in their own right- either as owners or as tenants paying rent. Anderson speaks opaquely about the 'profound metamorphoses experienced by the landed aristocracy in this period', but fails to conceptualise the role of landowners in the process of capital accumulation in any adequate fashion (1974b, p. 18). The implication is left that 'capital slowly accumulated beneath the glittering superstructure of Absolutism', but from 'mercantile or manufacturing sources', rather than the still feudal countryside. As such, Anderson is vulnerable to the arguments of those who would emphasise the importance of agrarian change to the overall process of capitalist development; agrarian change being seen as something more than a simple reflection of urban capitalist initiatives. Another line of criticism made against Anderson's analysis of absolutism as feudalism centres on the 'capitalist' (or 'proto-capitalist') policies apparently employed by absolutist regimes. Mercantilist economic policy, for example, not only made fortunes for privileged 'state-protected' monopolists but also tended to promote mercantile capital, plantation capital, and manufacturing capital (Heller, 1977, p. 208). It is also evident that absolutism drew extensively on bourgeois resources for revenue purposes and to promote administrative centralisation - both of which were often justified on grounds of greater military efficiency. The case against a 'feudal' characterisation of the absolutist state was articulated in classic manner by the French historian Roland Mousnier (1964) in his debate with the Russian historian Boris Porchnev (1963). Anderson is well aware that certain policies of the absolutist states may be regarded as pro-capitalist. He insists, nevertheless, that such policies emanated from a fundamentally feudal 'state'. This insistence seems to obstruct understanding more than it encourages it. In the first place, it is important to register that the mercantilist and administrative policies of absolutist states (such as those of the French or Hapsburg monarchies) were by no means as thoroughly 'frustrating' and 'false' from the viewpoint of capitalist development as Anderson suggests. In the second place, it seems necessary to challenge the value of the Marxist assumption that absolutism has to be characterised in terms of some mutually exclusive choice between a 'feudal' and a capitalist option.

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One of the reasons why Marxists wish to maintain such a rigid use of concepts is in order to be able to characterise the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century revolutions against absolutism, most notably the French Revolution of 1789, as 'bourgeois' revolutions against 'feudalism'. It has been argued that if the characterisation of the absolutist states as feudal is abandoned then the conventional Marxist presentation of the seventeenthcentury English Revolution or the late eighteenth-century French revolution as 'bourgeois' falls to the ground (Dobb, 1950, pp. 162-3). Such an argument seems to apply the concepts 'feudal' and 'bourgeois' extremely rigidly, as if societies must either be thoroughly dominated by one mode of production or another. Such rigidity seems especially inapposite with respect to their historical analysis of a transitional phase, which only led in the long term to unambiguously capitalist industrial societies in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western Europe. The empirical basis of such mutually exclusive class characterisations of the English and French revolutions also seems rather shaky. In the case of England, it is quite true that the parliamentary challenge to the Stuart state succeeded in ending certain feudal institutions (e.g. land held by feudal tenure) (Hill, 1958, pp. 25-28; 1961b, pp. 146-9). At the same time it appears that capitalists employing wage-labour and producing for profit on the market may be found on'both the royalist and parliamentary sides during the Civil War (Hill, 1961b, pp. 102-3). The English Revolution was no simple conflict between a feudal state and an emergent capitalist class, but rather a more complex struggle for state power in which merchant monopolist capitalist financiers and landed courtiers tended to be found on the royalist side, the 'gentlemen' and 'merchants' excluded from courtly privilege, on the other. It is, therefore, quite possible to deny the label 'feudal' to the Stuart state, while acknowledging the contribution of the Civil War and the Revolution of 1688 to capitalist development. In the case of France, somewhat similar considerations can be applied to the Revolution of 1789. Athough the revolutionary destruction of the ancien regime ended many 'feudal' dues, in most respects these had fallen into disuse over previous centuries, such that absolute property rights predominated in practice if not in theory (Cobban, 1968, p. 96). This makes it extremely difficult to apply the term 'feudal' to the absolutist state based on 'agrarian

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property', a task made even harder by the fact that a good deal of the initial revolutionary momentum against the state came from landed aristocratic sources (1968, pp. 97-8). At the same time, the long-term contribution of the Revolution to capitalist development (e.g. in terms of political centralisation) should not be underestimated. Once again it seems quite unhelpful to insist on a rigid 'class' characterisation of the contending revolutionary forces. Rather, there would seem to be considerable advantages in conceptualising the French absolutist state, or even the English Stuart state, as transitional post-feudal institutions. The overall relationship between Anderson's 'eclecticism' and previous Marxist contributions to the transition debate is clearly complex. In so far as Anderson depends on Marxist resources, he appears to move freely between the preoccupations of the two interpretative traditions previously discussed. The belief that changes in social relations must precede development of the productive forces seems to align him with the Dobb-Hilton-Brenner current. Yet, unlike such writers, he rejects the view that class struggle plays a decisive role in the germination as well as in the resolution of social crises. Like Sweezy and Wallerstein, he stresses the importance of towns and international trade to the process of capitalist development, yet such forces are seen to proceed from an interaction between classical slave-based and feudal social relations, rather than from some unspecified sphere external to the logic of feudalism. It is probably in the implicit assumptions about social being that seem to underlie his analysis that Anderson is most sharply distinguished from the two alternative tendencies. Anderson does not, it should be emphasised, make any explicit reference to ontological or anthropological issues. Nonetheless, it does not seem unreasonable to posit an implicit commitment on his part to a reading of human history in terms of the development of a social order capable of universalising the legacy of 'classical civilisation''its urban policy and culture'- thereby sustaining what Anderson clearly regards as the cumulative development of rational knowledge (Anderson, 1974b, pp. 422-8). Such a commitment contrasts with the Smithian view of man implicit in Sweezy and Wallerstein. It also amounts to a significant recasting of the more orthodox Marxist teleology whereby humankind seeks through the medium of history to overcome alienation, thereby realising its essential powers of creative praxis.

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Conclusion

There is no characteristically Marxist theory of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Marxists disagree quite fundamentally over the conceptualisation of capitalism and feudalism, the substantive explanation of transition, and over underlying teleological assumptions. The commonplace identification of Marxism with a theory of 'productive force' or technological determinism (North and Thomas, 1973) cannot in any way be regarded as a universal feature of Marxist explanations of transition. What is at stake in any comparison of Marxist and economic theories of transition is the relative merits of somewhat diverse 'Marxists" approaches, which are largely in competition with each other in substantive matters of historical analysis. While the 'Marxist' and 'Smithian' traditions of scholarship have often been presented as mutually antipathetical, there is in fact a good deal of overlap and mutual reinforcement evident among certain recent contributions within these two general perspectives. This is not only a matter of a common concern to analyse capitalism as a system of exchange relations and international division of labour among writers such as Smith himself or Sweezy and Wallerstein. It is also evident in the growing interest of economic theorists in 'property rights' and the political pre-conditions for the emergence of market society. There are at least some points of convergence, for example, between North and Thomas' analysis of the securing of private property rights and the classical Marxian concern with property relations. At the same time, Marxists working in the 'property rights' framework have developed a far richer and more persuasive account of certain of the processes by which private property rights emerged, than is available in the literature inspired by economic theory. The work of Dobb, Hilton and Brenner is not only concerned with the role of the state in securing such rights but also with patterns of class relations and class conflict. In this way power relations within civil society have been addressed in a manner which tends to dispose of historically dubious utilitarian assumptions of sovereign individual choice among individually rational economic actors. The substitution of social classes for individual actors, has not in any way overturned Marxism's own commitment to a materialist

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conception of history. Material class interests continue to be involved as the source of class conflict and as a driving force behind social change. This in itself has led to the perpetuation of a version of the rational economic man assumption, transposed to a collective level of social action. Thus instead of individuals rationally pursuing their self-interest as individuals so as to maximise utilities, they do so as members of a social class sharing a common interest with other members of that class. There is, therefore, a good deal in Parsons' view that Marxism (or at least Marxist political economy) remains 'fundamentally' a version of utilitarianism, being distinguished from 'the main trend of the latter ... by the presence of the historical element' (Parsons, 1937, p. 110). In the present context, one of the most serious consequences of the Marxist theory of society has been to treat the emergence of 'capitalism' on the level of culture and 'mentalities' as relatively unproblematic. In this way rational economic man, while seen as a historical product, is nonetheless interpreted as the product, or at best the facilitator of an already pre-existent material process of capitalist development. For since 'ideas' are viewed as but a reflex rationalisation of material system, they cannot pre-date the existence of such a system (Dobb, 1947, p.lO). It has become commonplace to regard the charge of 'economic determinism' as a simplistic caricature of Marxism. While a general review of the debates surrounding this issue is beyond the scope of the present study, two specific comments on this problem as it bears on Marxist practice within the transition debate are worth making. In the first place, Marxist scholarship has certainly not ignored supposedly 'superstructural' issues, as, for example, in the significant amount of discussion of the problematic role of the state, especially absolutism, in the transition to capitalism. Particular mention might also be made of the important contribution of the Marxist historian Christopher Hill to the analysis of such phenomena as religion, science and philosophy as they affected the English Civil War and the subsequent triumph of capitalism in Britain (Hill, 1965). In the second place, Marxists, from Marx and Engels onwards, have consistently adopted conceptual frameworks and explanatory strategies which treat 'superstructural' phenomenan in one of three inadequate ways. First, there is the tendency to discuss

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'superstructures' in some detail, but ultimately interpret them as functional to and/or dependent on the predominant force of the mode of production. Hill's important discussion of the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism is characteristic of this option. Thus 'in a society already becoming capitalist, protestantism facilitated the triumph of new values.' This facilitating role is, furthermore, linked by Hill to the more general proposition that 'in any given society', 'protestant theology ... enabled religion to be moulded by those who dominated in that society' (1961a, p. 36). Alternatively, superstructural phenomena are realised to be important but treated effectively as a 'residual' which must at some stage be integrated into the main body of theory, but which as yet remains insecurely anchored in the key notions of 'mode of production' and 'materialist conception of history'. Certain Marxist critics of the base-superstructure model have been interpreted by E.P. Thompson not as offering a secure Marxist alternative to the model, but rather as offering some kind of 'talisman' pointing the way to what a 'reconstructed' Marxism might look like. Economic determinism is not, of course, untenable in principle as one possible option in historical explanation. In the case of the transition problem there are good empirical reasons to suppose that an 'economistic' framework is inadequate. As already indicated, neither arguments from the pressure of market forces nor any other kind of productive force determinism (such as technological determinism) appear adequate as 'prime movers' of the process. On the other hand, increasing interest has been shown by Marxists and non-Marxists alike in the historical importance of political and cultural 'residuals', such as the absolutist state or the legacy of Roman Law. Such residuals obstinately refuse to yield their causal autonomy, even in 'the last instance', to economic determination. It is not surprising, therefore, that scholars have looked outside conventional economic theory and Marxism to find adequate conceptual and explanatory resources to deal with such phenomena. One such source of stimulus has been the work of Max Weber to whom attention now turns.

4

Max Weber, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism It is fortunate that many recent interpretations of Max Weber's contribution to the analysis of modern Western capitalist development have moved beyond certain well-worn tracks of the past. There are, for example, few who would now present Weber's sociology as profoundly antipathetical to Marxism in all its aspects. On the contrary, much of Weber's conceptualisation of capitalism and of his analysis of capitalist development may be shown to be complementary with thematic emphases in Marx (Birnbaum, 1953; Giddens, 1970; Turner, 1981). Similarly, not many writers now believe Weber's contribution to the transition debate to be dominated by the Protestant Ethic thesis as some kind of mono-causal 'idealist' explanation of capitalist development. There remain, nonetheless, a good many areas of interpretative disagreement and misconception concerning Weber's work. In the first place, there is the important issue as to whether there is a central unifying theme in Weber's historical sociology similar to the Smithian teleology of immanent market emergence or the Marxist philosophy of history based around the abolition of private property and the project of the free producer. Secondly, there remains a danger of reacting to the discredited theory of Marx-Weber antipathy, by assimilating Weber's work too closely to that of Marx. Finally, there is the task of reconstructing the various (sometimes unfinished or fragmentary) comments of Weber in the fields of religion, politics, law and so on, so as to identify the main themes of his explanation of transition beyond that of the Protestant Ethic theory.

Weber and the spirit of capitalism While Marx and Engels argued that the transition from feudalism to capitalism involved important ideational changes such as the

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undermining of custom and the 'profaning' of 'all that is holy' (1848, p. 37), such processes were not seen as central to the changes in productive forces and social relations of production characteristic of capitalism. For Weber, on the other hand, 'the spirit of modern capitalism' is seen as a central feature of modern capitalism. This 'spirit' is defined as a type of social action involving the rational calculative pursuit of profit-maximisation. This mentality is associated with values such as thrift, diligence and asceticism in 'worldly' economic affairs. As such it is contrasted with an alternative 'spirit' or 'mentality' called 'economic traditionalism'. This is characterised by the customary pursuit of ends other than the rational pursuit of profit-maximisation. Thus 'traditionalist' entrepreneurs will tend to prefer increased leisure over increased profit, while traditionalist labourers will work only up to that point where customarily defined needs are satisfied. Economic traditionalism is thereby conceptualised in relation to a prior conception of the modern capitalist spirit, in a manner methodologically if not substantively similar to the way in which market economists construct their own concepts of 'traditional' or 'pre-modern' society and Marxists, their notion of 'pre-capitalist' modes of production. Weber, however, sought to distinguish the 'spirit of modern' capitalism as only one aspect, albeit an important one, of modern capitalism itself. The 'rational capitalist calculation' of the modern capitalist spirit must therefore be combined with other social relationships or 'forms' such as free wage-labour and market freedom to produce modern capitalist society (1923, p. 208). Whether Weber succeeds in distinguishing effectively between 'the spirit of modern capitalism' and 'modern capitalism' itself is debatable. Gordon Marshall (1982, p. 56), for example, argues that Weber vacillates between a position which regards the spirit of modern capitalism as part of the nature of modern capitalism (i.e. as part of the explanandum) and a position where this spirit is seen as part of the causal explanation of the emergence of modern capitalism (i.e. as part of the explanans). Baechler (1971) and Smelser (1976) have also pointed out that Weber fails to clarify whether the spirit of modern capitalism is to be seen as an attribute of modern capitalism or as a condition necessary for its emergence. This raises the very real difficulty that the modern capitalist spirit may have been utilised in a tautologous way to explain its

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own emergence. Such criticisms are similar to the problems of tautology that Baechler has identified in certain of Marx's discussions of capitalism, namely, that 'the origin of the capitalist system presupposes the capitalist system' (1971, p. 25). In both cases no clear basis is offered whereby capitalism may be defined separately from the preconditions for its existence. Whether such criticisms of Weber are so damaging is debatable. Given his distinction between 'form' and 'ethos' as autonomous social forces, it would seem perfectly permissible for Weber to regard the 'capitalist spirit' both as one possible cause of the expansion of modern capitalist 'forms' and as an eventual component of modern capitalism conceived as some kind of unity of form and spirit. Such an approach can avoid tautology, providing that an explanation of the historical emergence of specific pre-conditions of modern capitalism does not already presume the existence of capitalism as a causal force. In this way such pre-conditions may be seen as having a 'history' distinct from the 'history' of modern capitalism of which they subsequently form a part. What remains as a fundamental part of Weber's discussion is the argument that some change is required in the 'spirit' or 'mentality' surrounding economic activity before modern capitalism can be said to have fully emerged. Weber, the 'Protestant Ethic' and the spirit of modern capitalism

Weber's celebrated essays, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, were first published in 1904--5. They form one of the main texts for the elaboration of Weber's notion of the spirit of modern capitalism, of the distinction between this spirit and the spirit of economic traditionalism, and finally of the distinction between modern capitalism and capitalism in general. In all these respects, Weber's position can be clarified more precisely by comparison with the parallel analysis of the capitalist spirit made by Sombart. Sombart's massive study Modern Capitalism first appeared in 1902. Like many other German scholars of this period it addressed the conceptualisation of modern capitalism, not only as technique of organisational form but also as spirit. For Sombart, each type of social order was characterised by a distinct mentality or set of attitudes.

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Although Sombart placed this conception of spirit in a prominent place in his analysis of different social orders, he did not clarify any general theory as to the relative importance of this component in relation to the other two aspects of the social order. In this respect Sombart's position is characteristic of those German historical economists who, in rejecting the notion of rational economic man, refused to set up some alternative general theory of society in its place. Social actors were seen rather as influenced by a range of economic and non-economic (including ethical) considerations even in their economic activity. The nature of such influences within any particular social order of historical epoch would therefore be expected to vary and hence only be amenable to inductive rather than deductive reasoning. Sombart's conception of the spirit of capitalism has two components, namely, the 'spirit of enterprise' and the 'bourgeois spirit'. The former was manifested historically in acquisitive activities such as 'the greed for gold' and the 'love of money'. These were conducted in a bold and aggressive manner, according to Sombart, through 'the desire for adventure' and 'the love of exploration'. Enterprise in this sense is seen as the expression of 'life energy', and might involve acquisition by force, scheme, invention or organisation. The historical origins of 'the spirit' of enterprise in Sombart's view probably grew out of warfare, but its subsequent historical manifestations are to be found among 'freebooters' and 'speculators' as well as 'conquerors'. By itself, however, enterprise does not produce the capitalist spirit. One of the basic conditions necessary to achieve this is, for Sombart, the conferring of a money or exchange value on the commodities and services involved. It is here that the 'bourgeois spirit' enters the picture. For money transactions allow precise calculation. In this way the somewhat formless spirit of enterprise is transformed into specifically capitalist forms of human endeavour. The bourgeois spirit is therefore to be found in 'the capacity to think of the universe in terms of figures and to transform these figures into a well-knit system of income and expenditure' (1915, p. 125). Its general characteristics are economic rationality, personal frugality, precise calculation and the 'careful' and 'economic' adjustment of available means to meet particular aims. Such practices are identified in rational bookkeeping as it developed in northern Italy in the fourteenth and

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fifteenth centuries. For Sombart, Florence was 'the Bethlehem of the capitalist spirit' (1915, p. 229). The 'bourgeois spirit' of calculation was thereby identified with the innovatory 'middleclass' city-dwellers of the late medieval and early modern periods. Sombart's capitalist spirit is not to be seen as an age-old phenomenon in the manner of those market theorists who assume the universality or (at the very least) the immanent historical emergence of homo oeconomicus. It is rather to be contrasted with pre-capitalist economic traditionalism. Sombart constituted this as the obverse of capitalism. Instead of restless enterprise and rational calculation, traditionalism was characterised by 'assured restfulness' and 'no very distinctive mental energy'. Needs were therefore satisfied by customary methods, and such trade as was conducted, made little use of exact calculation or sophisticated book -keeping. There is an obvious parallel between Sombart's emphasis on the rational calculative and methodological side of the capitalist spirit and Weber's conception of the spirit of modern capitalism. Where the two differ is in the analysis of what Sombart calls 'the spirit of enterprise'. Sombart sees 'the spirit of enterprise' as age-old, but argues that its manifestation as economic acquisitiveness, i.e. as part of the capitalist spirit, is restricted to modern times. Weber, on the other hand, sees economic acquisitiveness that is 'the impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money' (Weber, 1904--5, p. 17) as age-old. In so doing, he challenges those who would argue that the 'economic' impulse itself is a modern phenomenon. Thus 'the moving spirits of modern capitalism are not possessed of a stronger economic impulse than, for example, an oriental trader'. For Weber 'the greed of the Chinese Mandarin, the old Roman aristocrat, or the modern peasant can stand up to any comparison ... The auri sacra fames is as old as the history of man' (1904--5, pp. 56--7). In saying this Weber is, of course, implying the applicability of some generic sense of 'economic' to otherwise contrasting historical cultures. The influence of late nineteenth-century neo-classical economic thought upon him was also sufficient for him to identify the 'economic' with the economists' scarcity assumptions, that is, in terms of 'the prudent choice between ends'. And yet for Weber, the deployment of conventional 'scarcity' definitions of the 'economic' domain did not entail a belief in

108 Theories of the Transition to Capitalism market-responsive economic individualism as an immanent property of human history. While the practice of 'auri sacra fames' may be age-old, he also points out that 'those who submitted to it without reserve as an uncontrolled impulse, such as the Dutch sea-captain who 'would go through hell for gain, even though he scorched his sails', were by no means the representatives of that attitude of mind from which the specifically modern capitalist spirit as a mass phenomenon is derived' (1904--5, p. 57). Rational economic man as opposed to mere acquisitiveness is thus to be treated as a culturally specific historical product. Weber and Sombart disagree not only as to the nature of the modern capitalist spirit but also over the causal influences that explain its emergence. Sombart's theory of the emergence of the capitalist spirit (as distinct from capitalism itself) was far from mono-causal. What struck a number of contemporary observers was the emphasis he placed on the contribution of Judaism and Jewish culture. This theme is evident in The German Economy in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1903, and in The Jews and Modern Capitalism, first published in 1911. Here Sombart located a number of mechanisms connecting Judaism with the spirit of capitalism. These included certain biblical encouragements to trade and money-lending, the rationalism of Jewish Law, and the tendency for Jews to concentrate on economic activity, as a result of their exclusion from other political and civil pursuits in many parts of Europe. Sombart's later study, The Quintessence of Capitalism, first published in 1915, makes it quite clear that this 'Jewish' contribution is to be set alongside many other causal influences. Thus the 'bourgeois component' of the capitalist spirit is seen as having been fostered by trading groups such as the Friesians in the Dutch economy, and the Etruscans in northern Italy, as well as by the Jews. The 'spirit of enterprise', on the other hand, is linked to 'heroic' 'warlike' groups like the Romans, Normans, Saxons, and Francs. For Sombart, such 'nations must from their earliest origins have had a kind of germ-like capacity for capitalism' (Sombart, 1915, p. 211). The historical reproduction of these qualities is linked with notions of heredity. Qualities of the will are thereby seen as 'racially' inherited. It was Sombart's emphasis on the Jews that prompted most commentary. The publication in 1904--5 of Weber's essays linking

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the Protestant Ethic with the spirit of capitalism may be seen as directed in large measure to the rebuttal of Sombart's account. In this respect, Sombart occupies a far more central intellectual reference point for Weber than Marxist analyses of capitalist development. As we have seen, Weber, like Sombart, made a distinction between the modern capitalist spirit and modern capitalism. Weber's Protestant Ethic essays, in the same way as Sombart's analyses of the developmental significance of Judaism, were not intended as comprehensive explanations of modern capitalism itself. The Protestant ethic is not offered as a mono-causal explanation of the rise of capitalism. Nor is Weber committed to the belief that modern capitalism dates exclusively from the period following the Protestant Reformation. Weber's essays are directed rather at explaining the nature and emergence of that new mentality which is seen as replacing 'traditionalism' in economic life. The intellectual intentions behind Weber's 'Protestant Ethic' essays are then more modest than many have supposed. This is not simply because Weber is dealing with the modern capitalist spirit rather than capitalism itself in all its manifestations, but also because he sets out to locate only one set of plausible origins of this phenomena. His emphasis on Protestantism is not, therefore, to be read as commitment to a theory of society in which 'ideas' play the dominant part. What is interesting about the Protestant ethic, is that in dealing with attitudes and practical intentions embodied in action it provides a means of explaining the development of the modern capitalist spirit that is adequate on the level of meaning. Indeed, Weber's essays seek not so much to demonstrate a strict causal relationship between Protestantism and the capitalist spirit as to indicate an 'elective affinity' between the two. Within the Protestant Ethic essays Weber is not so much interested in Protestant, more especially Calvinist theology as such, but the practical effect of pastoral teaching. Weber's argument is directed in particular at the impact on everyday life of certain psychological pressures deriving from theology and ethical prescriptions. In response to certain misunderstandings, Weber made it quite clear that the 'point of this whole essay' is that:

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an ethic based on religion places certain psychological sanctions (not of an economic character) on the maintenance of the attitude prescribed by it, sanctions which so long as the religious belief remains alive, are highly effective ... Only in so far as these sanctions work, and above all, in the direction in which they work, which is often very different from the doctrine of theologians, does such an ethic gain an independent influence on the conduct of life and thus on the economic order (1904-5, p. 197). Weber's argument may be stated as follows. In the first place, within the ethical teaching of Calvinism are contained certain rules of conduct which encourage a rational, diligent, ascetic orientation to everyday 'practical' activity. Such rules or codes of conduct stem in part from the doctrine of predestination as it developed in Calvinist thought. This assumes that only a predestined elect are saved. Salvation cannot therefore be achieved by good works as in Catholicism. However, God's will in this matter is not only absolute but unknowable. Even the Lutheran reliance on faith cannot guarantee the individual any certainty. The awesome thrust of Calvinist teaching is that no one other than God can know whether an individual is saved or destined for damnation. In the second place, Weber directs attention to the terrifying psychological consequences of this doctrine. Here, unlike Catholicism, the individual is left to meet his destiny alone, without benefit of priests or sacraments. How then to act in a manner consistent with religious conviction? For Weber, the practical effect of this psychological uncertainty and isolation entailed by predestination was not fatalism or despair. Rather the pastoral teaching of Calvinist divines encouraged a more practical tendency. The individual was encouraged to assume himself to be one of the elect. This assumption should not in any way imply a sense of complacency or a resignation to chance. It was rather to be sustained by the systematic search for 'proof of election. Calvinists were therefore encouraged to regard success in everyday life as a possible proof of this kind. In this way, the practical everyday sphere became invested with a sense of religious significance, for the individual must make it part of his religious duty to strive for some such proof. Performance of this duty was associated with the notion of a

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worldly calling. In practical terms, the pursuit of a worldly calling required constant diligence and the systematic scrutiny of the use made of one's time, and also the avoidance of material excess and luxury. This notion of the worldly calling probably represents the most powerful example of the basic claim of all the Reformed Churches that 'secular life' was 'of equal moral significance to that of the religious' (Marshall, 1982, p. 71). The connection Weber seeks to make between Calvinism and the modern capitalist spirit is not a primarily theological one, in which certain religious tenets are seen as directly conducive to such activity. Thus neither Calvin himself nor later Calvinist preachers intended the advent of a new economic spirit. Weber is more concerned with the unintended consequences of attitudes and practices. Whatever Calvin himself may have thought about economic life, Weber's interest is in the powerful psychological sanctions on everyday behaviour that stemmed from theology but were expressed in pastoral teaching. The anxiety caused by uncertainty of election and the consequent drive for success in a worldly calling, clearly encouraged diligent and methodical behaviour conducive to entrepreneurial success. Nonetheless, the highly charged psychological sanctions that Calvinist pastors invoked have for Weber a second significance, in that they are deemed sufficiently powerful to challenge the spirit of economic traditionalism that had prevailed for so long. Without such powerful demands for a reorientation of social action, Weber implies that the mere practice of trade for profit would not have been sufficient to produce the modern capitalist spirit. A comparative dimension within Weber's argument was introduced in certain later writings on the sociology of religion 'Religionssoziologie' - a branch of study which Weber, in company with Sombart and Ernst Troeltsch, virtually created. Weber now turned from the analysis of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism to a comparative analysis of the practical ethical consequences of different world religions, in particular Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam and Judaism. In his earlier articles Weber had established an elective affinity between Protestantism and the uniquely Western spirit of modern capitalism. He now argued that Protestantism (at least in its Calvinist form) represented the most highly developed example of this worldly asceticism conducive to capitalism to be found among the

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major world religions. As a result Weber saw it as highly likely that the 'failure' of non-Western cultures to produce a modern capitalist spirit could be understood at least in part in terms of the absence of this worldly religious sanction on social action. Economic traditionalism therefore remained intact in such cultures as the predominant spirit of economic action. The empirical basis of Weber's comparative religious sociology involved two important exercises. In the first place, and contrary to Sombart, he argued that it was from a combination of Judaism and Christianity rather than Judaism alone that the modern capitalist spirit could be traced. Judaism resembled ascetic Protestantism in its emphasis on rational rather than magical rules of conduct of a transcendental kind. Judaism, however, was not able to offer what Abrams (1982, p. 98) has called a 'moral escape route from traditionalism'. The rational inclination of Judaism was linked with the ultimate priority of the welfare of the .Jewish people. This tended to obstruct religiously significant economic relations between Jews and non-Jews. Such relations were, according to Weber, a matter of ethical indifference, such that Jews, while economically successful in many cases, could scarcely demonstrate ethical merit through business behaviour (Weber, 1922, pp. 25{}-2). In the second place, Weber sought to demonstrate that no other religious bearers of this worldly asceticism could be found who placed such profound psychological sanctions on the individuals' responsibility to conduct their daily life in a systematic manner for the glory of God. At the furthest extreme from this worldly asceticism lay the other-worldly mysticism of Buddhism (especially early Buddhism). Hinduism and Confucianism both expressed a greater concern for this-worldly matters, but each in their different ways fell far short of Weber's ideal-typical Calvinist ethic. Hinduism, for example, through the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, made the spiritual fate of the individual dependent on 'magical' rather than 'rational' means. Confucianism lacked the transcendental thrust of Protestantism, seeking to adapt to rather than master the world. Islam lay rather closer to Protestantism and Judaism in encouraging rational strategies for salvation through practical conduct. It nonetheless failed to develop this-worldly asceticism as an overriding priority, according to Weber. This was largely the result of the strongly defined feudal ethic deriving from

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Islamic warrior orders. Finally, medieval Catholicism - about which Weber said comparatively little- while encouraging asceticism in the monastic sphere, demanded far less from the individual than Protestantism in terms of the methodical and disciplined organisation of everyday life. Throughout this vast empirical discussion, it should also be emphasised that Weber rejected any tendency to consider religious phenomena in isolation from the wider social context involving forms of state, land-holding, the economy, etc. Hence, while treating religion as an autonomous social force, Weber, in his discussion of Confucianism or any other religion, did not rule out the possibility that extra-religious influence may have also exerted a profound effect on the presence or absence of the modern capitalist spirit. This point is most important in the case of the impact of Protestantism, since Weber saw this as of only transitional significance to the development of this spirit. Once modern capitalism became secured it no longer had need for practices such as Calvinism to break down the obstacles of economic traditionalism. The capitalist spirit would now be fuelled, as it were, from internal secular sources. A positive statement of the precise contours of Weber's argument makes it possible to rule out certain familiar criticisms of the Protestant ethic thesis. First, Weber's emphasis on the relationship between Calvinism and capitalism is not directed so much at Calvin's theological position as at the pastoral teachings of later Calvinist ministers. Weber's theory cannot therefore be rebutted by showing that Calvin's theology differs in certain respects from such teachings. Similarly the argument of Samuelsson (1961)- one of the most celebrated of Weber's critics)- that Calvin did not preach 'free-for-all' capitalism is irrelevant. Second, Weber's distinction between intended and unintended consequences of Calvinist practices has not always been appreciated. His argument is not that the pastoral advice of Calvinist ministers expressly aimed at capitalism. It is rather that the emergence of the modern capitalist spirit is to bear as an unintended consequence of certain psychological sanctions on social action flowing from such advice. Hence Weber's thesis is not invalidated even if certain theological pronouncements of later Calvinist ministers can be found to have opposed 'capitalistic' practices such as 'usury' (Hyma, 1938) or enclosures.

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A third area where Weber's argument has been misconceived concerns the relationship between Catholicism and economic action. Here it has been argued that certain aspects of Catholic theology have a strong affinity with the 'modern capitalist spirit' (Robertson, 1933). Weber's reply to this kind of argument was that no one had located powerful psychological sanctions within Catholicism which demanded the methodical control of everyday 'worldly' life in the interests of salvation. The existence of certain aspects of Catholic theology which were conducive to the capitalist spirit does not help to explain how it was that the powerful forces of economic traditionalism came to be replaced by the economic rationalism of the modern capitalist spirit. Demonstration of the existence of Catholic capitalists or successful capitalist development in Catholic countries is far too indiscriminating to amount to a fundamental rebuttal of Weber's argument. Given the many misconceptions that exist as to the empirical provenance of the Protestant ethic argument, it has to be asked what kind of empirical findings would be relevant to the validation of Weber's position? The first category of appropriate evidence would seem to centre on the substance of Calvinist pastoral teaching. The principal data-base that Weber utilised to secure this aspect of his argument involved the practical teachings of certain English Puritan divines of the second half of the seventeenth century, notably Richard Baxter. This base has been seen as rather narrow in geographical scope. Weber has also been criticised for underestimating the extent to which post-revolutionary Puritans counselled 'meekness, humility, chastity, etc.' (Eisen, 1979, p. 209) as practical virtues, rather than the more activist conception of the 'calling' which Weber wishes to place at the heart of ascetic Protestantism. Eisen finds that pre-revolutionary English Puritan teachings from the first half of the seventeenth century corroborate virtually all of Weber's propositions concerning 'this-worldly asceticism' within neo-Calvinist pastoral advice. He claims that Weber 'exaggerated neither the importance of calling in Puritan writings, nor the psychological sanctions brought to bear on the anxious believer, nor the attempt to mould total personalities who might then alter the world according to a prescribed plan' (Eisen, 1979, p. 209). A similar emphasis on the calling and psychological

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sanctions on behaviour arising from the problems posed by predestination is confirmed by Marshall in his study of Calvinist pastoral teaching in seventeenth-century Scotland (1980). Where Weber's discussion seems less well substantiated is in the connection he draws between this practical theology and the emergence of the spirit of capitalism. One of the main empirical weaknesses of his thesis, as Marshall points out, is that very little evidence is offered concerning entrepreneurs attitudes and motivations. Virtually all of Weber's data on business men in the Protestant Ethic essays rests on the well-known example of Benjamin Franklin, and the affinities between his views and those of the Puritans. As it stands, this is really insufficient. Nor can it be said that very much systematic research has been completed since Weber's day which might shed conclusive light on the 'spirit' and conduct of capitalist entrepreneurs prior to the nineteenth century. One of the more interesting attempts to assemble data germane to this question has been provided by Trevor Roper (1963). On the one hand, he appears to present sound empirical support for Weber's thesis by locating a wide range of Calvinist businessmen throughout seventeenth-century Europe, many of them migrants from religious persecution. Yet the mentality of this grouping seems to have been characterised by the very opposite of 'this-worldly' asceticism. Just like the Catholic entrepreneurs of fifteenth-century Italy, the Calvinists two centuries later soon became involved in conspicuous consumption, the purchase of landed estates, and the pursuit of noble status. From this Trevor Roper concludes that the Calvinist religious legacy was of little relevance to the European Protestant business elite. Another line of argument which has led many to doubt the validity of Weber's thesis involves non-religious explanations of the significant number of Protestant and especially Calvinist entrepreneurs that may be found in early modern Europe. Mention has already been made of the somewhat reductionist attempts by a number of Marxists to explain such connections in terms of material influences. This approach is one of several which link Protestant entrepreneurship and Protestant entrepreneurial success to socio-economic causes. A widely held variant of this type of argument explains Calvinist or Protestant Nonconformist entrepreneurial success in terms of

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exclusion from other social pursuits. This process has sometimes been linked to the fact that many Protestant businessmen were immigrants. Simmel (1900), for example, argued that Calvinists, like the immigrant Jews and Americans before them, turned to business activity largely as a result of their legal exclusion from employment in government and higher education, as a result of religious hostility. Weber, for his part, agreed that the phenomenon of economic success among migrant groups was widespread throughout human history. He remained adamant that Calvinist migrant entrepreneurs differed from previous migrant business groups in their possession of an ascetic and diligent orientation towards economic action. Economic success is not then equivalent to possession of the spirit of modern capitalism. This response by Weber throws attention back once more to the problem of the actual mentalities of Calvinist businessmen. One of the few attempts to test Weber's thesis against the activities of Calvinistically-inclined entrepreneurs has been provided by Marshall using evidence from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scotland (1980). In this study it is claimed that the entrepreneurial conduct of a range of Scots capitalists was 'more or less consistent with Weber's account ofthe capitalist spirit' (p. 260). Evidence as to an expansionary orientation towards economic activity, 'to go for greater profits, to invest in the highest expected returns, to take advantage of the workings of the market, to advertise, to attract more customers', etc. (p. 161) is taken as behaviour vindicating Weber's argument. While this kind of evidence is valuable, it does not in itself tell us enough about the mentality of Scottish capitalists to be sure that we are in the presence of actors imbued with the modern capitalist spirit. Such activities as the attraction of more customers or the taking of advantage in the market, for example, would seem consistent with Weber's 'age-old' acquisitive spirit. On the other hand, evidence of systematic expansionism linked to book-keeping is more consistent with Weber's argument about more modern forms of the spirit of capitalism. At best, then, the data assembled by Marshall may be interpreted as ambivalent. While at the worst, there are occasions when Marshall claims unambiguous support for the presence of the modern capitalist spirit on the basis of evidence as 'weak' as the practice of money-lending for interest (p. 209).

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The rather inconclusive character of Marshall's evidence is further reflected in evidence assembled by a number of historians concerning changes in mentalities and world-views during the early modern period. One of the most clearly demonstrable changes in European life between 1550 and 1750 is the increasingly rational and disciplined orientation to time, associated above all with clock time. In contrast with the task-orientation of medieval peasant conceptions of time, an increasing emphasis is placed on the notion of strictly calculable time measurement. Thus by the eighteenth century, as E.P. Thompson points out 'Time is now currency: it is not passed but spent' (1974, p. 43). While there is considerable debate about the timing of this shift, it would appear that Le Goff's (1960) emphasis on the emergence of 'merchant time' based on exact measurement and cast in a rationalised framework in fifteenth-century France represents a rather premature announcement of the new attitude. Le Goff's case is built in part on the erection of public clocks in major cities to indicate the hours of commerce and employment. Cipolla, however, has drawn attention to the function of such clocks as symbols of rivalry and aesthetic pride rather than exclusively utilitarian instruments (Cipolla, 1967, pp. 42-3). He also indicates that such Renaissance clocks were extremely inaccurate and 'lost or gained much time in a day (if and when they worked)', which is related in turn to what he regards as 'low' contemporary requirements for precision. Minute hands were thus a rarity. For all these reasons it seems more plausible to regard the critical historical threshold in the emergence of such new conceptions as rather later than Le Goff indicates. The thorough-going rationalised attitude to time implied in Benjamin Franklin's eighteenth-century adages 'time is money', and 'never put off until tomorrow what you can do today' seems to have arisen in business circles after 1500, possibly even after 1600, during the period when Protestant divines such as Richard Baxter were advising their listeners and readers to 'Remember how gainful the Redeeming of Time is ... in Merchandise, or any trading; in husbandry or any gaining course' (cited Thompson, 1974, p. 61). A second possible indicator of a shift towards a modern capitalist spirit, has been located in the development of science at both a theoretical and practical level between 1550 and 1700. A

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particularly powerful challenge to medieval conceptions of a hierarchically ordered cosmos (Mason, 1953, pp. 31-41) was mounted by theoretical advances in astronomy, mechanics, and medicine by scientists such as Galileo, Keppler, Boyle, Harvey and Newton. These were paralleled at a practical level by the interest in, and use made of scientific knowledge in such activities as navigation, military engineering, mine drainage, and the search for more efficient sources of power (1953, p. 28). Weber himself did no more than hint at the possibility of a connection between Protestantism and the development of science. Merton (1936, 1938) and Webster (1975), more recently, have elaborated a detailed empirical case in support of some such connection. Merton in particular has argued that the modern tendency to see science as antipathetical to religion cannot be applied to the seventeenth-century English Puritans. Thus the application of science to the natural world was seen by influential scientists like Boyle and Ray as quite appropriate for those of religious conviction anxious to work for the glorification of God. This is because it served to demonstrate the existence of a divine order within the law-like workings of natural phenomena. The Protestant emphasis on the measuring capacity of the individual conscience and the practical search for empirical proofs of salvation is seen as paralleled in the rationalism and empiricism characteristic of science. Merton concedes that the Puritan ethos may not have directly influenced the scientific method. Rationalism and empiricism may simply have been a 'parallel development to that of Puritanism' within the internal history of science (1936, p. 579). Puritanism nonetheless provided a strong 'psychological compulsion towards certain modes of thought and conduct ... that made an empirically founded science commendable rather than as in the medieval period reprehensible or at best acceptable on sufferance'. It did so, moreover, in religious terms. This Merton sees as significant since new scientific practices in the seventeenth century could not be justified, as they are today, in purely scientific terms. In this sense Puritanism may be regarded as one of the influences which convinced social actors that the fruits of science were worth knowing. Merton's line of argument has been criticised on a number of counts. It has been claimed that the proportion of scientists that

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were Puritans or more generally Protestants has been exaggerated (Rabb, 1965). It has also been argued that Merton failed to appreciate the heterodox character of seventeenth-century Protestant thought. Yet for all this, there does seem to be a strikingly positive correlation between advances in theoretical and applied science and Puritanism. The evidence for such a correlation is particularly powerfully presented by Christopher Hill. He notes that 'In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the lead in navigation passed from Portugal and Spain to England and the Netherlands, and never returned to a Catholic country ... in science generally the lead passed from Italy to the same two countries ... in Counter-Reformation Italy science survived longest in Venice, whose theological radicalism caused Venetians like Paolo Sarpi to be regarded by most Englishmen as 'honorary Protestants' ... science, still flourishing in Spain in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, slumped tragically thereafter ... science disappeared from Copernicus's Poland and Kepler's Bohemia as these countries reverted to Catholicism and suffered economic decline' (Hill, 1964, pp. 88-9). Such evidence lends general credence to Weber's postulated connection between Protestantism and changing world-views. What it does not show is that science was important to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century entrepreneurial mentalities. The considerable evidence of 'practical tinkering' amongst businessmen of this period, that tells against Rostow's (1975) emphasis on the importance of new scientific world-views, tells equally against 'neo-Weberian' attempts to connect Protestantism, science, and the development of a modern capitalist spirit. In contrast to the Weberian emphasis on a new capitalist mentality emerging during the epoch of Protestantism, much available data gives the impression of a continuity in certain 'traditionalistic' aspects of the capitalist mentality well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such continuities are evident, for example, in the perpetuation of a spirit of 'adventure', 'risk' and 'speculation', set within a wider setting of social ends unconcerned with moral accounting in everyday life. Thus for

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Charles and Katherine George, 'the financing and organising of great segments of the Industrial Revolution was the work of men like Thomas Gresham, Horatio Palariano, Lionel Cranfield, Josiah Child, Josiah Wedgewood, or the Liverpool slavemerchants or London's eighteenth-century war profiteers - a galaxy of adventurous, risk-taking and enjoyment-centred individuals' (1961, p. 147). Although there is evidence of a disproportionate number of Protestant Nonconformists within certain key sectors of English industry during the eighteenth-century (Ashton, 1948, p. 174) there are no strong indicators as to whether entrepreneurs from this kind of religious background possessed the various features of Weber's spirit of modern capitalism. A further element of continuity between the eighteenth-century business world and what went before is evident in the wish to convert entrepreneurial wealth into landed status and rentier comfort. Continuity in business practice is also evident in major roles still accorded to the family enterprise throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a major form of private business organisation. Pollard (1965, pp. 16-36) has argued that the desire to retain personal or family control over eighteenth-century businesses set limits both to the scale of operations and to the extent to which systematic rational management became an end in itself for entrepreneurs. In this way limits were set to the development of management innovations such as the use of trained specialists like accountants, and of procedures such as capital accounting. The implication of this argument is that the sense of business as a systematic, morally regulated vocation in its own right cannot be regarded as a widespread feature of eighteenth-century English society. It may be, of course, that the post-eighteenth century development of modern Western society has involved a far greater emphasis on Weber's 'spirit of modern capitalism'. In this sense it has been said that connections like that between science and capitalism are far more a product of the second rather than the first phase of capitalist development (North, 1981). Such arguments have three important consequences for Weber's discussion. In the first place, they tend to minimise the importance of the 'spirit of modern capitalism' as an autonomous causal influence in the transition to modern Western society. Secondly, they intra-

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duce such a long time lag between seventeenth-century Calvinism and a post-eighteenth century modern capitalist spirit as to make any causal connection between the two seem dubious. Thirdly, they suggest that the origins of modern capitalism, as distinct from the modern capitalist spirit, may arise as the unintended consequence of certain 'traditional' forms of social action without any particular elective affinity with modern Western mentalities. While there is no conclusive evidence in support of the notion that European entrepreneurs were imbued with the spirit of modern capitalism before the nineteenth century, much of Weber's case for the developmental importance of this spirit rests on comparisons in mentalities between Europe and the nonEuropean world. Empirical evaluation of his theses on the modern capitalist spirit have also to be assessed in terms of cross-cultural comparisons. There are two main issues at stake here. The first concerns Weber's argument as to the uniqueness of Western rationalism as reflected in this-worldly ascetic religious traditions. The second concerns the possibility that it is not religious mentalities but some alternative kind of cultural practice which impedes the development of the spirit of modern capitalism in the non-Western world. Weber's comparative sociology of religion has come in for a good deal of justified criticism on the grounds of empirical inaccuracy. On the other hand, many of his more general characterisations of the world-view of different world religions have received support and a high degree of empirical confirmation. Weber's view of Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism as lacking in the this-worldly asceticism of Western Protestantism, has largely been confirmed by the work of Dumont (1959) and Gellner (1982) on Indian religion, and van der Sprenkel (1963-4) on religious mentalities in China. This leaves Islam as the only major world religion whose orientations have been interpreted as far closer to those of Western religion than Weber believed. Weber himself argued that Islam was in certain respects the closest to Western 'this-worldly asceticism', though he ultimately believed that Western Christianity, and especially Protestantism were in many respects unique as bearers of this type of worldview. This in turn was taken to imply that a major source of the spirit of modern capitalism was lacking in the Islamic world.

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More recently, however, both Rodinson (1966) and Turner (1974) have sought to dispute this overall verdict. Rodinson argues that Islam is a highly 'rationalistic' religion, a characteristic reflected in the 'rational', 'argumentative' discourse of the Koran. While the major practical demand on conduct stemming from the Islamic religion centres on the welfare of the community, there are few sanctions against private profit-making and the pursuit of gain. Since Rodinson defines capitalism in terms of profit seeking along the lines of the adage 'Buy Cheap, Sell Dear' he can find no essential incompatibility between capitalism and Islam. And yet if capitalism is to be defined in this way it would seem to pre-date Islam, for the merchants of eighth-century Mecca were engaged in precisely this type of activity. Rodinson is therefore inclined to argue that the 'rational' Islamic religion, while not incompatible with capitalism, is not to be regarded as a cause of its emergence. Rodinson's use of terms like 'capitalism' and 'rationality' is far broader than that of Weber. As a result he fails to demonstrate that the 'rational' discourse of the Koran involves the same kind of ascetic calculative rationality as Weber's Protestant ethic. Turner's argument, on the other hand, is more powerful since he appreciates far more clearly than Rodinson the nature of Weber's explanandum. He also penetrates rather more incisively into the character of Islamic teaching with respect to economic activity. For Turner, Islam, while containing mystical elements, also contained an ascetic this-worldly orientation. This is especially prominent within the Sunni tradition. Since Islam also involved notions of monotheism and predestination, ostensibly similar to those found in Protestantism, there would seem to be a number of major similarities between the structure of Islamic and Protestant thought. The only major ingredient missing in the Islamic case is the notion of the calling. In spite of this, Turner considers that certain currents of Islam contain teachings in most ways similar to those which comprise Weber's notion of the Protestant ethic. The Western European religious legacy, the Reformation, may not then be unique by world standards. What then are the implications of Weber's apparent exaggeration of the contrast between Western and non-European religious world-views. Gellner (1981) speculates that but for the impact of certain adverse 'contingent' historical events, it is not inconceiv-

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able that Islam could have been a force behind the development of the spirit of modern capitalism. On the basis of certain 'rational' elements of the Islamic world, and the sociological commentaries of Ibn Khaldun he suggests that had Charlemagne lost and the Arabs won at [the battle of) Poi tiers and gone on to rule Europe ... no doubt we should all be admiring Ibn Weber's The Kharejite Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ... In particular the work would demonstrate how modern economic and organisational rationality could never have arisen had Europe stayed Christian, given the inveterate proclivity of the faith to a baroque, manipulative, patronage-ridden, animistic and disorderly vision of the world ... A faith so given to seeing the cosmic order as bribable by pious works and donations could never have taught its adherents to rely on faith alone and to produce and accumulate in an orderly, systematic and unwavering manner. While such comments are a useful corrective to excessively teleological renderings of occidental history, they do not in themselves offer much of an explanation of why capitalism in Weber's sense emerged in the West and not in the East. An alternative line of reasoning is developed by Turner (1974). This focuses not upon religious world-views but on the domination of Islamic societies by military bureaucratic structures which effectively constrained any dynamic elements contained within Islamic religious practices. This implies that if the 'West' is to be regarded as 'unique', then this is evident not so much at the level of religious world-views as in terms of patterns of political organisation. In developing this view Turner, like Anderson and North, focuses on political structures as a vital component of the comparative analysis of social change in the Western and non-Western worlds. In so doing he also draws upon wider features of Weber's own comparative historical sociology, features which seek to integrate the analysis of religion within a broader framework.

Conclusions Prior to the nineteenth century, the 'spirit of modern capitalism' cannot be regarded as a prime impetus behind processes of

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transition from feudalism to capitalism. In this sense changes in mentalities may not be as central a watershed in the emergence of modern Western society (or at least the first phases of that emergence) as Weber thought. This in turn suggests that cultural traditionalism may not have been quite as powerful an obstacle to 'transition' as Weber's analysis at times seems to suppose. Whether or not Western culture was uniquely possessed of 'this-worldly' ascetic world-views, and whether Protestantism expressed this uniqueness, may then be questions that are not of central significance to the problem of why capitalism emerged first in Western Europe and not elsewhere. To say this is not, of course, to dispute the methodological importance of 'cultural' accounts of the development of modern capitalism, that is, accounts that are able to identify the various patterns of values and norms surrounding economic activity. Even if Protestant 'this-worldly' asceticism cannot be regarded as a uniquely Western dynamic force tending to undermine traditionalism, it still remains to establish whether Western Europe possessed other distinct cultural features, germane to the explanation of differences between West and non-West. Weber himself adopted a broader survey of this kind when he came to address the problem of the nature and historical emergence of modern capitalism, conceived as a unity of both 'spirit' and 'form'.

5 Max Weber and the Transition to Modern Capitalism Weber and modern capitalism

Whereas the Protestant Ethic essays are mainly concerned with the nature and origins of the modern capitalist spirit, Weber's concept of modern capitalism comprises a far wider set of components. In his General Economic History, six features are listed. These are rational capital accounting, free markets, rational technology, 'that is one reduced to calculation to the largest possible degree, which implies mechanisation', calculable law, free wage-labour, and the commercialisation of economic life (1923, p. 208). One immediately striking feature of this list is the inclusion of free wage-labour. For Weber, as for many Marxists, free wagelabour is not only a feature of capitalism, but an extremely prominent feature. Weber believed that most other items on this list only achieved full developmental significance when combined with wage-labour. Rational accounting, for example, is seen as deriving its 'significance in the last analysis, only from its association with the capitalistic organisation of labour'. Similarly 'even what is generally called commercialisation, the development of negotiable securities, and the rationalisation of speculation, the exchanges etc. is connected with it. For without the rational capitalist organisation of labour all this ... would have nothing like the same significance ... Exact calculation - the basis of everything else ... is only possible on the basis of free labour.' Thus for Weber the unique cultural distinctiveness of the west lay not with capitalism in some general sense but rather in 'sober bourgeois capitalism, with its rational organisation of free labour' (1920, p. 24). At the same time, what is equally striking about Weber's perspective is the emphasis on the modern capitalist mentality of

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calculation. Free wage-labour is significant in so far as it allows labour's input into the production process to be rationally and calculably organised and controlled. Weber thereby differs from many Marxists in refusing to assimilate the capitalist spirit to the structural forms of capitalism. 'To be sure the capitalistic form of an enterprise and the spirit in which it is run', says Weber, 'generally stand in some sort of adequate relationship to each other, but not in one of necessary independence.' The example of Benjamin Franklin is given to reinforce this point. For Franklin, while filled with the 'spirit of modern capitalism', still conducted his printing business by traditional handicraft methods. It is this irreducible distinction between 'form' and 'spirit', which Weber uses to justify the consideration of the nature and origins of the modern capitalist spirit, distinct from the analysis of modern capitalism as an empirical unity of form and spirit. Weber's approach to modern capitalism also differs from that of Marxism in that he regards capitalism as but one expression of a more general pattern characteristic of modern society and especially occidental society. This involves rationality, or to be more exact, a combination of what Weber referred to as instrumental-rationality, together with rational-legal means of domination. Modern 'rational capitalism' was thus paralleled outside the economic sphere by rational science, rational law, rational art and music, and the rational state. In one sense 'rationality', viewed in terms of the existence of a means-end relationship, is seen by Weber as a formal property of all types of social action. The looser commonplace sense of 'rationality', however, approximates to Weber's notion of 'instrumental rationality' centred on social action involving 'rational consideration of alternative means to the end, of the relations of the end to the secondary consequences, and finally of the relative importance of different possible ends' (Weber, 1978, Vol. 1, p. 26). In this sense, as used for example within economic theory, 'rationality' is associated with action oriented to find the best technical means to reach a given end. Weber also made a further important distinction between 'rational technique' and 'rational economic action' (1978, Vol. 1, p. 65). Thus 'the technique of an action refers to the means employed as opposed to the meaning or end to which the action is, in the last analysis oriented' (1978, Vol. 1, p. 65). This distinction

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enables Weber to come to terms with the fact that significant degrees of technical rationalisation could be compatible with widely contrasting orientations from instrumental rationality to traditional rationality 'ingrained by habituation' (1978, Vol. 1, pp. 69-70). That kind of rational economic action characteristic of modern capitalism does not reside in certain formal techniques alone. Rather it depends on substantive changes in the orientation of economic action itself. The foremost of these is the shift away from the age-old 'irrational' capitalistic activity involving 'an impulse to acquisition, the pursuit of gain, of money, etc. for whatever purposes (Weber, 1958, p. 16) to the pursuit of profit and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous rational capitalist enterprise- considered as an end in itself. For Weber, therefore, the empirical presence of modern capitalism can only be established when the character of social ends is taken into account. The shift in the character of 'ends' involved in the change from age-old to modern capitalism is linked in turn to a more general shift from traditional to rational-legal forms of domination and legitimation. This involved a transition from the ascription of legitimacy to social practices in terms of 'that which has always been' to a compliance with legitimate domination through 'positive [legislative] enactment which is believed to be legal'. This latter type might arise out of voluntary agreement or be imposed by an authority which is held to be legitimate and therefore meets with the compliance of those who might not necessarily accept the substance of particular acts of domination. Rational-legal domination was encapsulated above all for Weber in the development of bureaucracy in both the public and private spheres, and in the rule of law. The historical emergence of the modern epoch is then seen primarily in terms of the instrumentally rational activities of such institutions becoming regarded as 'ends' in themselves. Such considerations reflect the very important point that the notion of transition from feudalism to capitalism does not represent the centre-point of Weber's conceptualisation of the changes evident in the emergence of modern Western society. This particular notion is but one aspect of a more general rationalisation process; a process characterised by the breakdown of a range of traditional forms of domination, including oriental sultanism and other forms of prebendalism, as well as feudalism, and by a transition to more rational forms of domination, which may

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include socialist as well as capitalist modes of social organisation. Hence whatever common features there may be in the conceptions of capitalism developed by Weber and Marx, it should be emphasised that Weber's analysis of 'social action' is not bounded by the Marxian conception of the mode of production', and hence not subject to economistic limitations. A further consequence of Weber's assimilation of the problem of modern capitalist emergence to the more general rationalisation process, is the tendency to tie the explanation of the former very closely to the explanation of the latter. Weber, rationalisation and the explanation of modern capitalist emergence Unlike any of the theorists of transition considered hitherto, Weber gives no explicit support to the practice of deducing the reasons for the rationalisation of any particular aspect of social life from some general 'prime mover'. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, Weber rejects any theory of society which gives consistent causal primacy to one type of 'factor' (e.g. the economic, the political, etc.) rather than another. This rejection arises from his neo-Kantian epistemology which rules out any naturalistic attempt to explain society in terms of laws of development which can be scientifically validated (1904-5). 'If we look at causal lines', argues Weber, 'we see them run, at one time, from technical to economic and political matters, at another from political to religious and economic ones', etc. There is no resting point (cited G. Marshall, 1982, p. 151). In this way Weber rejects as 'prime movers' not only all forms of economic determinism, but also that kind of ideational or religious determinism that his critics have often associated with him. Instead of some form of totalistic objectivity-grounded explanation of capitalist development based on a consistent prime mover, the most that can be achieved is a partial selective understanding of particular culturally relevant perspectives on capitalism. Weber's second argument against a 'prime mover' at the heart of capitalist development and the rationalisation process arises from historical rather than theoretical considerations. It focuses on his awareness that 'rationalisation' proceeded historically across different social spheres at different rates. There is in other words

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no parallel process of rationalisation across different social spheres. This point is illustrated in the comparison of legal and economic rationalisation. Here Weber argues that 'the rationalisation of private law ... was achieved in the highest hitherto known degree in the Roman law of late antiquity. But it remained most backward in some of the countries with the highest degree of economic rationalisation, notably, in England'. In the light of the development of European capitalism from the contrasting juridical backgrounds of continental Roman law and English common law, Weber is inclined to reject any notion of some general causal influence working across the board to create rationalisation and capitalism. Thus 'modern capitalism prospers equally and manifests essentially identical economic traits under legal systems containing rules and institutions which differ considerably from each other' (Weber, 1968, Vol. 2, p. 890). There is then not one mode of transition to capitalism in Europe therefore, but several, each requiring analysis of 'national' particularities. Not every commentator, however, has taken these arguments against 1!ny causal prime mover at face value. A certain amount of interest has been directed instead to the quest for some kind of thematic causal unity within Weber's comparative historical sociology. Tenbruck (1980), for example, has claimed an implicit causal priority in Weber's analysis of rationalisation for the sphere of religion. His interpretation, put very briefly, is that for Weber, 'religious ideas' not only form the principal historical 'tracks' along which human interests are conducted but also follow an 'inner-logic' of rationalisation of their own. Religion becomes progressively rationalised because humankind in the face of ubiquitous suffering and misery fails to find meaning in various charismatic solutions. This line of argument has been criticised as over-exaggerating the centrality of the 'religious' domain for Weber, thereby giving more of a unity to Weber's work than is justified (Kalberg, 1979). One important indication of Weber's wish to avoid postulating any causal prime mover, is his tendency to explain the emergence of various individual components of rationalism in terms of one another. This applies in the case of religion and 'religious rationalism' as to any other component. Weber spends a good deal of time indicating the class basis of various types of religious commitment (1922, pp. 80--117), while not going so far as to claim

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an exclusively economic determinist explanation of religious adherence. Rational religion and economic rationalisation are rather regarded as both cause and consequence of each other. A similar situation may be found in the interrelationship between modern 'rational' capitalism and the 'rational state' characterised by bureaucratic organisation. This case is also important since some commentators have pointed towards politics and state forms as perhaps the crucial dimension to Weber's comparative sociology of civilisations. At one stage, Weber argued that the phenomena of capitalism and bureaucracy 'have arisen from quite different sources' (1968, Vol. 1, p. 224). Yet he also makes the point that within Western European social development a considerable degree of causal interdependence is evident between them. This interdependence does not establish any claims for causal primacy, however, since Weber maintains both that capitalism as 'the most rational economic basis for bureaucratic administration ... played a major role in the deveopment of bureaucracy', and that 'capitalism in its modern stages of development' requires the 'stable, strict, intensive and calculable administration' characteristic of bureaucracy. 'Indeed without it', claims Weber, 'capitalistic production could not continue' (1968, Vol. I, p. 224). Weber's tendency to causal pluralism such that individual aspects of Western rationalism get explained in terms of each other, has been recognised by many commentators. There has been evident a certain habit of shrinking from the radical causal indeterminacy that this approach implies. The temptation to intrude unwarranted 'prime movers' into Weber is reflected in Giddens exegetical gloss. Here Weber is seen as committed to explain Western rationalisation as 'the result of the interplay of numerous factors, although the extension of the capitalist market has been the dominant impetus' (Giddens, 1970, p. 183). There is no clear warrant in Weber for this attribution of causal dominancy. The main substantive components of Weber's explanation of the emergence of modern capitalism may be listed as follows: (1) the separation of productive enterprise from the household and from considerations of kinship; (2) the inheritance of Roman Law;

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(3) the development of the occidental city; (4) the emergence of the rational-legal nation-state administered by a bureaucracy; (5) the Protestant ethic in the context of the Judaeo-Christian religion; (6) the separation of direct producers from the land1>o as to create free wage-labour. Reconstruction of the manner in which Weber analysed the precise role of the various elements is not easy. There are two main reasons for this. In the first place, Weber does not always take care to differentiate between instances when he is discussing historical data as elements in an abstract ideal-type concept, and when he is actually discussing complex empirical processes of social change. In the second place, the historical and empirical depth with which he dealt with the various causal components is extremely uneven. Thus religion and the city receive far more attention than the creation of free wage-labour. As a result it is by no means clear exactly how much causal weight Weber intended to give to these various components of occidental rationalism in the development of modern capitalism. An especially important over-arching theme in Weber's analysis of occidental history is the progressive dissolution of kinship systems organised at first around clans and subsequently around familybased modes of economic and political organisation. The significance of such changes, for Weber, was enormous since they allowed the development of political states, and the gradual emergence of an economic sphere, distinct from the ascriptive ties of kinship. They also formed one of the preconditions for the development of 'public law' as a sphere equally distinct from clan and household. Such considerations closely resemble earlier conceptions of social change such as Hegel's focus on the sequential development of family, civil society and state, or Marx's and especially Engels' discussion of the transition from primitive communism to the progressive universalisation of private property forms. Weber, however, adds to this kind of perspective by stressing a close historical interconnection between the dissolution of the clan to create the state and the individual citizen and the dissolution of magic and taboo to create autonomous 'rational' thought, auton-

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omous practitioners of rational thought, and rational legal and political procedures. While certain aspects of rationalism are certainly to be found outside the West (e.g. rational 'science' as an aspect of non-magical thought in India), these developments tended to be obstructed by the far greater weight of 'irrational' tendencies. Weber does not, however, produce much of an explanation of why this progressive dissolution should have been such a relatively pronounced feature of occidental history. This difficulty may perhaps stem from his resistance to some search for a 'prime mover'. At any rate he avoids any temptation to search by means of some relentless historical regress for some original moment at which point the tendency of Western history might be thought to be first revealed. He concentrates instead on two more tangible explanations for this kind of process. He first sees the dissolution of clan and clan-based religious thought in terms of demographic, military and political disruption. In the ancient world around the Mediterranean this is seen as brought about by such various factors as mercenary soldiering, piracy, military adventures and colony foundation (Weber, 1978, Vol. 2, p. 1243). For the Germanic world, Weber argues that a certain tendency to settle land by kinship organisation was outweighed in importance by military and legislative-judicial means. As a result 'magical clan ties' never really developed. The main problem with this speculation - for it is no more than that- is that Weber adduces no comparative evidence as to the lesser dislocation of the non-Western world, so as to confirm the causal connection he wishes to make between dislocation and dissolution of clan ties. Weber's second explanation of the dissolution of clan and magical ties involves the impact of Christianity in the West. Here he introduces certain religious forms as another component of occidental rationalism, interconnected with economic rationalisation. It is not made entirely clear by what mechanism Christianity, especially in its pre-Protestant/ascetic forms, 'finally destroyed whatever religious significance these clan ties retained' (1978, Vol. 2, p. 1244). Given the perpetuation of 'magical' sacramental elements and of familial symbolism within unreformed Christianity, Weber's case might seem to exaggerate any contrast between 'clan magic' and Christianity. Weber's argument seems to be as

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much concerned with early Christianity or medieval Catholicism. He points in particular to St Paul's universalistic claims for Christianity as a world mission relevant to the salvation of all in contrast to the ascriptive tabooistic norms of Judaism, which separated Jew from non-Jew in virtually all spheres of life. In the absence of a more detailed indication of Weber's argument, Parsons (1963) has sought to elaborate further on what he takes to be the certain 'ethical-rational' characteristics of Christianity relative to Judaism. Thus while Judaism sought to absorb secular life into the religious community, Christianity is seen as coming to accept from early in its history a fundamental institutional distinction between the religious and the secular domain. Thus the Church is conceived of as an 'independent not an ascribed aspect of a total society', which may take up the mission of proselytising the rest of society. In such a way the Christian Church, according to Parsons, became differentiated from any clan or communal identification, thereby paving the way for a greater ethical-rational perspective on the everyday secular world. Weber contrasts the dissolution of clan and magic in the West with the perpetuation of clan and kinship relations elsewhere. In the Islamic world, for example, Weber believed that the 'divisiveness of Arab tribal and clan ties' was 'never really overcome' (Weber, 1978, Vol. 2, p. 1244). In contrast to Christianity with its universalistic rather than ascriptive base, Islam developed as 'the religion of a conquering army of tribes and clans' (1978, Vol. 2, p. 1244). Kinship relations were also seen by Weber as perpetuated in China, such that the extended family group (tsung-tsu) formed the basis or model for economic enterprise. Kinship groups thereby controlled economic and social activities even in the town. This was linked in turn to the adaptive character of Confucianism which accepted kinship as a source of spiritual harmony. Although Confucianism was seen by Weber as a highly rational religion in a formal sense in its encouragement of systematic self-perfection through education, it nonetheless failed to challenge the traditionalistic context in which this was expressed. Thus values like propriety and filial piety remained predominant, leaving little or no cultural space for radical individualised projects linked to personal salvation.

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In terms of the chronology of occidental history, Weber argued that a number of aspects of rationalisation were already evident in the ancient world, more especially ancient Rome. These not only included a tendency towards the dissolution of clan ties and magic, but also Roman Law and certain forms of city life and organisation which Weber regarded as distinctively occidental. Weber's analysis of law and occidental history involves a careful and critical scrutiny of a range of legal traditions and forms of organisation, including Roman law, Germanic law and canon law. Amongst these he attached great importance to Roman law. This juridical legacy had contributed to such modern developments as the absolutist state, or the French Revolution. Roman law cannot, of course, be regarded as a static entity since it changed and developed a good deal between the period of the Republic and the later Empire. The general characteristics of Roman law which Weber saw as especially important were its formal tendency to analytical and systematic codification on rational principles, and its substantive development of juristic concepts conducive to the rational pursuit of economic life. These included the concept of ownership (dominium) which covered full ownership of the sum total of all rights and benefits from a property, and the concept of the corporation which distinguished between corporate and individual property rights. Weber also pointed to the secularised character of the administration of Roman justice which he contrasted with the theological training of Islamic lawyers. In all such cases, Weber does not necessarily claim that these legal developments originated entirely in antiquity or Rome, only that they were elaborated and systematised at various points of time in this phase of occidental history. Such tendencies occurred partly as a result of the already conceptual, abstract and analytical character of Roman religious law, and partly as a result of the needs of trade in the Roman cities. In the latter case, Weber distinguishes the involvement of Roman law in 'urban business activities as carried on through contracts', with German law whose main concern is related to 'rural matters such as social rank, property in land, of family law and inheritance' (1968, Vol. 2, p. 797). Weber's analysis of the developments and significance of the ancient city stems from his belief that occidental cities differed

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markedly in their historical development from those elsewhere, and that the cities of Greece and especially Rome represented one of the first historical instances of this pattern of development. Weber's claim in this respect centred on what he believed was the tendency of occidental cities to transcend clan and kin ties. This in turn created scope for the legal, cultural and personal autonomy of a distinct citizen or burgher class and its individual members. Weber was quite adamant that 'the policies of the [Roman] polis necessarily set the pace for capitalism' (1968, Vol. 1, p. 365). They were warlike and expansionist and sought to maximise revenue from land-holding as well as tribute. He also suggested that the Roman polis and imperial organisation may be seen as a forerunner not of capitalism in some general sense, but of occidental rationalisation in certain of its legal and political aspects. Yet for all this Weber, like Rostovtzeff and many others, is faced with the problem that the Roman Empire failed to develop into modern rational capitalism. In explaining why this was so, Weber focuses upon political organisation and its developmental consequences. His discussion of the fall of the Roman Empire is in fact closely linked to a comparative assessment of those political structures which were conducive or unconducive to the development of the modern rational-legal bureaucratically administered nation-state. This discussion supports the view that Weber's comparative spciology of 'civilisations' is as much concerned with 'political' structure as with religious world-views. Thus for Turner, 'the political instability of certain types of social systems', and the developmental effects of certain types of 'structural breakdown' in political organisation are a major theme in Weber's work (1981, p. 245). In the case of the Roman Empire, Weber saw instability as stemming from a combination of two factors. The first involved a dependence on slave labour which had to be replenished by military means since it could not reproduce itself. The second involved an inefficient state unable to meet the fiscal problems created by these military necessities. The polis was increasingly constrained by the Empire based on a dynastically organised army and increasing non-Roman mercenaries. This simply did not possess efficient means of raising revenue in order to meet military needs, and as such went bankrupt and into decline before the onset of barbarian invasions.

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In spite of the collapse of the Roman Empire, Weber went on to argue that certain pre-medieval legacies combined together with new developments in the late medieval 'feudal' period to create further advances in 'rationalisation'. These new developments included the city, and the development of the modern rational nation-state. Weber's work on cities and transition parallels that of Pirenne and Sweezy in many aspects of substantive historical interpretation. Thus particular emphasis is placed not ~nly on urban centres in their function as markets generating accumulations of wealth, but also, and possibly more significantly, as politico-administrative centres, autonomous from feudalism. And yet Weber rejects any simple evolutionary schema involving a continuous dynamic leading from the development of the Western city into modern capitalism. Pirenne thought in terms of 'steps' in the social history of capitalism. Medieval cities and urban merchants provided the initial dynamic during the first of these 'steps' from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. At this point the universalistic logic of capital accumulation began to transcend the particular interests of individual towns, and indeed the network of competing particularisms. International trading companies with connections in many towns now emerged, together with a shift towards mercantilist nation-states, constructing a 'national' rather than 'urban' framework for capitalist development. Weber, by contrast, tries to reject this kind of evolutionary teleology of the city and capitalism. In particular, he denies that the medieval city is in some sense the historic carrier of modern capitalism. The history of Western urban autonomy is seen rather as circular. What this means is that while urban autonomy did emerge from patrimonial or feudal regimes for a certain period, it eventually became undermined again by closed monopolistic urban patrician elites; and above all by the modern absolutist state. Thus while the period between the tenth and thirteenth centuries had seen the expansion of urban autonomy, the period between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries marked its erosion (Weber, 1923, pp. 248--9). How then is Weber's line of argument to be sustained further in the transition towards capitalist consolidation. It seems that two

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mechanisms are possible. In the first case, the late medieval and early modern experience of urban autonomy left its impact on the now dominant state, producing as it were capitalism 'from above'. In the second place, the earlier experience of urban autonomy was somehow later recovered, probably within some kind of fusion with the 'spirit of capitalism' to produce as it were 'capitalism from below'. Several commentators (Bendix, 1960; Saunders, 1981) seem to interpret Weber as being committed to the latter, on the basis that the ideological and institutional legacy of urban autonomy paved the way for the subsequent acceptance of the Protestant ethic. Poggi (1983) has also sought to link together Weber's urban sociology and the Protestant ethic study, albeit in a different manner. His argument is that Weber can be interpreted as having regarded the advent of the Protestant ethic as a momentous stage in the evolution of European burgertum. This involved transition from the status of a corporate estate of burghers to a bourgeois class composed of rationalised individuals. Both these versions of the 'urban autonomy-Protestant ethic' connection highlight important features of Weber's approach. This type of connection is not the only way of interpreting the significance of Weber's comparative historic sociology of the city. Another such connection, as Poggi demonstrates in an earlier work (1978), is that between the forms of rational legal authority developed within the occidental city and the modern state. Two aspects of Weber's analysis of the state and capitalism need to be distinguished, namely, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century absolutism, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century competition between European nation-states. Absolutism was seen in general terms by Weber as a form of patrimonial and hence traditional rather than modern rational-legal domination. As such the prevalence of arbitrariness and corruption tended to restrict the development of rational economic activity in that it made calculability very difficult. On the other hand, Weber argued that in certain cases absolutist patrimonial states could 'accidentally' develop in a rationalistic direction mainly through the systematic pursuit of fiscal policy. Seventeenth-century France in the epoch of Colbert's fiscal and commercial policy was taken as a case in point. Weber also regarded more centralised patrimonial states as more likely to develop in this

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direction than the decentralised estate-type (standestaat) or feudal regimes. For domination by estates inevitably involved shifting compromises according to varying balances of political power, while centralised absolutisms created monopolies of power and hence a more effective basis for systematic fiscal and commercial policies. When speaking of nation-states, on the other hand, Weber emphasised the centrality of this form of political organisation for the development of modern capitalism. Weber discusses the mechanisms by which this connection came about by comparing the fate of cities in the ancient word under the Roman Empire and their fate under the nation-state. In the former 'imperial case', aspects of urban freedom were 'swept away by a bureaucratically organised world empire' so as to throttle capitalist development. The cities by the time of the later Roman Empire were enmeshed in systems of compulsory taxation and distribution of resources 'from above'. In the latter case, the 'cities' of late medieval Europe are also seen as losing their 'freedom, and yet their assimilation into nation-states is seen by Weber as offering a context more conducive to capitalist development. This is largely because the political competition between such nations encouraged alliances between 'state' and 'capital'. It is from this source, according to Weber, that 'the national citizen class, the bourgeoisie in the modem sense of the word arose' (1923, p. 249). The implications of this argument are twofold. First, Weber clearly placed considerable emphasis on variations in political structure within the explanation of capitalist development. Second, the crucial political element in the emergence of Western capitalism seems to be associated more with the development of the nation-state as a post-feudal mode of political organisation, than with Europe's experience of feudalism. While a number of recent writers including Wallerstein (1974) and Turner (1981) have cited Weber in support of the argument that the decentralised political structures of feudalism stimulated a positive thrust towards capitalism, there is no clear or unequivocal warrant for this view in Weber. Compared with Marxist emphases on the feudal mode of production, the place occupied by the concept of feudalism in Weber's analysis is in fact rather limited. In a formal sense Weber sees feudalism as a particular type of 'traditional authority'. It is

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not synonymous with late medieval European society (including its 'free cities' and urban merchants) as such. Weber's definition of feudalism is in any case somewhat wavering and unstable. The main reason for this is that he has some difficulty in deciding whether feudalism should stand as a generic term for all forms of patrimonial domination involving the use of land-grants in exchange for military service, or as a discrete sub-type of this relationship connected specifically with the fief as distinct from prebendal systems based upon the benefice. At one point Weber speaks of 'prebendal feudalism' and 'feudalism of the fief', while at another he sharply contrasts feudalism and p,rebendalism. This tension probably reflects Weber's awareness that it is often very difficult to distinguish in practice between relationships based on fiefs and those on prebends (e.g. benefices). It is also perhaps indicative of the problem that neither form has been exclusively located in either West or East. In any case Weber was more inclined to see prebendalism, with its greater use of centralised control over land tenures, as inhibitive of modern capitalist development, than to draw an intimate connection between feudalism and capitalism in the manner of Marxist scholars. Weber's elaboration of the significance of post-feudal developments in the European political structure is rather sketchily elaborated. His comments on the absolutist state and policies such as seventeenth-century mercantilism are not particularly extensive or helpful. He is indeed rather sceptical of their role in capitalist development. We are also faced with a rather significant chronological gap in his treatment of European patterns of political organisation between the demise of feudalism and the rise of the nation-state. In this respect Weber's analysis is a good deal less adequate than those provided by North and Thomas (1973) and Anderson (1974b). The final major component of Weber's notion of modern capitalism, namely 'free' wage-labour, provoked little historical analysis from Weber. While he clearly regarded wage-labour as the form wherein a 'rational organisation of labour' was expressed, his detailed comments are restricted in the main to the logical connection between wage-labour and calculative economic rationality. Whereas Marx endeavoured to link his conceptual discussion of the capitalist mode of production with a historical account of the

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process of 'primitive accumulation', Weber supplies very little discussion as to the mechanisms whereby free wage-labour emerged historically. This is probably because he was less interested in the general category wage-labour as in the association of wage-labour and the rational organisation of production (Weber, 1920, p. 21). In this respect Weber's relative neglect of a discussion of the historical emergence of wage-labour may be explained by the causal priority given to the more general development of rational calculability. Here may be noticed Weber's resistance to the determining role of structures that exist independent of human will. Conclusions

Weber's 'methodology' offers a considerable challenge to explanations of the transition to capitalism within the two major theoretical traditions considered above. His rejection of a 'prime mover' has particularly corrosive implications for both economic theory and Marxism. In the first place, Weber's causal pluralism offers a way of by-passing that familiar array of empirically discredited 'prime movers' associated with technology, markets or the productive forces. Second, Weber's approach allows the possibility that there may be more than one route of transition to capitalism within the European context. For Weber, 'sociology' must recognise the particularity of individual processes of social change. Any patterns that may be evident across a range of particular cases do not necessarily confirm the existence of universal laws of social change embodying some general causal formula. If Weber encourages us to think of 'transitions to' rather than 'the transition' to capitalism, he also encourages caution as to the salience of the Marxist notion of transition from 'feudalism' to capitalism. On the assumption that feudalism represents a distinct and delimited aspect of the pre-capitalist world connected with land tenure, military service, and political power, Weber's substantive discussion of transition in the West places far more emphasis on 'pre-feudal' or 'post-feudal' relationships, than on the experience of feudalism itself in the making of modern capitalism. In this context, one suspects that the durability of the Marxist framework is as much to do with the extravagant stretching of the

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concept of feudalism to embrace a wide range of dissimilar institutions such as fiefdom and absolutism, as with a closely argued case linking capitalist emergence with those features of the pre-capitalist world that may legitimately be ascribed to feudalism. This, of course, leaves the usefulness of the organising framework itself in great doubt. If much of Weber's methodological framework seems extremely fertile, it remains striking how few of the main planks of his substantive historical analyses have stood up well to empirical testing. This is especially true of his accounts of the role of changing mentalities in the emergence of modern capitalism. In the case of the Protestant ethic thesis, for example, there is surprising little convincing evidence, at least from the pioneering case of England to support the proposition that leading entrepreneurs were imbued with 'a spirit of modern capitalism'. While it is arguable that later phases of European capitalist development may have involved a sharper break with the pre-capitalist world at the level of mentalities, such processes occurred in the nineteenth century well after the Protestant Reformation. The English case is then so crucial to Weber's argument that much of the general thrust of the Protestant Ethic argument is lost if the English evidence fails to sustain the weight Weber places upon it. Weber's emphasis on the role of cities, urban autonomy and citizenship in the transition to capitalism also seems to offer far less empirical insight into the explanation of modern capitalist development than is often supposed. Even though he rejected any crude or direct relationship linking cities with capitalism, there is no doubt that he regarded the urban sector as the cultural key to the making of modern Western society, in a manner which effectively excluded much concern for the centrality of processes of agrarian transformation. The problems with Weber's historical sociology of cities also reflect adversely on the neo-Weberian argument that the decentralised structure of the European feudal polity was rather more conducive to capitalist development than the centralised structure of European prebendal states. Given its ambitious sweep, it is also not surprising that Weber's comparative sociology of world religions and civilisations has also received criticism. From the viewpoint of explaining Western development, however, there remains much of empirically substantiated value in Weber's account of such comparisons. Above

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all perhaps they confirm the importance of variations in non-economic aspects of society in explaining patterns of social change. There continues to be much truth in Weber's belief that it was not so much lack of markets, capital, technology or labour that prevented the emergence of modern capitalism in the world beyond the West, but rather certain political or cultural inhibitors and resistances. This insight remains important even though Weber both exaggerated the uniqueness of Western mentalities and overestimated the importance of major breaches in traditionalism for the emergence of modern capitalism in the West. The growing awareness of the limitations of economic determinist accounts of transition among economic theorists and Marxist scholars has produced an increasing convergence of attention on political and (to a lesser extent) 'cultural' aspects of transition. In this way, it is arguable that the interpretative tide has turned in favour of Max Weber's more pluralistic approach to the transition problem. It is also arguable that of the three major traditions reviewed here, Max Weber's work - for all its deficiencies suggests a number of the more promising lines of inquiry in the present state of debate. The need to shift attention away from the notion of unilinear 'transition from feudalism to capitalism' to a broader framework involving the developmental significance of pre-feudal and post-feudal social institutions is one of these. Yet Weber himself scarcely provided the empirical backing to sustain such a large reorientation of inquiry. In Part II of this study, therefore, a more general synthesis of theoretical insights and research findings is attempted.

PART II

TOWARDS AN EXPLANATION OF THE TRANSITION TO CAPITALISM IN EUROPE

Introduction One of the principal aims of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century analysts of modern Western society was to establish a causal 'prime mover' within the development of human society. This project may usefully be seen as a search for some all-embracing secular explanation of long-run social change, analogous to the earlier religious belief in the existence of a divine prime mover. From the standpoint of the transition debate, however, this quest seems as far from completion as ever. Neither the inexorable drives of rational economic man, nor the expansion of the productive forces bursting through outmoded patterns of social relations, nor the fateful march of rationalisation, seem at all adequate as underlying explanations of the transition to capitalism in Europe. In this way no unifying causal principle has been successfully demonstrated to lie behind the historical emergence of capitalism. Perceptions of a unifying causal order in history therefore remain an indicator of cultural resistance to any conception of history as random and contingent. They cannot be regarded in any sense as 'proven', 'verified' or 'unfalsified' features of historical scholarship. Rejection of the evolutionary preoccupation with the location of a causal 'prime mover' in human history requires a recasting of the intellectual idiom in which the transition debate is usually conducted. Instead of the search for a unitary causal force behind the emergence of capitalism, what seems called for is a greater tolerance of causal pluralism, multilinear patterns of social change, analyses of particular unrepeatable historical conjunctures and explanation in terms of contingent rather than historically necessary patterns of social development. Many contemporary advances in the understanding of European capitalist development have only emerged as a result of the decomposition of the evolutionary project. A trend of this kind is reflected in the causal and theoretical pluralism of Perry Anderson's 'eclectic' Marxism, and Douglas North's progression

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through a range of economic and political themes in pursuit of the massive 'residual' problems left unanswered by neo-classical theories of economic development. The earlier work of Max Weber, for all its implicit teleological overtones, probably comes even closer to a systematic post-evolutionary approach to the analysis of the making of the modern world. This is evident in Weber's rejection of a general theory of social change, his effective tolerance of causal pluralism, and his substantive analysis of individual historical 'conjunctures', involving unique patterns and combinations of contingently related social phenomena. Part II of this study is written within this type of post-evolutionary intellectual idiom. Any attempt to explain the emergence of modern European capitalism as an immanent feature of world history according to some underlying sense of teleological necessity is rejected, as is the search for a prime mover. In Chapter 6 a further challenge is mounted against those versions of evolutionism which speak of transition from feudalism to capitalism. This challenge rests on the argument that the emergence of capitalism depended to only a very limited extent on the pre-existence of a 'feudal' economy or 'polity'. While the pre-feudal legacy may be seen as of more developmental significance than the experience of feudalism, the main explanations of European capitalist emergence advanced in Chapters 7 and 8 focus on certain characteristics of post-feudal society. In contrast with many interpretations, however, it is on the state and landed society, rather than the city and the industrial bourgeoisie, that analytical attention focuses. There is no single pattern of capitalist development within the nation-states of early modern Europe. As demonstrated in Chapter 9, this is largely because of exogenous as well as endogenous influences in the successful consolidation of capitalism in different parts of Europe.

6 The Place of Feudalism in the Transition to Capitalism The Marxist-derived notion of transition from feudalism to capitalism represents one of the most widely used and convenient organising frameworks for the analysis of the emergence of modern Western society. Its convenience may be attributed as much to its vagueness as an 'umbrella' concept under which many different conceptual schema may subsist, as much as for its reliance on clear-cut concepts. 'Capitalism', for example, has come to be loosely synonymous within this framework for that set of social relations whose emergence represents a decisive watershed in European and world history. 'Feudalism', on the other hand, has become an even looser term for pre-capitalist Europe. The vagueness of the organising framework founded on the notion of transition between these two entities has succeeded in drawing into its debate many conflicting interpretations both of the nature of the phenomenon whose emergence is to be explained, and of the factors of developmental significance in its historical development. One of the major thrusts of the debates reviewed in the first part of this study is that the economic watershed associated with the development of the modern Western world is manifested more clearly within changes affecting social relations of production than in relations of exchange. Wage-labour and 'absolute' private property rights in the means of production and the products of the labour process are a better indicator of the presence of a qualitatively new overall pattern of social organisation than the simple development of market exchange of commodities for profit. This basically Marxist view of capitalism as a mode of production remains insightful, but may be combined with a modified version of Weber's arguments concerning capitalism as a 'mentality'. Thus it is not the mere presence of economic acquisitiveness that marks out the main ideational watershed in

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modern Western history, so much as the long-term development of mentalities which stress the systematic and rational pursuit of profit as an end in itself. While Weber's views as to the causal importance of the spirit of modern capitalism in the first phases of transition to modern capitalism seem largely untenable, he does show that modern capitalism itself cannot simply be regarded as a set of structural economic relations but must also be considered as a cultural phenomenon on the level of meaning. In addition, Weber's demonstration that the mentalities characteristic of modern capitalism may be connected with parallel developments towards rationalisation in the state and legal systems, suggests that the phenomena whose emergence is to be explained cannot be regarded in some narrow economistic sense as the transformation of one mode of production by another. In the remainder of this study, the historical problem of the emergence of capitalism is taken to refer to the reasons for the long-term transformations in relations of production and cultural mentalities identified by Marx and Weber. The convenient vagueness of the notion of transition from feudalism to capitalism has produced far less clear-cut results as to the status of 'feudalism' within the process and explanation of capitalist development. Debates as to the nature and developmental significance of 'feudal' Europe have undoubtedly enhanced understanding of relationships and institutions within this period that may be seen as conducive to, or alternatively inimical to transition to capitalism. At the same time the underlying belief that feudalism, defined in whatever manner, is to be regarded as a pre-capitalist rather than a non-capitalist form of social organisation, has built into most analyses the evolutionist presumption that capitalist development depended in some causal sense on the prior experience of 'feudal', as opposed to some other kind of social relationships. In the process it is arguable that the developmental significance of non-feudal forms of social organisation has not been fully appreciated, certainly not within most phases of the post-war transition debate. The following chapters are therefore intended to clarify exactly how much importance should be placed on European feudalism as an essential feature of Western transitions to capitalism. The present chapter advances two main arguments. The first emphasises the developmental significance of features of the

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ancient/classical and Germanic worlds, features that pre-dated the epoch of European feudalism which may be seen as reaching its zenith between AD 1000 and 1300. The second locates a range of damaging conceptual and empirical weaknesses in the case of regarding the experience of feudalism as crucial to European capitalist development. To most eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century analysts of the emergence of the modern Western world it would have been unthinkable to commence analysis with an account of the nature and developmental significance of feudal Europe. Attention centred rather on the legacy of Middle Eastern civilisation, the ancient or classical (Graeco-Roman) world, Germanic Europe, and Western Christianity expressed above all through the Roman Church. Such emphases have found continued expression in recent work by Parsons (1963), Baechler (1971) and Anderson (1974a). It is very striking how few post-war contributions to the transition debate have dwelt to any significant extent on these themes. At its worst, as in some versions of modernisation theory, feudal Europe during the Middle Ages is depicted as 'traditional society', that supposedly changeless order out of which, or, in relation to which, new developments suddenly emerged. At its best, analysis, while sometimes alluding to prior developments (see Macfarlane, 1978 on the Germanic inheritance), has tended to concentrate on the breakdown of either 'feudalism' or the medieval 'natural economy' (Dobb, 1947; Rostow, 1952; North and Thomas, 1973; Wallerstein, 1974, 1980; Brenner, 1976, 1977). In such cases, the chronology of transition becomes foreshortened into the late medieval and early modern periods between the years 1000 and 1750. Europe before AD 1000 and the problem of transition to capitalism The arguments linking the Graeco-Roman world with the development of modern capitalism are relatively well known. In the first place, certain classical indi((ations of autonomous urban politics have been taken as forerunners of the revival of free cities during the late medieval period. Such continuities form an important element in many explanations of capitalist development. The

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urbanist theory of capitalist development has nonetheless been shown to have many conceptual and empirical difficulties (see above). A second more plausible connection between the classical and modern worlds concerns the legacy of Roman law. This has been considered both in terms of its general rationalised procedures and in terms of its justification of unconditional property rights. These characteristics have been seen as precursors of a number of features believed to be integral to modern capitalism including private economic individualism, the rationalisation and secularisation of property rights, the more general development of rational thought including science, and the growth of secular professional organisations autonomous from the cultural constraint of corporate religious sanctions. One of the most striking aspects of this set of arguments is the connection made between capitalism, individualism and rationalisation. Such assumptions, when combined with arguments about the legacy of classical urban autonomy, are reminiscent of what Parsons has called the Anglo-Saxon view of capitalist development. This is seen as dependent on individual initiative within civil society 'from below'. A corollary of this view is that certain centralist features of the Roman legacy, such as the Imperial form itself, or its use of 'prebendal' rather than 'feudal' systems of land grants were unconducive to, or inhibitive of capitalist development. Evaluation of such arguments about the classical legacy depends very largely on whether any necessary relationship is posited between capitalism and decentralist individualism, on the one hand, and capitalism and rationalisation on the other. In the first part of this book a case has already been made in favour of the existence of a contingent relationship between capitalist development and individualism. It is abundantly clear that the English mode of transition based on a relatively small state (by continental standards) and private economic initiative contrasted markedly with later European processes of transition where the state and corporate interests played a far more prominent role in stimulating capitalist development from above. It is similarly the case, as Weber himself recognised (1968, Vol. 2, p. 890), that a .contingent relationship is also evident between the transition to capitalism and the development of rationalisation in

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the legal system. In the English case, in particular, the influence of Roman law was relatively weak as compared with empirical common law traditions based upon case precedent. Yet England secured transition to capitalism before her continental European counterparts dominated by rationalistic systems based to a far greater extent on Roman jurisprudence. Two implications may be drawn from this. In the first place, any move away from unilinear theories of transition to capitalism stressing decentralism and rationalisation, brings into question those interpretations of Western capitalist development which stress the decisive historical importance of rationalisation and/or decentralised relationships and institutions within the classical world (or indeed the feudal epoch for that matter). There is, in other words, no need to posit a unique occidental pattern of decentralism and accumulating rationalisation as the necessary pathway of transition to capitalism. In the second place, any emphasis on centralist political sources of transition to capitalism coming as it were 'from above', must necessarily bring into question the assumption that the extensive Imperial political structure of ancient Rome was necessariy inimical to the transition to capitalism. It is, of course, important to reiterate that the polity and economy of the Roman Empire collapsed rather than producing a direct process of transition to modern capitalism. This collapse, moreover, may be attributed in part to the pressure of fiscal demands placed upon the population in order to support a massive military and administrative apparatus. Jones (1959, pp. 39-40) has shown that by the end of the Western Empire, the state apparatus was absorbing between one quarter and one third of agrarian output. Land taxes had increased by about three times since the days of the later Roman Republic. For all this, it does not follow that political empires must necessarily create structures of such a centralist yet unstable kind that they inhibit capitalist development. While it is true that reliance on political conquest as a source of slave labour inhibits the development of other means to improve labour output, productivity, and hence the tax base, it is also arguable that under different social relations strong centralised political structures practising conquest may act as highly conducive frameworks for capitalist development. The imperial political legacy of ancient

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Rome, as expressed through the revived notion of a Holy Roman Empire dating from the eighth century, did not simply produce aspirations and structures inimical to capitalist development within medieval and early modern Europe. It is, of course, arguable that certain incumbents of the Imperial title, such as the Habsburg Emperor Charles V during the sixteenth century, encouraged strategies of military domination in Europe and the plundering of the New World that discouraged economic rationality and piled up fiscal burdens on the Habsburg's Spanish Empire. Spain under the Habsburgs experienced fiscal burdens that inhibited transition to capitalism. At the same time, it is arguable that imperial aspirations helped in the development of the modern centralised nation-state. At the outset, such structures may be regarded, as Kiernan (1965, p. 35) points out, very much as empires manque. In this sense the construction of the first wave of nation-states within which framework capitalism emerged need not be regarded as a simple product of bourgeois initiative from below, but rather as unintended consequences of desires to reinstate imperial units of centralised political authority. The failure of the Spanish Empire can also be set against the success of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Prussia in securing transition to capitalism through processes of imperial consolidation, conquest, and war. Thus in contradistinction to Baechler's argument that capitalism emerged as a result of episodes of political 'anarchy' and 'collapse', it is possible to regard at least certain transition processes as dependent on the very opposite processes of political control, centralisation and cohesion. This theme will be elaborated in the following chapter. In the meantime, it is important to establish two further aspects of European history, predating the feudal epoch, which may be linked with the development of processes conducive to transition to capitalism. These involve the influence of the Germanic world of northern Europe prior to AD 1000, and the impact of Western Christianity, especially as embodied within the Roman Church. There are two features of Germanic society during the first millennum AD which are conventionally seen as important influences in the making of European capitalism. In the first place, the structure of German rural settlement has been seen by a range of writers from Montesquieu (1743) and Marx (1841) to Macfarlane (1978) and Anderson (1974a) as involving a high level of private/individual rather than communal property.

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Macfarlane's historical regression, whereby Germanic society is postulated as a possible source of English individualism and agrarian capitalism, has already been discussed in relation to the character of social relations in medieval England. The data base for the Germanic link with medieval England is very slim, involving in Macfarlane's case an appeal to the Roman Tacitus' first-century observations on the Germans. Kiernan (1976) in an important recent discussion of 'private property in history' has provided further philological arguments consistent with some such link. Kiernan's argument is that both the Germanic and Latin (i.e. Roman) languages contain a far greater sense of individual private property rights than is evident in most other languages in world history. Although the evidence is complex and by no means conclusive, he shows how grammatical constructions of possession from the ancient Roman and Germanic worlds tend towards a far clearer sense of individual possession of property than other languages such as Gaelic, Russian, Hindi, Arabic and Turkish (1976, pp. 365-6). This apparent support for some kind of unique occidental emphasis on private property rights is, of course, broader than Macfarlane's purely Germanic theory of individualism. Kiernan's argument is also interesting, in so far as he links the emergence of a sense of private property with two mechanisms - namely, 'from below out of production, and from above, by force' (p. 366). Thus to a Roman dominium meant both 'ownership' and 'authority'. This again suggests that the emergence of capitalist property relations need not necessarily be restricted simply with an analysis of the release of 'individualism' within civil society from political control. A second link between Germanic society and capitalism has been seen within the Germanic emphasis on the dignity of manual labour. This emphasis contrasts with a certain tendency to devalue such activity within the slave-based societies of the classical world. At the same time, it has been argued that Christianity as it developed in the later phases of the Western Roman Empire also contained emphases of this kind. While connected with the Roman legacy, Christianity is a cultural and political force whose nature and impact on the making of the modern Western world far transcends its Roman origins. It

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not only involves the development of the Greek Orthodox Church within the Byzantine Empire, but also the Christianisation of many parts of Eastern Europe under the impact of Catholic or Orthodox emissaries. Even in the case of the Roman Church, this distinctively Western form of Christianity built on Judaic as well as Graeco-Roman legacies, and both modified and added new elements over time to make it far from 'Roman' in character. Four main links have been claimed between the Roman Church and the development of Western European capitalism. In the first place, the Church has been seen both as a source of institutional continuity with the developmentally significant Graeco-Roman world, and as a continuing agency responsible in large measure for the very idea of Western Europe as a civilisation with a discrete and original character and destiny. The existence of a cultural reference-point and source of legitimation of this kind seems to have been vital in encouraging assertions of the distinctiveness of the West in the face of invasion and challenge from the East. To the extent that there are any uniquely occidental social factors conducive to capitalist development, the association of the West with the fate of Christendom represents a vital cultural resource in the continuation of Western society right through the epoch of Moorish, Magyar and later Turkish expansionism. While it is tempting to interpret the history of the West teleologically as historically predestined to produce modern society, it should be emphasised that no guarantee existed that Western Christendom would survive such attacks from outside. From hindsight it is probably only with the repulse of the Turks outside Vienna in 1683 that Western society could regard itself as permanently established as a political and cultural entity. By the same token, there may also be much credence in the view that it was superiority in military technology rather more than Christian cultural legitimation that accounts for this process of consolidation against external threat (Cipolla, 1965). A second possible connection between the Roman Church and capitalism centres on the cultural implication of theological practice. Thus the doctrine and practice of monasticism developed by St Basil and St Benedict 'linked asceticism, manual labour, and intellectual instruction' (Anderson, 1974a, p. 134). Thereafter Western society could no longer accept the idea of labour as lacking in dignity and status. Hallam (1975, p. 30) has gone so far

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as to argue that the Benedictine rule of 'regularity, order, subjection and hard work ... revolutionised the life of medieval Europe'. He sees it as making a vital contribution both to the legitimation of 'money-making' and a new rationalised attitude to time. In such a way monasticism was one means 'by which the capitalist mentality took hard hold upon Europe' (p. 49). The exaggerated nature of such claims for the developmental consequences of monasticism has been made clear by Max Weber and by a number of empirical studies of the development of economic rationality. Weber recognised that 'the monk is the first human being who lives rationally, who works methodically by rational means towards a goal', and that 'the economic life of the monastic communities was also rational' (1923, p. 267). The problem with monastic rationalism was that it did not diffuse very widely into the surrounding environment, but was constrained within 'other-worldly' forms of asceticism. This seems to be the main reason why monasticism whether in the West or in other regions such as China or the Byzantine Empire produced very little direct impact on the conduct of economic life. Hallam's argument about new 'monastic' attitudes to time is vulnerable to a similar line of criticism since, as pointed out above, rational attitudes to strict time-keeping seem to be a product of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rather than the medieval epoch. A third link between the Roman Church and the development of capitalism concerns the characteristic separation of the Church from the state. Within this tradition theocracy was ruled out. The consequences of this situation have been dealt with in two sharply contrasting ways. Baechler (1971) has interpretated the distinction within Western Christendom between the 'religious' and the 'secular' as a way in which religion could be confined to 'private life' without a resultant collapse of the social order. This in turn is seen as encouraging 'religious unbelief' as an alternative force capable of legitimising forces of social innovation such as 'science'. This argument is not wholly convincing because it fails to take account of the close historic connection between religion (more especially Protestantism) and the development of science. Parsons (1963) has advanced an alternative interpretation of the developmental significance of the Church-State distinction within Western Christendom. His discussion is linked very closely to a

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third possible mechanism connecting Christianity with capitalism, namely, its encouragement of religious (and hence a more general) individualism. For Parsons, Christianity took up from Judaism the emphasis on a universal transcendent God governing all of humankind. Unlike Judaism, however, Christianity did not claim total and direct religious jurisdiction over secular society as such. Church and State were seen as distinct. In contrast with Baechler, Parsons sees this distinction as a basis by which secular activities, while detached from the religious community, could nonetheless be influenced by the teachings, especially the ethical teachings, of the Church. The mechanisms by which such teachings were felt were in the context of a separation between Church and State, channelled through individuals. For Christianity focused above all else on the salvation of the individual soul. In other words, Western Christendom, far from confining religion to private life, encouraged an individualism bound to religious sanction. For Parsons, the effectiveness of the sanctions involved in the Protestant Ethic depended to a large extent on the prior receptivity of Western society to such disciplines. While individualism may not have been quite as necessary to the process of capitalist development as Parsons (1960) supposes, his argument seems preferable to Baechler's in that it emphasises the compatibility of religious concerns with both private profit seeking and the development of rational science. Parsons' emphasis on the Christian absorption of the notion of a divinely ordained 'natural law' from Graeco-Roman philosophy, indicates that religious faith and scientific rationality cannot be regarded as necessarily incompatible options. The compatibility of religious conviction and scientific endeavour could as easily be empirically demonstrated for Islam as Christianity. For this reason it may be that the Church-State separation in Christianity is of more developmental import. Weber's argument, it should be remembered, was that 'Industrialism was not impeded by Islam as the religion of individuals - the Tartars in the Russian Caucasus are often very "modern" entrepreneurs - but by the religiously determined structure of the Islamic states, their officialdom and their jurisprudence (Weber, 1968, Vol. 2, p. 1095). The relative weight of the 'Graeco-Roman', 'Germanic' and 'Christian' legacies to the making of modern Western capitalism

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remains a matter of protracted debate. What is clear is that Western Europe seems to have already possessed a number of features conducive to capitalist development before the consolidation of the feudal system from the ninth century onwards. These include Roman law, ideas of individual private property and the separation of Church and State. At the same time, it is important to avoid teleological reasoning to the effect that Western Europe around AD 1000 was already embarked on such a unique and dynamic occidental trajectory as to make subsequent episodes in the transition to capitalism appear as the unfolding of a historically necessary scenario. In this way it is important to leave methodological space for the hypothesis that certain features of feudal society in Western Europe materially advanced processes of transition to capitalism. The place of feudalism in the transition to capitalism

One of the few common features exhibited by the various conceptions of 'feudalism', reviewed in the first part of this study, is the belief that the characteristics of feudal society are the obverse of those found under capitalism. It is commonplace, for example, to regard such 'perceived' features of 'feudalism' as serfdom, military honour, chivalry, and luxury consumption as quite inimical to such processes as the commodification of labour power, the rational pursuit of profit as an end in itself and capital accumulation. It has not proved easy, however, to move from this bold conceptual dichotomy to a historical explanation of the connections between the experience of feudalism and the development of capitalism. For a number of scholars, the rise of capitalism is in itself seen as destroying feudalism, through largely 'exogenous' forces such as the expansion of markets, trade and cities. Such arguments though are not very convincing for several reasons. In the first place, trade, markets and urban life on a significant scale have been shown by a range of writers including Dobb (1946) and Merrington (1975) to be both perfectly consistent with, and integrally related to, the development of late medieval European societies in which such 'feudal' institutions as serfdom, fiefdom, vassalage and 'parcellised sovereignty' predominated. It is only if feudalism is defined as a system of economic self-sufficiency or natural

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economy that 'exogenous' explanations of the development of capitalism would look convincing. Such a definition does not have much purchase on the empirical character of those societies to which the label 'feudal' has conventionally been applied. A second good reason for doubting any theory of feudal decline at the hands of capitalist development is that the demise of those institutions conventionally associated with feudalism such as fiefdom, vassalage and serfdom was separated by several centuries in most of England, France and Holland from the rise to prominence of 'capitalist' institutions such as wage-labour or the spirit of modern capitalism. This reinforces the view that the decline of feudalism cannot be regarded as a process synonymous with 'transition to', or with the 'rise of', capitalism. To assert this is, however, to raise the possibility that successful transition to capitalism depends as much on the character of post-feudal institutions as on the experience of feudalism itself. Before investigating the relationship between post-feudal institutions and capitalism, it remains to reach some conclusion as to the plausibility of an endogenous connection between the experience of feudalism and the development of capitalism. Two particular theories of this kind stand out. The first of these is associated with the 'property relations' school of Marxist interpretation. This emphasises certain internal contradictions between the material interests of lords and serfs culminating in the destruction of serfdom through class struggle. At best, this line of interpretation deals more directly with the process of 'feudal' decline than capitalist expansion. Thus the ending of serfdom is seen merely as one significant precondition for the development of capitalism. Serfdom could be replaced as easily by peasant society (as in France after the fourteenth century) as by capitalism as in England. Hence the recourse by Brenner and many other Marxists to consideration of the policies of the state as one possible differentiating element as between France and England. Without further supplement then this approach is less a theory of transition from feudalism to capitalism than a theory of the transition from serfdom to some form of 'free' labour. As such it fails to engage with the possible significance of other 'feudal' institutions such as fiefs, vassalage, or feudal jurisdiction for the transition to capitalism. Moreover, while writers like Brenner

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have provided some very interesting ad hoc analyses of the post-feudal societies of Western Europe, they have not as yet clarified at a theoretical level why so much depended on the character of post-feudal as compared with feudal society. Instead a considerable degree of energy has been devoted to inappropriate and largely fruitless questions such as the debate as to whether the early modern absolutist state is better characterised as 'feudal' or 'capitalist', or some combination of the two. A second connection made between feudalism and capitalism centres on the 'parcellised' or decentralised nature of the feudal polity. This has been seen by writers such as Wallerstein (1974), Merrington (1975) and Turner (1981) as particularly conducive to the development of capitalism, since autonomous jurisdictional space was thereby left for capitalist initiatives which were ultimately to be corrosive to feudalism. Following Weber, Turner in particular has argued that the more centralised prebendal or imperial systems of political organisation found both in pre-feudal Europe and much of the non-European world gave far less impetus to capitalist development. Whereas such systems gave priority to the distribution of resources for dynastic political and military aims financed by taxation on direct producers, feudalism, for all its emphasis on military values and luxury consumption, offered greater scope for economic autonomy such as that found in the late medieval cities. This argument has some prima facie merit. Modern capitalism did emerge first in Western Europe in countries such as England, Holland, Germany and France. Here feudalism, defined in terms of institutions such as fiefdom and vassalage, had been a comparatively recent form of political organisation in most of these areas. Outside Western Europe, other types of state structure, such as prebendalism or imperial bureaucracies, seem now to have been conducive to the endogenous development of capitalism. It is even more striking that the one area outside Western Europe which developed a political system approximating to feudalism - namely Japan- represents the only major example outside Europe (and its overseas settlements) to have succeeded in securing an advanced capitalist economy. There are, nevertheless, many problems with this line of argument. In the first place, the Japanese experience does not lend as much support to the feudalism-capitalism connection as might

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appear. Certain features of 'feudal' Japan, such as the market-oriented landlords, high agricultural productivity, commercial urban development, and literacy, indicate an internal environment conducive to capitalist development (Anderson, 1974b, p. 415). It is also arguable that Japan relied far less heavily than many nineteenth-century European societies on exogenous sources of initiative in securing capital, access to skills and technical knowledge (Landes, 1965, pp. 93-100). At the same time, there are many doubts as to whether nineteenth-century Japan was involved in a strong endogenous thrust towards capitalism prior to the impact of European and American technology and economic ideas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The development of such important sectors as automobile production and electrical engineering, for example, depended to a considerable extent on joint Western-Japanese ventures. More fundamentally perhaps, Anderson argues that the impact of the West was largely responsible for the undermining of the existing 'feudal' state (The Tokugawa Shogunate) - a body which lacked national taxation powers, a coherent bureaucracy, and international diplomatic outreach, and hence effective centralised political control over mid-nineteenth-century Japan. In his view, it was not so much Japan's feudal structure as the exogenous impact of the West that was decisive in securing a successful transition to capitalism (Anderson, 1974b, pp. 419-20). Japan still stands out as the one spectacular non-European example of a successful transition to capitalism. It is difficult to believe that this success is entirely unconnected with certain features of the social structure that existed before the western impact - though whether such features need necessarily be connected with some pre-existent 'feudalism' remains unclear. The general implication of Anderson's argument is nonetheless more plausible, namely, that 'feudalism' - whether in Japan or Western Europe- is insufficient by itself to produce a transition to capitalism. This argument turns attention back to the Western European case, and the possibility of an account of the transition process dependent on the positive significance of 'non-feudal' precursors to the establishment of capitalism. A second line of argument against the feudalism-capitalism connection deriving from the European experience concerns the problematic role of cities and the bourgeoisie in the transition to

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capitalism. Such problems surfaced throughout the first part of this study. Three particular difficulties stand out. In the first place, the capacity of the late medieval and early modern bourgeoisie to break out of the feudal context in which it first grew up has been exaggerated. Much urban capital depended upon feudal luxury consumption, while successful merchants and bankers, like the Medici of Florence or the Fuggers of Augsburg, eventually became rentiers who joined the aristocracy and secured their social standing by ties of ascribed status rather than individual achievement (Holton, 1983). In this sense urban merchant capital developed within the structure of feudal parcellised sovereignty did not lead directly or necessarily to modern capitalism. Such developments do not completely dispose of the contribution of the late medieval and early modern bourgeoisie to capitalist development. The Medici, for example, were pioneers in many aspects of modern accounting practice such as double-entry book-keeping (de Roover, 1963). It is also possible to argue that capitalism has developed through a constant succession of new sources of bourgeois initiative. From fifteenth-century Florence to nineteenth-century England, successful entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial families have aspired to rentier or aristocratic status. Yet this does not necessarily disturb the general validity of the claim that economic initiative comes primarily from the 'urban' sector. A second more damaging line of objection to the 'urban' emphasis is that it downplays the importance of initiative from other agencies such as landowners and rural producers, on the one hand, and the state, on the other. Neale (1975, p. 84) amongst others has counselled caution in respect of Marx's and Engels' celebrated claim that 'the bourgeoisie historically has played a most revolutionary part' (1848, p. 36). There is now good reason to doubt the existence of a profound division of labour between 'progressive' cities and a backward 'countryside' in late medieval and early modern Europe. Well before the French Revolution, which is generally interpreted as a decisive defeat for 'feudalism' and the backward-looking concerns of the landed aristocracy, and a victory for the revolutionary bourgeoisie, there is much evidence of economic dynamism as a result of the activities of large landowners, small rural producers and the newly emerging nation-states. While some of this can be interpreted as the product of urban initiative, as for example urban investment in landed

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estates or urban involvement in the putting-out system, there remain quite autonomous reasons why non-bourgeois agencies should have promoted economic development conducive to the eventual emergence of capitalism. These include the desire of landlords to maximise estate revenues for purposes of luxury consumption and status enhancement, the desire of small rural producers to supplement incomes in the face of limited or seasonally uneven returns from subsistence production (Kriedte, 1977, pp. 15-16) and finally the interest of nation-states in the protection of indigenous industries from international competition. A third set of problems with notions that connect feudal parcellised sovereignty with urban autonomy and the development of capitalism is, as Weber realised more fully than most, that the late medieval experience of urban autonomy was eroded in the early modern period by the development of the nation-state, generally within some absolutist form. When capitalism finally became consolidated in the period after 1700 it did so within a 'national' rather than urban (or city-state) form. Several further questions therefore need to be addressed. In the first place, should the experience of state-formation and absolutism be seen as representing some kind of continuity with feudal parcellised sovereignty, or some kind of discontinuity? Secondly, was the experience of urban autonomy continued through certain procapitalist policies of the absolutist state. Or was it lost perhaps to be regained after capitalism had already emerged in later bourgeois struggles, such as the French Revolution against the absolutist ancien regime. Third, is there one single developmental pattern linking nation-state formation and absolutism with the emergence of capitalism, or are there several? Hechter and Brustein (1979) in their analysis of nation-state formation in Western Europe challenge the decentralist connotations usually given to the notion of feudalism as 'parcellised sovereignty'. Their emphasis is rather upon the way feudalism encouraged certain processes of economic consolidation and political concentration which were to contribute to the development of the nation-state. In this way a rather more 'centralist' line of argument is offered linking the nation-state (and capitalism) with the prior experience of feudalism. In this approach urban autonomy does not play a direct role in the creation of those

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nation-states which were to form the framework for capitalist development. Hechter and Brustein's 'centralist' perspective emphasises the important point that Western Europe was never comprehensively feudalised. The map of late medieval Europe can be divided into three types of regional economic and political organisation. These include: the petty commodity zone, found in the city-states and parts of northern Italy and southern Germany; the sedentary-pastoral zone found in the small farming communities of Scandinavia and parts of the Iberian peninsula; and the feudal zone, concentrated between the Rhine and the Loire, in south and central England and in Castile. Hechter and Brustein go on to argue that the processes of state formation and economic development, seen in Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, were founded upon certain core areas in this feudal zone, rather than the city-states which had hitherto been the almost exclusive centres of economic and cultural dynamism. In this way the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Western Europe may be seen as founded upon a 'national' rather than 'urban' framework. The connection made between the feudal zone and the location of the first wave of European nation-states (e.g. France, Spain, England) is argued in two ways. In the first place, it is claimed that the feudal institutions of fiefdom and vassalage led to consolidation. Land law contributed both to the consolidation of landholding and, in their view, to the development of agricultural productivity. Vassalage, while often encouraging internal conflict, is seen as encouraging territorial concentration and political co-ordination through its hierarchy of positions headed by a monarch. Such political cohesiveness is seen as lacking in the other zones. This explains why 'the core areas of the first modern states' (e.g. Spain , France, England) emerged 'from the feudal zone alone', and why the petty commodity zone and the areas of sedentary pastoralism subsequently became 'subdued by expanding feudal cores'. If the second wave of nation-states formed from the seventeenth century onwards such as Brandenburg-Prussia did not originate from 'feudal cores', this is explained in terms of an imitation effect whereby lords felt compelled to centralise or be dominated. In addition to encouraging structural political cohesiveness, feudalism exerted a further important influence on state formation

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through the agency of the landed aristocracy. This class is defined as having interests quite contrary to those of capitalism. The aristocrats aimed at production for use rather than exchange, for factor market constraint rather than factor mobility, for ascribed status rather than achieved economic position. Absolutist regimes which ushered in the epoch of the nation-state represented an attempt by the landed aristocracy to 'compete' with the developing power of the bourgeoisie. Absolutism in this view emerged in those areas of Europe where no one social class dominated. 'Strong states', according to Hechter, were 'most likely to emerge in those territories having both a numerous and well-established landowning nobility and a politically autonomous bourgeoisie. State formation must have grown out of a conflict between them' (1979, p. 1068). The main strength of Hechter and Brustein's discussion is their attempt to demonstrate and explain why the feudal zones of Western Europe should also have become the core areas around which many nation-states were constructed. Their attempt to provide a 'centralist' interpretation of the link between feudalism and the development of the nation-state is liable to a number of criticisms. In the first place, it is not at all obvious that a clear line of continuity can be drawn between the decentralised political and juridical institutions of feudalism and the newly centralised nation-states. If feudalism is to be defined in terms of parcellised sovereignty based on personal ties of vassalage, it is difficult to see how state structures based on centralised control over territory can be regarded in any other way than as the undermining of feudalism by a polity quite inimical to it. On the other hand, if 'feudalism' is to be defined in a wider sense as those forms of political organisation developed by landed aristocrats (whether centralised or decentralised) in order to check the power of other classes, the connection between feudalism and decentralisation is reduced to a purely contingent one. In this case any necessary relationship between feudal decentralisation and the transition to capitalism falls. In addition, if centralisation on the model of the nation-state is the main political form within which the transition to European capitalism takes place, then the experience of decentralised 'feudalism' could easily be argued to have been an obstacle rather than a factor conducive to capitalist development. It is only if one can show that feudalism was essential to the emergence of

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centralisd nation-states that this line of argument would become more plausible. A second set of objections strikes at the plausibility of this kind of argument. This involves Hechter and Brustein's conflation of nation-state formation especially in its absolutist form with the political activities of the landed aristocracy. The danger of this conflation is that it neglects the historical resistance of landed aristocrats to the construction of centralised nation-states, in the name of parcellised sovereignty. Such resistance is particularly evident in seventeenth-century France and Spain. Here aristocratic taxation privileges were defended against attempts at state fiscal centralisation and rationalisation. This resistance may be seen as a symptom of the lack of congruence between 'feudal' parcellised sovereignty and the emergence of the centralised nation-state. Poggi (1978), drawing on the work of earlier writers such as Otto Gierke and Otto Brunner, has argued for a discontinuity betwen feudalism and the development of the modern state. The latter emerged not as a result of the experience of the former, but as a challenge to the former. This argument rests on the proposition that the making of the modern state involves a shift from personalised to public forms of rule. Feudalism, through such institutions as vassalage and fiefdom, is seen as an intrinsically personalised system whereby individual warriors became rooted to the land through a hierarchical system of personal duties and obligations. The classic period of this system was from around AD 800 to the late twelfth century. Thereafter a transition towards the public politics of the modern state is evident, first with the development of the standestaat (polity of estates) between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, and from the sixteenth century onwards with the emergence of the absolutist state. Poggi regards neither the standestaat nor absolutism as feudal. Nor does he see them as linear descendents of feudalism. The standestaat is seen as constituted by the development of urban corporations seeking a measure of autonomy both from feudal lords and central territorial rulers (e.g. kings). Poggi accepts that late medieval towns emerged initially within a feudal context of lordship. The development of towns claiming a distinct place within the political system created a post-feudal polity in which territorial rulers, feudal lords, and urban groups negotiated and

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conflicted with each other. Towns might as readily unite with feudal lords against territorial rulers to uphold local autonomy, as ally with territorial rulers against the claims of lords. Nevertheless, Poggi claims that the standestaat represents something quite distinct from a system of parcellised sovereignty. Thus, 'By assembling into constituted bodies, the stande represented themselves to the territorial ruler as prepared to associate with him in those aspects of rule that were understood as characteristically public and general' (1978, pp. 43-4). This development of 'public' political life was of more developmental significance than mere corporate separatism. Competing jurisdictions were of less importance in this respect than the drive by towns 'to construct with the ruler and the feudal elements, through the Estates, under frameworks for law enforcement and order-keeping conducive to the security and progress of their business pursuits' (1978, p. 63). Even though the cities were eventually to lose much of their autonomy after the fourteenth century, such losses were counterbalanced by the success gained in ceding responsibility for the creation of social stability and the protection of domestic industry to a centralised territorial ruler- namely, the absolute monarch. Absolutism in providing rule from a unitary centre guaranteeing order is thereby seen as conducive to the development of capitalism, though not as some necessary evolutionary pathway to its consolidation. By rejecting the use of 'feudalism' to characterise a wide range of personalised or corporate, decentralised or centralised institutions, Poggi avoids the problem of conflating the nature and developmental implications of institutions as varied as vassalage, urban autonomy, and absolutism. In so doing he shows that the process of state formation is a product of post-feudal development associated both with urban autonomy and the political centralisation developed by absolutism. For Poggi, feudalism and the modern state are more or less antipathetical. His view is that absolutism cannot be regarded as a defensive creation of landed aristocratic classes in competition with towns. Rather it is seen as emerging out of the tripartite relationships of the standestaat. Here territorial rulers, towns and feudal landed groups all expressed some interest in creating a greater degree of national integration, though not necessarily for the same ends. In the case of the urban influence, Poggi produces evidence to

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show how townsmen's desires for a stable framework in which to conduct economic activity were more or less taken over by the absolutist states through policies of national integration, domestic peace and trade protection. In the case of France, for example, absolutist restrictions on business 'derived much of their content from status and customs that merchants and tradesmen had previously elaborated for their own use'. At the time when independent merchants courts were suppressed in the mid sixteenth century, former members of such courts were taken into the judicial system. Poggi does not link such political developments in any highly elaborated way with the problem of transition from feudalism to capitalism. His argument would seem to involve two important conclusions. In the first place, the feudal polity as a system of decentralised patrimonial lordship contributed very little to the development of capitalism. In the second place, the decisive thrust towards the making of the modern Western world is associated with certain centralising tendencies associated with the standestaat and the development of centralised states. While proponents of the 'urbanist' theory of capitalist development also place considerable importance on the role of free cities within the standestaat, their emphasis is on the decentralist rather than the centralist implications of this kind of polity. Poggi's argument, therefore, does far more than re-label the standestaat as a 'post-feudal' rather than a 'feudal' institution. Its thrust is rather to imply a 'centralist' interpretation of the problem of capitalist development quite at variance with Baechler's argument that capitalism emerged out of 'feudal anarchy', and with the whole individualistic tenour of the Anglo-Saxon theory of capitalist development from below. The preceding discussion indicates that there are neither strong economic nor political connections linking the European experience of feudalism with the development of modern capitalism. This important finding has two very significant consequences for the transition debate. In the first place it throws doubt on the convention whereby the development of capitalism is seen in terms of a transition from feudalism to capitalism. Marxist accounts of internal contradictions within feudalism (or rather servile relations of production) account far better for the decline of unfree labour than they do for the emergence of capitalism. Similarly while the

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argument that 'feudal' regimes are more likely than 'prebendal' or 'imperial regimes' to be succeeded by capitalism has empirical credence, no convincing mechanism has yet been adduced to explain why the experience of feudalism as a form of decentralised politics should be regarded as causally connected with the development of capitalism. For this reason it seems misleading to speak of the European transition from feudalism to capitalism in anything more than a descriptive chronological sense. In the second place, the lack of any strong causal connection between the feudal experience and capitalism reaffirms the importance of looking closely at pre-feudal and/or post-feudal influences on capitalist development. Since the importance of certain features of the pre-feudal world, such as the classical inheritance and Christianity, has already been established, the argument of the next two chapters seeks to explain how certain aspects of post-feudal society were instrumental in securing the variou~ patterns of transition to capitalism in European history.

7

The Post-Feudal Polity and the Emergence of the Nation-State Europe around the year 1400 displayed no inexorable tendency towards the stable consolidation of a capitalist system (as defined here). This is reflected in the internal vulnerability of European society to periodic 'Malthusian' subsistence crises resulting in demographic collapse. It may also be seen in the lack of any striking technological breakthrough in the medieval period to relieve such pressures. In the light of these problems it is difficult to see capitalism as an immanent feature of either the classical, Germanic and Christian worlds, or of the parcellised sovereignty of the late medieval polity. Hence while the pre-feudal legacy may have been of far greater developmental significance than that particular to the feudal world, it remains the case that the European transition to capitalism in later centuries cannot be regarded as a necessary product of either the pre-feudal or feudal epochs. The argument developed in the next two chapters centres on the decisive importance of post-feudal society for the successful transition to capitalism in Western Europe. The present chapter focuses on endogenous influences conducive to, and constitutive of, capitalist development within various European nation-states. The initial emergence of capitalism is not located primarily in terms of those processes known as the Industrial Revolution and French Revolution, centred on the eighteenth century. Nor is the greatest analytical emphasis placed on such conventional themes as the rise of individualism and civil society, changes in factorybased technology and work organisation or the development of a liberal/democratic bourgeoisie. While all such trends were of considerable importance at particular times and in particular locations, my argument is that it is primarily to the 'state' and to landed society that most attention should be directed in the centuries prior to, as well as during, the eighteenth century.

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Explanation of the emergence of European capitalism, while not amenable to any single 'prime mover' argument, may be seen very largely in terms of two key processes. The first involves the creation of various forms of effective political centralisation within the state, so as to secure national consolidation, stability and the defence and promotion of national economic as well as political interests. The second involves the development of agrarian capitalism on a sufficiently productive basis to support the consolidation of capitalist industrial society. Within such spheres emphasis is placed on the agency of statesmen, bureaucrats and landowners, groups who may be regarded as equally important to the process of capitalist development as industrial entrepreneurs. The post-feudal state and the transition to capitalism One of the main findings of the previous chapter was that the late medieval city or city-state was insufficient as a political base for any successful transcendence of feudal parcellised sovereignty and the secure consolidation of capitalism. For all their economic and cultural vitality the Italian city-states of the fourteenth- and fifteenth century Renaissance did not produce a new social system able to reproduce itself. Instead there occurred a shift from entrepreneurship to rentier activity in which capital accumulation never assumed overriding importance as a structural imperative and cultural end (Holton, 1983). Meanwhile over Western Europe, as a whole, the emergence of the nation-state had by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made massive inroads into urban autonomy. Many recent contributions to the transition debate have involved extensive discussion of political structures and the state (North and Thomas, 1973; Wallerstein, 1974, 1980). While North and Thomas have tended to reaffirm the conventional 'Anglo-Saxon' assumption that 'small states' (as in England and Holland) were more conducive to capitalist development than large, especially absolutist state structures (as in Spain and France), work by other writers like Wallerstein tends to challenge this model. In this alternative perspective there is no particular merit in 'small states' if they are politically ineffective and no particular developmental demerit in a large state apparatus, especially where large scale was combined with political effectiveness. When

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confronted with historical evidence of the continental European experience of state organisation and capitalist development (including that of Prussia), any general model based upon the conduciveness of small 'watchdog states' leaving scope for the exercise of bourgeois individualism and entrepreneurship 'from below' seems inappropriate to the explanation of successful transition. Such problems are further compounded when it is realised that English capitalist development, while different in many of its political aspects from that of continental Europe, nonetheless depended on a considerable measure of centralised state direction in partnership with proto-capitalist interests. Within the post-feudal period, there are a number of ways in which strong autonomous state organisations may be seen as both conducive to, and constitutive of, capitalist development. In the first place, the securing of public order and the guaranteeing of private property rights in the immediate historical context of feudal jurisdictional disputes, internecine dynastic disputes, peasant unrest, fiscal weakness of the state and poor communications, required not simply state intervention to 'hold the ring' and maintain ground rules, but a more obtrusive presence to define and enforce rules of public order and property rights, and to find means of financial support for state activities. In the second place, within a European context of competing nation-states, strong government was important not merely for the protection of national integrity, but also for the protection and promotion of a range of economic, political and military projects of developmental significance. These ranged from the protection of home industries and the construction of national markets, to the acquisition and defence of territory and the economic resources it contained. Whether or not statesmen and bureaucrats aimed at the explicit creation of capitalist social relations, it is possible to regard such activities as conducive to, and in some cases constitutive of, certain features of capitalist social relations. The following survey of the nation-states of Spain, France, England, Holland and Prussia indicates that capitalist development is encouraged, not by small as opposed to large states or vice versa, but by the more effectively centralised states, whether based on absolutism or some other state form. This emphasis on political effectiveness helps to explain why decentralised non-absolutist states are no guarantee of success in achieving capitalism,

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and why absolutist states may stimulate as well as obstruct capitalist development. Spain

Habsburg Spain was the first great absolutist power of modern Europe. The territorial scale of the Spanish Empire was built on two pillars, the Habsburg family connection which involved the Low Countries, Austria, and much of Italy, and the conquests in the Americas which yielded precious metals. And yet for all this, Spanish absolutism represents a striking case of failure to secure a transition from post-feudal Habsburg seigneuralism and an empire based on plunder towards modern capitalism. The reasons for this, as indicated by North and Thomas (1973) in their discussion of 'property rights' and by Anderson (1974b) in his discussion of absolutism, centred to a large extent on the reliance on, and impact of, revenue from the Americas. This not only inhibited the development of some kind of fiscal and administrative reform by the central territorial ruler, but also distorted the structure of the economy. Production shifted away from arable farming to wool production, olives and wine. This not only led to a massive need to import grain, but also left the wool mesta in place. This form of taxation on wool production meant the inhibition of private arable estate enclosures, and a consequent lack of definition of property rights since sheep could be driven over any kind of land. Above all, perhaps, the flow of precious metals into Spain encouraged imperial warfare in Europe on a scale which was ultimately to prove too great to support. During the reign of Philip II, for example, the continuing war with the Dutch over the Low Countries was combined with armed intervention in the French religious wars and a naval attack on England. Even though the Spanish forces were ultimately unsuccessful in all these theatres, the decline of Spain did not come suddenly or without certain attempts at reform from above. By the end of the sixteenth century, Madrid had for the first time become a stable capital for the Spanish crown, while a royal secretariat had emerged as a means whereby the monarch could offset some of the power of the landed aristocracy. Olivares, the king's minister of the 1620s and 1630s, attempted to weld together the various territorial demerits of the Spanish monarchy by

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inviting the large landed magnates to abandon regional particularism in return for access to high office at the centre. This initiative, however, failed. The failure of Olivares' attempted centralisation occurred in a context where the flow of bullion from the Americas was on the decline. Between 1606-10 and 1646-50 the tonnage shipped fell by 60 per cent, but throughout the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries military activities continued. The crown went bankrupt in 1596 and again in 1607. Soon after a truce was signed with the Dutch ceding the United Provinces from the Habsburg Empire. This represented a considerable loss of revenue, yet military activities in northern Italy, Flanders and elsewhere continued. The crown went bankrupt again in 1627. Such periodic fiscal crises produced new taxes on consumption, but the fiscal exception and resistance of powerful groups such as landowners continued unchecked. By the end of the seventeenth century, Habsburg Spanish absolutism was moribund. The sixteenth-century vitality of the Spanish Empire had been crushed by an unreformed ancien regime. Most trade and commerce had meanwhile been taken over by outsiders, but no transition to capitalism, even on this basis, was underway. Spanish absolutism had certainly not stimulated any significant processes of transition, but this can be attributed very largely to the weakness of its centralised apparatus with respect to domestic Spanish politics, rather than to absolutism as such. France

With the decline of Spain, French absolutism came to the forefront of European politics most notably in the reign of Louis XIV. During the second half of the seventeenth century, a number of features of state policy seemed to mark a more auspicious relationship between absolutism and capitalism. In the first place, after the defeat of the Fronde rebellion in the 1660s French absolutism secured a higher degree of centralised control over the regions and over the landed aristocracy through administrative and fiscal rationalisation. The centralised intendant system developed in the 1620s was extended further as a non-purchasable office of state to administer the regions (generalities) of France. Bars on the sale of state offices were also effective for a time. The

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regional parliaments were emasculated so as to lose any rights over fiscal policy. Finally the army was increased to 300,000 while the nobility was effectively disarmed. Under Colbert in the 1660s assistance was given to industries such as cloth-making, glass, ironware and shipyards. Yet such activity was organised essentially to complement the overriding aim of French absolutism to be militarily and politically dominant in Western Europe. Mercantilism in this context was an instrument of national political aggrandisement. This aim does not in itself rule out any transition to capitalism. Economic development may well ensue as an unintended consequence of such political aim, especially through the creation of a stable centralised nation-state, and the effect of war production on industries such as metal-working and textiles. In the case of France, however, the net effect of absolutist political aggrandisement was to obstruct any such development. The problem was not the maintenance of a large overseas empire or the reliance on imported bullion rather than domestic entrepreneurship. It was more a combination of the massive fiscal burdens of the war machine upon the mass of mainly rural producers, and a resistance on the part of most sections of the larger French aristocracy to support agrarian improvement. Even though French absolutism under Louis XIV was far more effective in securing centralised rule, it remained unable to rationalise thoroughly the political and fiscal structure. This in turn reflected the continuing power of the landed aristocracy. No absolutist regime could ever feel secure without some kind of support from the landed aristocracy, hence the fiscal and status privileges of this group were in the main preserved. This underlying dependence was reflected in the resurgence of the power of the French aristocracy over the monarchy after the death of Louis XIV. Indeed it is arguable that further initiatives towards the development of French capitalism during the eighteenth century emerged mainly from 'below' rather than 'above'. While the wealthiest groups remained financiers, draining large profits from tax-farming and loans to the monarchy, it was from outside the orbit of the state that most economic development proceeded. Eighteenth-century French capitalist interests in trade and manufacture owed comparatively little to state support. This was reflected in the support of such interests for the Revolutionary cause against the ancien regime. In France, it seems, capitalist

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development could not proceed very far without some challenge to landed and aristocratic interests and the ineffective absolutist structure of state power. Absolutism, whether in Spain or France, has often been seen as an inhospitable political environment in which to secure a transition to capitalism. It is not clear, however, whether the main obstacle was the absolutist political structure involving the attempt to centralise state power itself. It is arguable that the real problems stemmed from the largely ineffective character of political centralisation, a difficulty which may be explained in part by the resistance of powerful landed aristocratic groups. In the case of France, it is important to note that the nineteenth-century process of transition to capitalism, however protracted and regionally unbalanced, occurred only after the post-Revolutionary strengthening of centralised state power during the Napoleonic epoch. While it is difficult to describe the French Revolution and the destruction of the ancien regime in any immediate economic sense as representing a bourgeois revolution ushering in capitalism, the political effects of the Revolution and the Napoleonic reforms had the effect of centralising and rationalising centralised state power in both the juridical, administrative and military areas. Thus for Skocpol (1979, p. 205), 'Despite the fact that they had not caused the Revolution, or been suddenly furthered by it, capitalist relations of production could expand gradually but steadily in the relatively favourable legal and administrative framework crystallised by the Revolution'. It is tempting to argue, therefore, that had French absolutism succeeded more consistently in achieving the degree of effective political centralisation sought under Louis XIV in the epoch of Colbert, that one less obstacle would have existed to a successful transition to capitalism, and also that greater progress would then have been achieved during the eighteenth century. Perhaps French absolutism was not absolutist enough! The importance of post-feudal political centralisation to capitalist development, whether via the absolutist state or some other political structure, is further indicated when the cases of England, Holland and Prussia are considered.

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England and Holland

It has often been argued that early modern England developed only a weak form of absolutism, and that this created a less restricted environment within which capitalism could flourish. This argument does, of course, assimilate capitalism to individualism and bourgeois initiative rather than any strong sense of state sponsorship 'from above'. Such an interpretation is seen as buttressed - as in North and Thomas' discussion (1973) - by the successful development of capitalism in the United Provinces (later Holland) in the period after 1550. Here a relatively loose federal constitution, without provision for a standing army, is seen as forming a context suitable to individualistic initiative, quite contrary to the restrictions of the strong absolutist states. Arguments of this kind though are suspect on several counts. In the first place, there are strong grounds for regarding the Dutch experience as an indicator of the long-run development problems created by the possession of a relatively weak decentralised state structure. While Holland made a spectacular shift towards agrarian and especially mercantile capitalism in the seventeenth century, the subsequent loss of momentum and decline of the Dutch economy in the eighteenth century relative to other nations such as England is equally striking. The reasons for 'Dutch decline' are complex and cannot be reduced to one overriding factor. A number of historians including Swart (1975, pp. 44-8) and Smit (1975, p. 62) have emphasised the significance of the Dutch political system as an obstacle to capitalist development. Dutch federalism has been seen as both politically and fiscally inefficient; such problems, when combined with the relatively small scale of the country, militated against the provision of sufficient resources to maintain a navy to rival the English and French, and hence to secure the economic protection of Dutch interests at home and abroad. In the second place, it is arguable that the English state apparatus, while perhaps indicative of a relatively weak absolutism, nonetheless involved a relatively strong centralised and effective state. Under the Normans and again under the Tudors it seems that royal power and the structure of the landed nobility were far more united and centralised in England than in continental Europe. Whereas in Europe feudal vassalage had been

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extremely parcellised such that 'the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal', in England all lords were vassals of a centralised Crown. Hence while the Crown exercised in theory if not always in practice a far more centralised relationship with feudal lords, such lords themselves were equally bound into a relatively centralised political structure. This was reflected in the structure of the English parliament. This body was a far more centralised unitary means of representation compared with the complex regional, local, and internally stratified standestaat of continental Europe. In England, the distinction between Lords and Commons did not amount to an estate division. Moreover, from the fourteenth century certain rights of legislative veto were ceded to the Commons. Anderson also points out that links between the Crown and feudal lords were consolidated at the local level. Here the administration of justice was not fundamentally divided between royal and feudal jurisdictions as on the Continent. Instead sheriffs and later justices of the peace (JPs) administered justice as royal appointees selected from the landed aristocracy and gentry. One implication of all this is that English lords as a class did not become 'semi-independent' feudal 'potentates' to anything like the same extent as their European counterparts. If feudalism means parcellised sovereignty, then it can be argued that medieval England was one of the least feudalised regions of Europe. The centralised political structures established in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England became subject to a fragmentation process during the Wars of the Roses during the fifteenth century. This phase of aristocratic factionalism and feuding was brought to a close by the late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century post-feudal consolidation of the Tudor dynasty. This saw a recentralisation process in which royal government effectively constrained local and regional magnate power ensuring a greater internal peace. Under Henry VIII, royal administrators such as Thomas Cromwell also secured a far higher centralised control over matters such as the appointment of local magistrates, and the incorporation of large outlying lordships in a nationwide system of shires. At the national level, administration was organised through the regular functioning of the Privy Council. The increasingly centralised Tudor state not only took political measures conducive to a climate of greater social peace, but also

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became involved in a range of policies and projects which exerted a more directly beneficial influence on the course of economic development. Not all such policies, however, were deliberately aimed in this direction. The dissolution of the monasteries during the Reformation in the 1530s and the subsequent sale of Church lands to support royal expenditure was in no way intended as an economic development strategy. The net effect was to give a boost to the land market and thereby put into the hands of agrarian capitalists considerable amounts of land which could be exploited for purposes of profit-maximisation. On the other hand, the growing involvement of Elizabethan governments in the promotion of industrial projects in the second half of the sixteenth century was far more explicitly aimed at maximising national welfare. Thirsk (1978, p. vi) has argued that such activities not only helped to meet the intended aim of reducing unemployment, but also 'added a new dimension to the home market by diversifying its wares and expanding consumption'. As a result of state projects in such sectors as pin and nail making, knife and tool making, stocking-knitting, soap making, linen weaving and many more, Thirsk claims that new 'economic energies' filtered through to the very heart of the national economy, making it beat faster and more strongly' (1978, p. 7). Such consumer goods industries were thus stimulated by state support well before the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution period, which is generally taken as the decisive watershed in England's transition to capitalism. The English state at the close of the sixteenth century was therefore very far from being decentralised. At the same time the development of absolutism on the continental European model was not successfully achieved either under Henry VIII or later in the seventeenth century under the Stuart monarchy. This is reflected above all in the political organisation of military power. The Elizabethan period undoubtedly saw great advances in the expansion and technical equipment of the navy. The defeat of the Spanish Armada ushered in a centuries long epoch of naval dominance for England. At the same time, this became significant more for its role in the securing and protection of commerce and trade routes than for any striking increase in the scale of the state apparatus. As far as land warfare is concerned, England lacked a standing army. lt was this that marked the main

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distinction between the English experience and continental European 'absolutist' patterns of nation-state development. The lack of a standing army, while setting limits to the centralised extent of the English state, may be interpreted in large measure as a product of England's geo-politicl situation as an island. This placed less strategic emphasis on the need to keep a permanent standing army. It not only lessened the fiscal demands of the state on private economic producers, but also meant that the English nation-state could maintain its centralised political cohesion without a large absolutist structure being set in place. A final consequence of the lesser need for a permanent standing army was the earlier demilitarisation of the English landed class by the middle of the sixteenth century as compared with their continental counterparts. It is important then not to confuse the relatively limited scale of the early modern English state apparatus with political decentralisation and ineffectiveness. The political cohesion of the English nation-state and its involvement in certain interventionist policies conducive to capitalist development was an established fact well before the seventeenth-centqry Civil War. Private capital did not in the main face a state hostile to national economic development. It dealt rather with one not unwilling to promote development through a combination of private and st&te initiative. In this context it is difficult to regard the English Civil war as a 'bourgeois' response to the failure of previous regimes to act in a manner conducive to capitalist development. Other difficulties with the Marxist interpretation of the Civil War as a 'bourgeois' revolution have already been noted (see above Chapter 3}. One of the foremost of these involves the problem that capitalist entrepreneurs or landed aristocrats may be found on both the Royalist and Parliamentary sides. This suggests that the Civil War did not represent a clear cut socio-economic contest between some kind of traditionalist quasi-feudal landed interest and an emergent mercantile and industrial bourgeoisie. As an alternative it is possible to interpret this struggle as a contest between two broad coalitions representing religious and political as well as economic interests. Amongst such competing interests it is possible to distinguish between those economic interests who had benefited in previous years from corporate monopolistic trading and manufacturing privileges granted by the state, and

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those who had not prospered in this way. This kind of split does not approximate in any simple way to a division between traditionalist acquisitve capitalism, in Weber's sense, and a more modern laissez-faire oriented capitalism. Many of the capitalistic interests supporting the Parliamentary cause were committed in principle to policies of state mercantilist intervention, even if they rejected some of the existing monopolistic forms that gave a privileged status to corporate capitalist groups favoured by the state. The fact was that mercantilist intervention in the domestic and international economies was vital to the consolidation of the emergent English capitalist economy in competition with both the Dutch and French. Whether the Royalists or Parliamentarians 'won' the Civil War was probably not decisive either way for the development of English capitalism, since in each case policies of state intervention and national economic protection would have ensued. This is reflected in certain continuities in policy between the Commonwealth period and the decades that followed the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The defeat of the Royalist attempt to govern without Parliament confirmed the post-absolutist thrust of seventeenth-century English politics. This was further ratified in the Revolution of 1688 when James Il's attempt to revive absolutism led to his overthrow and a new political settlement. The result was the creation of a constitutional monarchy linked with the prohibition of a standing army and a central fiscal role for Parliament. At the same time, Parliament did not institute a predominantly laissez-faire economic policy. Instead the mercantilist system of strong centralist state support for private capitalist interests was continued (Wilson, 1965, pp. 133-8). Such measures included a strengthening of the Navigation Acts, first developed under the Commonwealth to protect British shipping and commerce, and the Corn Laws to protect grain prices and agrarian capitalism. Such policies may be seen not simply as conducive to, but in some ways constitutive of, the English transition to capitalism. Once again they pre-date the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution and are hard to subsume under some simplistic notion of England's pioneering development of capitalism as the manifestation of economic individualism freed at last from political constraints.

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Prussia

Unlike all the previous cases, the example of Prussia indicates the possibility of a far more direct relationship between absolutism and the transition to capitalism. The German state of Prussia, which in the nineteenth century became the core of the German Empire and German capitalism, derived historically from the seventeenth-century Hohenzollern state of Brandenburg - subsequently Brandenburg-Prussia. In the first half of the seventeenth century the power of the standestaat within the Hohenzollern lands effectively constrained the territorial ruler (The Elector). From the mid seventeenth century onwards, however, the balance of power was reversed. A key moment in this process was the success of the Elector Frederick William in getting the estates to give financial support for a standing army capable of withstanding foreign (e.g. Swedish) expansionism in that region. A secure fiscal basis for Brandenburg was achieved not by the sale of venal offices to the nobility. Noble support stemmed rather from the Elector's noninterference in the Junkers' domination of their estates, combined with an opportunity for Junkers to participate in the State bureaucracy. The construction of a strong centralised state founded on military organisation and military superiority became from then on the principal aim of Prussian absolutism. What is particularly striking about this development is the gradual rationalisation of the military and bureaucratic structure. At the outset Hohenzollern rule amounted to a form of 'dynastic absolutism' in which sovereignty and legal authority resided in the personal authority of the prince. Bureaucracy in the age of Frederick William I (1713-40) and Frederick II (1740-86) was subject to the arbitrary decisions of the king and his 'personal office' (Rosenberg, 1958, p. 39). Over time, however, the predominance of the rulers' personal sovereignty was matched and eventually supplanted by what Rosenberg refers to as a 'bureaucratic absolutism' (pp. 202-3). This process was partly a product of 'a royal commander-in-chief becoming . . . caught in the wheels of his own bureaucratic apparatus' (p. 175). From an early date the Privy Council had become the agency of central administration involving military, financial and judicial bureaucracies. The emancipa-

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tion of the bureaucracy from monarchic authority also depended on the expansion of Prussian territory, population and revenues during the eighteenth century. In addition to this bureaucratic rationalisation, the Prussian absolutist apparatus depended on discipline, modelled on the army, rather than courtly indulgence. The scale of the bureaucracy in the seventeenth and nineteenth century was also relatively compact with 'rigid checks on expenditure and careful management becoming the mark of Prussian administration' (Barraclough, 1962, p. 400). The comparatively spare and frugal character of the Prussian bureaucracy reflected, at least in part, the limited financial resources available to the state - especially once military needs were met. In this respect Prussian absolutism contrasted with the top-heavy form of state apparatus found in France. The disciplined character of Prussian absolutism also depended on the impact of cultural and political influences from Western Europe. Amongst these the conversion of the Hohenzollerns to Protestantism in the first half of the seventeenth century has been seen by a range of writers from Engels to Hintze (1975) as especially important. Oestreich (1982) has produced an even broader account of 'Western' influences upon Prussia. These not only include Calvinism, but also, and more importantly for Oestreich, Dutch humanism imbued with a revived neo-Stoic ascetic and political philosophy. Frederick William and several prominent members of the seventeenth-century Prussian bureaucracy were deeply influenced by Dutch society and the religious and philosophical current as circulating in Dutch universities. Oestreich demonstrates in a persuasive manner how the Stoic emphases on a sense of duty the importance of work, and the necessity of militant preparedness made a profound impression on the Brandenburgers. It is also clear that the discipline of the Dutch army influenced the early builders of the Prussian state. It might seem something of a paradox that the Dutch republic with its 'loose federal structure' should have influenced the military monarchy of Prussia. Oestreich is nonetheless convinced that 'the influence of the Netherlands in eighteenth-century Prussia was supreme' (p. 129)- an influence through which aspects of the classical Graeco-Roman legacy were mediated. From the time of Frederick the Great Prussia was regarded as the 'Sparta of the North'. Oestreich's comparison of the Dutch republic with

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Prussia has the further merit of pointing out how the Dutch economic decline in the eighteenth century corresponded with a decline in Holland of the rational disciplined spirit of the seventeenth century which had so influenced the Prussians. In eighteenth-century Prussia, on the other hand, social discipline was already becoming built into the increasingly rational character of the state. The effectiveness of the Brandenburg-Prussian polity, with its centralised, militaristic, and increasingly bureaucratic form of absolutism was demonstrated during the eighteenth century. In external affairs it may be seen in the striking military successes which led to the capture of West Pomerania from Sweden in 1719, and of Silesia, one of the most industrialised regions of Central Europe, from Austria in 1740. Prussian absolutist effectiveness is also demonstrated by internal stability. Unlike Spain, France or England under absolutism, Prussia was never faced with significant opposition from the landowning nobility. This reflected a successful compromise whereby Junker lords maintained jurisdictional authority over local government, while also becoming incorporated into the army and bureaucracy. One of the main reasons for the success of this compromise was, as Anderson (1974b) has shown, the lack of a factious nobility. This can be explained in part by the medium size of Prussian landed estates, allowing no stratum of large magnates who might either challenge or manipulate the absolutist state to their exclusive privileged advantage. The Junkers were not only relatively homogenous as a class but also, in the absence of towns, tended to live on and even manage their estates. Below the centralised absolutist state, therefore, there existed a class characterised by what Anderson calls 'rough rural business traditions'. If Anderson baulks at calling the Junker agrarian economy capitalist, this is partly because he finds it disconcerting to find a nonbourgeois source of economic initiative among the militaristic, state-conscious Junkers. 'Rural business traditions' are deemed 'rough' presumably because they fall outside the ambit of classical civilisation in which the bourgeoisie is located. The characterisation of eighteenth-century Prussian polity as increasingly post-feudal is ruled out by Anderson. His scathing view of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Prussia as a 'cabbage paradise' (p. 265), a 'feudal order' with 'conservative' Junkers

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located in the north-east corner of Europe is indicative of his overwhelming emphasis on the civilisation of Western (or 'Roman') Europe as the creative source of capitalist development. This perspective creates the strong impression that eighteenthcentury Prussian absolutism would not have subsequently become the core of nineteenth-century German capitalism, had it not been influenced by exogenous influences from the West. The successful transition to capitalism in Germany only occurred because 'Geographically and socially ... [Prussian absolutism] ... had slowly been tugged over from East to West' (p. 278). The exogenous 'Western' influences which are seen as crucial to the 'transmutation' of Prussia into a capitalist state are associated with two particular events. The first is the defeat of Prussia by Napoleonic France at Jena in 1807. The trauma of military defeat at the hands of a state which had recently destroyed an ancien regime supporting an absolutist monarchy is seen as stimulating a set of social and political reforms of considerable significance for German capitalist development. These included a further rationalisation of the central state administration into functional departments of state on the French model, and the Stein-Hardenberg agrarian reforms which abolished serfdom, but compensated the Junkers by redistributing a good deal of former peasant land to them. The main instigators of these reforms are seen by Anderson as bureaucrats in the Prussian public service coming from a range of territorial backgrounds, most of them outside the Prussian Junker heartlands. The second major exogenous impact is seen as stemming from the Prussian acquisition of the Rhineland-Westphalia as part of the peace settlement that followed the defeat of Napoleon. This region, whose traditional particularism had been eroded during Napoleonic occupation, represented a major centre of economic, especially industrial and commercial, activity. It also included the Ruhr which, with its natural resources and access to Rhenish capital, was to become the heartland of German heavy industry after 1840. Up until this point, Prussia, with the exception of Silesia, was conspicuously lacking in industrial capitalist activity. There can be no doubt that the impact of the Napoleonic wars and the Prussian acquisition of the Rhineland represented crucial elements in the emergence of German capitalism. Anderson's picture of Prussia being gradually 'tugged away' from East to West

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by these events underestimates the developmental significance of many pre-existing features of Prussian society. These included a strong, increasingly rational bureaucratic state apparatus with a low level of venal corrupation and a strong tradition of mercantilist support for industry, a territorial area which already included the industrialised area of Silesia, and a class of Junker nobles who, while politically conservative, were energetic agrarian capitalists. It is arguable that this pre-existing context represented reasonably fertile soil within which many 'Western European' influences could grow and develop towards capitalism. In spite of political conflict between conservative Junkers and the liberal bourgeoisie of the Rhineland culminating in the abortive revolution of 1848, the period from 1815 onwards saw a significant amount of partnership between the centralised 'absolutist bureaucracy, industrial capital mostly located in the West, and agrarian capital mostly located in the East'. This was reflected in the degree of common support among these groups for the creation of the Zolverein - a customs union creating a large internal free trade area based on Prussia- and the ambitious system of state-supported railway building. These two measures created much of the structural basis of the rapid development of German capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century. This development depended in a fundamental way on the absolutist state, which, in the absence of a dynamic bourgeois class, played a key role in the creation of German capitalism 'from above'. The means by which this pathway of capitalism emerged depended not only on a post-feudal absolutist political structure, but also on a culture which sought to transmit a view of social discipline derived from Graeco-Roman and Protestant sources, through the state and through bureaucracy rather than through the individual and voluntarism.

Conclusion There are two main conclusions that may be drawn from the preceeding discussion. First, there is no necessary relationship between any particular post-feudal state (e.g. absolutist, constitutional monarchist, federal republican) and successful transition to capitalism. Absolutism, as in the case of Prussia, does not necessarily constrain capitalist development, while federal struc-

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tures lacking a powerful military and bureaucratic core, such as the Dutch United Provinces, do not necessarily promote it. While successful transition to capitalism clearly required a 'national' framework, the only common feature among the European successes is an effective degree of centralisation and national political coherence. However, while the English were to achieve this through a mixture of Tudor absolutism, the Civil War, Restoration mercantilism and (after 1688) constitutional monarchy accountable to landed and mercantile interests, German capitalism was built upon a mixture of Prussian absolutism, military discipline and bureaucratic initiative, influenced from time to time by Western European currents of political and economic rationalism. 'National' political coherence in this case was largely imposed on landed interests from above. These two cases differ from those of Spain, pre-revolutionary France, and the Dutch republic, in the greater effectiveness of political unification and centralised authority. A second finding is that the state's contribution to capitalist development may involve cultural changes as well as structural forms. The line of argument developed by Oestreich (1982) shows how absolutism, in its Prussian form, may be interpreted as the bearer of a rationalising ethic - something akin to a Protestant ethic operating 'from above' rather than 'from below' within civil society. In this type of transition, capitalist development depends not only on the creation of a centralised stimulating rationalisation. Prussian absolutism may be seen not as a 'cabbage paradise' but as the bearer of certain Graeco-Roman (e.g. neo-Stoic) and Christian (e.g. Calvinist and Lutheran) practices. Arguments linking capitalist development with certain rationalistic developments at the level of the state may, of course, be linked both with Weber's political analyses of occidental history and with a continuing tradition of continental European scholarship. Mannheim (1940, p. 255), for example, argued that the forms of obedience and discipline inculcated in the armed forces of the absolutist states also extended to absolutist bureaucracy, and indeed any organisation which sought to 'educate large masses of men'. Thus it was not only the army 'that was put through its paces on the parade ground', according to Oestreich (1982, p. 270) 'the same rigour prevailed in administrative, economic, moral and

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spiritual spheres as well'. Such ascetic discipline, it should be stressed, contrasts with notions of courtly luxury and indulgence associated with certain features of the absolutist experience, such as the Court of Versailles. For as Hintze put it, 'Ambition, diligence, scrupulous exactitude and a keen sense of responsibility replace gentlemanly indolence, benevolent indulgence and leisurely casualness' (0. Hintze cited Oestreich, 1982, p. 271). It is difficult to believe that this kind of political and cultural rationalisation process, as it were from above, is of no relevance to the understanding of European capitalist development. At the same time this 'Prussian' model cannot be regarded as generally applicable. This is indicated by the terms upon which England's pioneering transition took place. Here, the picture drawn above of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century development of an effective centralised state able to protect and promote agrarian and mercantile capitalism, must be qualified by the increasing presence of parasitical and corrupt office-holding. In spite of the great significance of mercantilism to English capitalist development, it is important to note the gradual accretion of parasital office-holding around the state. The collapse of the anti-monarchical Commonwealth based on disciplined Puritanical principles may have resulted in a monarchical state structure malleable to capitalist interests. At the same time, it also represented an evacuation of Protestant zeal from the state apparatus. Gradually as the eighteenth century developed, there emerged around the English state a phenomenon referred to by William Cobbett as 'Old Corruption'! If the eighteenth-century English state evolved in quite a different manner from that of Prussia, this evolution was probably too late and too limited in scale to offset the many significant advantages for capitalist development that had been secured by state actions in previous years.

8

Landed Society One of the principal variables affecting the emergence of postfeudal state forms and policies was quite clearly the activities and attitudes of landowners. Where landowners, or powerful sections of the landowning classes, sought to obstruct the development of fiscally secure centralised states, as in Spain and France, this undoubtedly produced obstacles to the development of capitalism. In England and Prussia on the other hand, the support for, or rapprochement between, landowners and the public claims of some kind of centralised state, exerted a more positive influence on the transition to capitalism. This effect seems to hold even if landowners' pro-capitalist practices were the unintended consequence of desires for the preservation of public order and the preservation of the landed estate as a local system of political power and status. It is perhaps not surprising that the activities of landowners played such a significant part in helping to determine the character of post-feudal ~tates. The land and the social relationships associated with its settlement and exploitation were after all the dominant source of employment, income, wealth, status and tax revenue in most parts of Europe well into the eighteenth and in some cases nineteenth centuries. Successful merchants and officials from non-landed origins bought estates and sometimes married into landed society. From the viewpoint of capitalist development, it is highly significant that the scale of capital invested by the landed classes of a country like England around the year 1700 dwarfed that in all other sectors of the economy, including overseas trade or industrial production. Some indication of this is provided by Neale (1975, p. 93), who demonstrates that the capital invested by landed gentry in the construction of the English spa town of Bath matched that involved throughout the entire eighteenth century in the English textile industries - conventionally regarded as the core of the British Industrial Revolution!

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In these circumstances it seems extremely unlikely that overseas trade, or industrial production could have been a sufficiently powerful or sufficiently extensive mechanism to have succeeded in 'revolutionising' by themselves what is often seen as a recalcitrant or 'backward' 'feudal' agrarian sector. Even though England's eighteenth-century foreign trade was expanding faster than the scale of that overseas, trade still represented a comparatively small proportion, probably less than 20 per cent of total national income. In the case of industrial production, it would appear that the relatively modest impact of the early phases of industrialisation upon the agrarian sector in England has probably been obscured by the euphoric connotations often given to the term Industrial Revolution. There is clearly some credence in the notion that late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England experienced an important boost in rates of economic growth, capital formation, technological change and foreign trade (Deane and Cole, 1962, pp. 40-97). To regard this as a 'Revolution' is, however, something of a misnomer. The rates of change in many of these key indicators have been shown to have been far more gradual than was once thought. In the sphere of capital formation, for example, Rostow's notion of a 'take-off', in which the proportion of net investment within the national income doubles within two or three decades, has been sceptically received by many economic historians, who point to a far more gradual rate of change (Deane, 1961; Crouzet, 1972). Similarly the extent of technological discontinuity between the eighteenth century and the previous three or four centuries has been seen as exaggerated (Nef, 1943; Coleman, 1956). One of the implications of this argument is that the transition to capitalism, including the process of agrarian transformation, did not have to wait for a decisive burst of industrialisation. From this viewpoint too it is not always the case that the bourgeoisie, and especially the industrial bourgeoisie, plays, in Marx's words 'a most revolutionary part' (1848, p. 36). Instead, the development of agrarian capitalism may be seen not only as preceding the Industrial Revolution, but also in proceeding very largely through the agency of non-bourgeois groups. The exaggerated claims of the urbanist theory of capitalist emergence have already surfaced at a number of points in this

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study. It is, however, important not to replace a one-sided 'urbanist' theory of capitalist development with a completely one-sided 'agrarian' theory. Due weight has to be given to the considerable interdependence that existed betwen the landed sector and the remainder of post-feudal European societies, including the urban sector. Rural producers after all bought from and sold to urban markets. Wrigley (1967) has shown how important the demand from the largest cities, like seventeenthcentury London, was to processes of agrarian expansion and technological change. Not all urban producers and merchants, on the other hand, were conservatively committed to meeting luxury needs or retaining guild controls. Much of the putting-out system (verlaggsystem), whereby industry was located in the countryside to avoid urban guild restrictions, was developed by urban merchants (Kriedte, 1977, pp. 21-2). Much urban capital, whether from mercantile activity of from the profits of public office, was similarly invested in the land and landed estates. For all this, it is essential to realise that there were limits to the scope and scale of bourgeois initiative in the countryside, and that there were autonomous sources of rural initiative whether from large landowners, small producers, or small village merchants (Kallenbentz, 1974). Wilson (1965, pp. 157-8) has shown that while English merchant capital did feed into examples of agrarian improvement, bringing with it commercial expertise, such urban-rural transfers were on a limited scale and generally affected substantial merchants in middle age. To explain the continuation of agrarian entrepreneurship in later generations, Wilson relies less on any assumption of 'hereditary commercial flair' than on the availability of outlets for commercial opportunity. While there is little systematic research available to assess the issue more precisely, it seems that agrarian capitalism - at any rate in England - emerged far more through the agency of non-bourgeois than bourgeois capital and enterprise. At a theoretical level it is also arguable that the potential importance of the agrarian sector is likely to be most crucial during the transition to capitalism than in later phases of consolidation. This is partly because the land remains by far the largest potential source of capital and labour, and partly because cities and urban industries, before the nineteenth century, remained acutely vulnerable to disturbances in the agrarian sector. The vulnerability

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of cities and urban employment to high food prices and subsistence crises remained the dominant cyclical influence on economic life well into the nineteenth century. To the extent that agrarian resources are held by indigenous rather than bourgeois groups, landed classes are placed in a crucial strategic position in the process of capitalist development. There are at least four structural mechanisms whereby the rural or agrarian economy may be seen as occupying a strategic position with respect to the transition to capitalism. The first involves the supply of sufficient food to feed a growing population and a growing non-agrarian population. While Marx and Weber both ignored this Malthusian problem, its salience to the successful transition to capitalism is, as the result of the work of Postan (1973) and Le Roy Ladurie (1966), very clear. A second mechanism involves the supply of labour, generally in the form of wage-labour, for both industrial and agrarian needs. The rural sector, through the proletarianisation of the peasantry, represents a major source of such labour, especially where relatively small urban centres cannot meet demands through natural increase. At the same time, it is important to note that limits on the supply of wage-labour may in some circumstances be an inducement to central kinds of economic innovation, such as the development of labour-saving technology. Two further mechanisms involve, first, the rural population as a market for commodities produced elsewhere (a market determined both by the scale of population and income levels), and finally, much capital as a source of investment funds for nonagrarian and, in some cases, urban projects. An emphasis on the agrarian roots of modern Westen societyof democracy as well as capitalism - is scarcely novel (Barrington Moore, 1966). At the same time, it is probable that the predominance of French-derived views of the conservative role of landed society in social change has encouraged a general neglect of the importance of agrarian transformation in the transition to capitalism. The notion of the countryside as a backward 'feudal' repository of traditionalism, whose further development is possible only as a result of bourgeois liberation, derives much of its force from the success of French revolutionaries in dramatising the destruction of the ancien regime as the demise of a still vigorous feudalism.

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Landed society in post-feudal France It is almost certainly the case that the socio-economic immobility of

the ancien regime has been exaggerated, both by a failure to realise that such 'feudal' institutions as vassalage and serfdom had long since vanished, and by a neglect of significant regional variations in economic development (Wallerstein, 1980, pp. 89-90). It would seem that French agriculture made comparatively little organisational and technical progress until after 1750 (Le Roy Ladurie, 1970, p. 575). This in turn reflects a general lack of concern for agrarian innovation and agrarian capitalism on the part of most French landowners. Even though increased amounts of land were cleared and enclosed for cultivation and certain regions, mainly in northern France, developed large commercial operations, the scale of such activities seems to have been far less than in England during the same period. Whereas in 1800 the output of each English agricultural worker fed an estimate of 2.5 persons, in France the equivalent figure was only 1.3 persons (Jones, cited in Brenner, 1982, p. 106). Thus, even though France managed to feed a growing population during the eighteenth century, this was not achieved without subsistence crises on a scale far greater than England had known since the sixteenth century. Eighteenth-century England, meanwhile, had become a net exporter of grain. A number of reasons have been put forward for the relative lack of innovation on the part of the French landed classes. Amongst these, the familiar argument that French customs of partible inheritance rather than primogeniture (as practised in England and Prussia) militated against the development of large agrarian capitalist estates seems exaggerated and misconceived. While French inheritance customs varied considerably between regions and over time (LeRoy Ladurie, 1976; Cooper, 1976), it seems that partibility in one form or another was the predominant practice outside the South. Formal distinctions between French partibility and primogeniture elsewhere do not necessarily amount to qualitative differences between inheritance practices. While it is theoretically easier to conceive of the development and consolidation of large estates as a basis for capitalist farming within a system of primogeniture rather than partibility, in practice this kind of distinction quickly blurs. Certainly at the level of larger landed proprietors, it seems that both systems gave preference to the

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claims of the first-born (usually first-born male) while protecting the interests of other heirs (Cooper, 1976). France did, therefore, boast large landed estates. What made her landowning structure distinctive was the far greater proportion of the land worked in small units by small peasant proprietors. While the fragmentation of peasant holdings within as well as outside large landed seigneuries no doubt reflected the predominant peasant practice of partibility, the causal importance of this practice in determining the fate of French agriculture and rural sector as a whole seems comparatively limited. While small-scale units are not necessarily inefficient depending on the type of crop produced or the extent of infrastructural support (Forster, 1970, p. 1602), what is arguably of more importance in the French context are the reasons why peasant holdings remained such a persistent feature at a time when such holdings were declining in many other parts of Europe. The cultural attitudes of the French landed nobility are generally held to be responsible in large measure for the lack of support or encouragement given to agrarian improvement. The combination of an extreme distaste for manual labour and a strong preference for integration into French courtly life, which was seen as a status preoccupation, effectively precluded the larger French landowners from any thrust towards agrarian capitalism. There is certainly a good deal of empirical backing for the prevalence of such status ~oncerns. For as Forster has pointed out 'the land was but a means, too often sucked dry to provide the cream of society, the resources to consume, to buy regiments, to pay dowries, and to consume again' (1970, p. 1613). Such activities centred above all on 'the magnetic role of Paris' with its 'marriage market, money market, sciences offices, preferments, and the magnificent setting without which to be a gentleman was a poor thing indeed' (p. 1613). The net effect of such concerns not only precluded policies of agricultural improvement and productivity growth but also a consumption of resources, little of which flowed back into the land or productive industry. While such 'status obstacles' are undoubtedly significant, arguments of this kind tend not to take into account that other European landed aristocracies succeeded in combining a measure of status preoccupations with a far greater concern for agrarian and social improvement. Stone's (1957-8) study of the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English nobility, reveals

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a class which 'would have been both astonished and disgusted to hear themselves described as men of business' whose main concern was 'conspicuous consumption', (1957-8, p. 54). Yet this same group was heavily involved in the development of landed estates, including enclosure for grain production, the exploitation of mineral resources, and the promotion of urban real estate development. A similar combination of status and economic improvement may be found among the Prussian Junkers and the American plantation owners. Comparative evidence of this kind throws some doubt on the argument that the status preoccupations of the French nobility represent the key obstacle to French agrarian capitalist development. Such doubts are reinforced by Forster's emphasis on the short-term income-maximisation revenue strategies of the French provincial nobility. 'Far from an idle, dull and impoverished hobereau, the provincial noble', according to Forster, was as likely to be an active, shrewd and prosperous landlord. These adjectives are meant to suggest more than a swollen pocketbook. They imply an attitude towards the family fortune characterised by thrift, discipline and strict management usually implied by the term 'bourgeois' (Forster, 1963, p. 683). Such attitudes produced demands to keep estate expenses to a minimum, and to raise peasant rents at every opportunity. Such arguments begin to suggest that there was nothing especially unique about the French nobility's cultural attitudes, nor is it necessarily the case that status preoccupations preclude the use of a type of 'rational' economic calculation to meet consumption goals. It may be then that the causal explanation of the slow development of French agrarian capitalism stemmed more from the structure of landholding, and from peasant rather than noble cultural attitudes. While landlords as seigneurs retained formal jurisdictional and therefore economic control over their estates during the ancien regime, the vast majority of land was 'held' and worked in relatively small units by the peasantry. In comparison with England and Prussia, this represented a far greater emphasis on peasant land-holding and a far less restricted development of production on landlords' demesnes. This structure can be traced back in France at least to the late medieval period. In both Normandy and the area around Paris at this time only around

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10-12 per cent of the cultivated surface was contained within demesnes. The remainder of the land was held, though not in the main owned, by hereditary peasants who retained control over the process of production, and were not subject to arbitrary seigneurial taxation. In late medieval England, by contrast, the lords' demesnes represented around one third of the cultivated land, while another third was subject to arbitrary taxation. Brenner (1982) goes on to argue that these contrasts in land-holding structure had profound developmental consequences. The most important of these involves the relationship between lords and peasantry. In Brenner's view the late medieval consolidation of hereditary peasant tenure, combined with the decentralised character of French feudal lordship, not only meant that most production was in the hands of peasants, but also that the peasantry possessed considerable security and autonomy. Such features of French landed structure acted as major obstacles to any potential strategies for agrarian capitalist development, for several reasons. In the first place, landlord access to revenue-maximisation was limited by the relatively small scale of demesne cultivation whose produce could be sold directly, and by the relatively large scale of peasant tenures immune from arbitrary (i.e. variable) taxation. In the second place, peasants were in a relatively strong position to resist attempts by landlords to undermine their tenurial security so as to consolidate or enclose land into large co-ordinated estates. The importance of this position is reflected in Bois' study of northern French agriculture in the early sixteenth century, where attempts at peasant eviction were effectively prevented by fierce resistance (Bois, 1978, p. 62). Brenner argues that these two mechanisms effectively aborted any strong tendency towards agrarian capitalism generated 'from above' during the favourable market conditions of the sixteenth century. Such economic restrictions turned the nobility, especially the lesser nobility, rather to increasing dependence on revenues that could be obtained from royal office, access to which increased considerably with the gradual consolidation of the absolutist state. By the late seventeenth century, as we have seen, the state in its turn attempted to protect the peasantry as the major source of tax revenue to support militaristic ambition. This also prevented any significant tendency towards the displacement of the peasantry in the interests of agrarian capitalist movement.

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French land-holding structure also tended to preclude the development of capitalism from 'below'. Relatively small-scale units of production are not necessarily inimical to capitalist development as the case of seventeenth-century Dutch agriculture indicates (de Vries, 1974). In the French case, however, there were major structural obstacles to any development of this kind. In the first place, as Brenner points out, the relative security of most peasant proprietors 'who did not face the falling in of their leases, rising fines, or direct competition for their tenures' (Brenner, 1982, p. 91) produced little incentive to enter the market except perhaps sporadically. Secondly, the possibility of capital accumulation was limited both by the increasing impact of state taxation (1982, p. 82) and by the continuing impact of fixed seigneurial dues. Thirdly, peasant cultural practices did involve a far greater tendency to partible inheritance and subdivision of holdings between family members, thereby creating a highly fragmented 'strip' pattern of holdings, unconducive to efficient arable production. This combination of structural and cultural factors may be seen as explaining the relative conservatism and self-sufficiency of the French peasantry - factors which persisted until well after the French Revolution. In effect, French agriculture, while succeeding in feeding larger numbers of peasants, did not generate sufficient tenurial and organisational innovation before 1800 to enable the rural economy to give a decisive stimulus to capitalist development in the remainder of France. The maintenance of peasant tenures militated against labour mobility and the development of wage-labour, while peasant self-sufficiency inhibited the scale of rural demand and hence the home market. While some improvement in the scale and distribution of food supply is reflected in a modest increase in the relative proportion of the population living in cities, it is doubtful whether the incomes generated within French agriculture were translated into productive capital investment in other sectors. If a range of structural and cultural obstacles prevented any strong connection between the agrarian economy and the transition to capitalism prior to 1800, it should also be emphasised that the French 'transition' process was itself a gradual, long drawn out process. Instead of an Industrial Revolution or a short sharp 'take-off' into a new pattern of socio-economic activity, social change in France took the form of a long-term cumulative

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transformation of society, 'unobtrusive' in most of its component parts (Roehl, 1976). There is, therefore, some plausibility in the view that the agrarian economy did make some contribution to capitalist development, especially after 1750, in gradually improving agricultural productivity and food supply, and also supplying some labour to industry, particularly where that industry was located in rural areas. Connections of this kind should not obscure the essential point that French nineteenth-century capitalist development depended far more on bourgeois initiative and state infrastructural support than on the rural economy and the landed classes. This initiative and support involved policies such as national administrative integration, railway building, and the importation of British capital and technology by urban rather than rural interests. This French pattern of transition is, however, very far from general within Europe. Particularly useful contrasts may be made both with England, where agrarian capitalism was a far more decisive influence on the development of capitalism, and with Prussia, where capitalism emerged as a result of the seemingly unlikely combination of state initiative from above and the entrepreneurial activities of the social conservative Junker landowner. England

By 1750 English landed society had already experienced a transition from peasant to capitalist agriculture. F.M.L. Thompson (1966, p. 517), in his careful survey ofthe social distribution of landed property, emphasises that 'peasant-owners did not disappear because there was an industrial revolution. They had gradually failed to survive over the previous centuries.' This transformation affecting agrarian productivity as well as the social structure was reflected in the relative lack of subsistence crises in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries compared with continental Europe. Furthermore, while in France the bourgeoisie had been incorporated into landed society and ennobled, England experienced a reverse development in which large sections of the landed aristocracy and gentry were transformed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries into 'bourgeois capitalists', or an 'agrarian bourgeoisie' [sic!].

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For several centuries, but especially from the sixteenth century onwards, a number of elements of 'improvement' are detectable. These included the enclosure of communal or hitherto waste land, the gradual dispossession of small peasant producers and the consolidation of holdings into larger units. The sale of monastic land by the Crown during the sixteenth century may also have aided the process of a large estate consolidation. Meanwhile, technical improvements are evident in both arable crop rotation and animal husbandry affecting a range of tenant farmers on landed estates and medium-sized landowners. Most nobles and gentlemen leased land to tenant farmers who were directly responsible for the actual production of agricultural produce. Unlike the hereditary peasants who in the main were responsible for French demesne farming, the English tenant farmer had no heritable security of tenure, but competed for leases on a commercial basis. Similarly, while the French lords remained content to squeeze the peasantry, obtaining revenue through a range of share-cropping, rent and seigneurial dues, English landlords tended to think more in terms of tenant farming as an investment in which they provided fixed capital and favourable leasing arrangements and the tenant, working capital and expertise. Hence while the French seem to have opted for short-term revenue maximisation at the expense of agrarian improvement, the English seem to have taken a longer-term view, believing that estate improvement and incentives to tenants would increase profitability and revenue over the longer run. At any rate, the English practice of raising rents at less frequent intervals than the French, coupled with a tendency to try to avoid raising rents on sitting tenants, appears to contrast with French practices where rents were sometimes raised annually (Forster, 1970, p. 1610). Overall, the English landlord-tenant structure seems to have offered a more conducive environment to organisational and technical innovation than that found in France. In addition to agrarian improvement which lifted agricultural productivity, improved the capacity of England to feed a growing population, and created the potential for a shift of labour to urban-industrial centres, the larger landed estate proprietors became involved in a range of other activities. These included the development of mineral resources, notably coal and iron ore mining, the establishment of rural manufacturers, and infrastruc-

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tural investment in roads and canals. Major landowners also contributed to the massive costs of urban infrastructural investment and house building. Capital provision by large landowners was therefore a crucial element in the process of English capitalist development. In the first place, the large nobles were often alone in possessing the scale of wealth necessary to finance large-scale investment, but they were also prepared to direct a good deal of such wealth into many productive and pioneering activities. While a good deal more was squandered in a manner similar to that of their French counterparts, the sizeable proportion that was not, seems to have exceeded the investment capital invested by the bourgeoisie in many key areas. At least, for the sixteenth and seventeenth century Stone (1957-8, p. 61) argues that mercantile and finance capitalists were often less energetic and more conservative than noble landed capital. While the latter provided loans on many occasions for 'new and risky business ventures', merchants, including the mercantile oligarchy of the City of London, tended to do so only when land was pledged as security. A further connection between the English agrarian sector and capitalist development involves the home market, in particular the rural population which formed the largest component of that market up until the nineteenth century. Here the economic significance of small rural tenant farmers and wage-labourers as consumers becomes prominent. The rural market for industrial production was still crucial during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its breadth and scale is reflected in surviving household inventories compiled on the death of householders. These indicate considerable lifetimes' expenditure on such items as ironware, pottery, and textiles. In this way those who participated in agrarian prosperity and expansion became involved in a home market which far exceeded the export market in significance. This clearly stimulated the development of industrial production to meet that demand. In seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England, industries might equally be located in the countryside as in the towns. Rural industries based on mass consumption not only supplied the rapidly growing City of London (Wrigley, 1967) but also a large and growing rural market. The industries involved included mineral extraction, cloth-making and garment-knitting, drawing capital from a range of sources, not necessarily that of urban

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merchants. Much of the labour force for such activity came from underemployed rural workers, particularly those from pastoral areas where demands for labour were less acute than in arable farming (Thirsk, 1961). The central role of agrarian development in the pioneering transition to capitalism in England between 1500 and 1750 reflects the empirical importance of all four of the economic mechanisms (i.e. food supply, labour supply, rural markets, capital mobilisation) conceived of as theoretically pertinent to the development of non-agrarian sectors of society. Any picture of rural England as a 'conservative' backwater, catastrophically depopulated by enclosures, and dependent for its economic fate on urban-industrial initiatives, is quite at variance with the economic history of the period from 1500 to 1750. Outside England, other examples of dynastic agrarian sectors influenced by non-bourgeois initiatives may be found, though not necessarily on quite the same scale. One of the most important such cases is that of Prussia, and Junker-dominated agrarian capitalist development. Prussia The role of the socially conservative Junker class in the Prussian (later German) transition to capitalism has proved especially perplexing to those who relate this process to developments such as the replacement of status by contract, and the dominance of 'bourgeois' economic individualism over landed classes. While Marxist opinion in general has tended to downgrade the role of the Junkers for such reasons (see the review in Dorpalen, 1971), Lenin recognised the developmental significance of the Junker-dominated agrarian sector in Prussia as representing a 'conservative' route of transition to capitalist agriculture (Lenin, 1905). There certainly appears to be a prima facie case in favour of regarding the Prussian Junker landlords as 'capitalist', since they were often directly involved in agricultural activity and expansion on their own estates for sale on the world grain markets. The 'capitalist' character of the late eighteenth-century Prussian Junker economy is less easy to establish if 'relations of production' rather than 'relations of exchange' are taken as the main criterion for the presence of capitalist social relations. Serf labour was still

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utilised at this time on the Junker estates, constituting relations of production which most Marxists would regard as 'feudal'. If feudalism connotes a disdain for economic activity and a disregard for economic rationality, it seems a somewhat misleading label to put on to the Junkers. However much they acted as a status-conscious estate, their resistance to the commodification of labourpower made economic sense, in so far as labour had historically been scarce in the areas of Prussian agriculture east of the Elbe. It is also important to note that serf-labour agriculture did not preclude an interest in technical and organisational innovation. Prior to the abolition of serfdom, between 1807 and 1812, new crop rotations were introduced (Dickler, 1975, pp. 273-5). These allowed increasing amounts of labour to be fed from plots previously devoted to meeting the food needs of serfs, and also tended to improve soil fertility. The effect was to increase the productivity of Junker agriculture so as to be able to meet expanding demands for arable products. The problem of the social characterisation of the Prussian Junkers probably represents one of those occasions when an empirical combination of economic rationality and social conservatism defies the dichotomous character of labels like feudal or capitalist, traditional or modern. It is arguable, nonetheless, that the character of the late eighteenth-century Junker serf economy indicates a transitional state of affairs, in which certain 'pro-capitalist' practices amongst the Prussian landed classes were of some developmental significance for the subsequent consolidation of capitalism in Germany. The trend before 1800 was further strengthened by the terms of the serf emancipation edicts. These gave the Junkers access to land previously held by the serfs. This might now be enclosed and utilised once again to extend the area of marketable crop production. On the other hand, the same reform period, in creating a free market in land, also paved the way for the input of bourgeois capital in land. This occurred through active intervention in the land market such that by the mid nineteenth century around 50 per cent of knightly Junker estates were owned by those of a bourgeois background (Dorpalen, 1971, p. 240). The considerable productivity increases evident in the nineteenth-century Prussian agrarian economy, dependent in the main on Junkers but also on some bourgeois capital, played an important part in

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generating export revenue for domestic capitalist investment, and in improving domestic food supply. There is also considerable evidence to indicate that part of the revenue generated by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Junker estate agriculture was used to support other important areas of Prussian and German economic development. These include coal and iron-ore extraction (especially in Silesia) and in railway building (Dorpalen, 1971). It is difficult to tell, however, whether the scale of such activities was quite as large or significant as the industrial and infrastructural investment of English landowners in their own policies of estate development and income-maximisation. This is partly because Junker and bourgeois interests became intertwined as the result of common investments made in railway construction in the 1850s and 1860s (Eichholtz, cited Dorpalen, 1971, p. 339). It is the case, however, that the contribution of the Junkers to German capitalist development went far beyond the expansion of food supply. In spite of their social conservatism and preoccupation with status concerns, Prussian landed society played a limited but significant, positive economic role in the transition to capitalism. This role, manifest in improved food supply and provision of investment capital, may be regarded as complementary to their strong political and military support for the Prussian state, whose centralising tendencies were so important to successful German national unification. While the Prussian case is very far from exemplifying the probably decisive role of agrarian capitalism in the English pattern of transition to capitalism, it is also very far from confirming the typicality of French ancien regime landowners as models of the role of landed society in the transition to capitalism. What England and Prussia had in common was a relatively strong landowning class whose economic power was sufficient to prevent the continuation of a rural peasantry, but whose political power was deployed in a manner consistent with the presence of a strong and effective nation-state. Where Prussia differs from England is in the way the alliance between state and landowners sought to block the advance of political democracy and, in particular, the enfranchisement of the bourgeoisie. That Prussia and Germany were nonetheless successful in achieving transition to capitalism during the nineteenth century, indicates that political democracy need not be a vital

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component of the institutional context for modern economic development. In this way the connections between political democracy and the emergency of modern capitalism may be as contingent as those between laissez-faire economic individualism and modern capitalism.

The state, the land and the development of industrial capitalism While the development of the nation-state and agrarian capitalism cannot be considered in complete isolation from the remainder of society, it is arguable that such essentially post-feudal developments represent the shift of European history on to a new developmental tendency. Whereas capitalism was not immanent in fourteenth-century Europe, by the beginning of the eighteenth century its development at the societal level - at least within the English context - seems far more clearly evident. The successful Industrial Revolution, whereby England developed many pioneering new technologies, the factory system, and an increasing reliance on foreign trade, may therefore be seen as premised on developments in the previous two centuries. Two particular landmarks in the transition process stand out. The first is the development of a strong nation-state with sufficient centralised power to secure domestic social peace, incorporate Wales and Scotland into the United Kingdom, and to provide international protection of England's international interests. The second is the construction of a prosperous agrarian capitalism able to withstand the economic crises that beset most of Europe during the seventeenth century, and to help spawn a good deal of strategically important infrastructural investment and rural industries. England, of course, benefited considerably from its merchants, in domestic as well as international trade, and from certain early industrial enterprises not necessarily dependent on state or landowning capital. At the same time, it is arguable that it was the combination of political and agrarian developments that secured the pioneering transition to capitalism. The plausibility of this interpretation is reinforced when comparisons are made between England and Holland, France and Prussia. In the case of the Dutch, it is important to reach some understanding of why the leading 'capitalist' interest of the mid-seventeenth century subsequently faltered, such that Holland

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failed to become the first capitalist society. The Dutch had at this time a thriving mercantile sector, predominant in European trade, while 'behind this seaborne fa($ade' there existed 'a set of industrial and agricultural sectors able to respond to new opportunities' (de Vries, 1974, p. 166). In the longer term, however, the relatively weak structure of the Dutch state proved unable to protect the international integrity of Dutch interests, and lost naval and economic dominance to England. While there are other reasons for Dutch decline, this 'political' explanation seems particularly important. Similarly, it was England's combination of political and agrarian structures conducive to capitalism which distinguishes her from France. Here neither state structure nor agrarian relations were sufficiently conducive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and even after the Revolution of 1789 the effect of a stronger state was partly offset by continuing agrarian conservatism. It is not particularly surprising that the French transition process was so gradual. On the other hand, Prussia, while similar to England in having an effectively centralised state and a reasonably dynamic agrarian sector, was severely disadvantaged by the massive German political fragmentation. If parcellised sovereignty was really so conducive to capitalist development, Germany, with its multiplicity of principalities and free towns, should have been one of the first to secure jt. The extent of the economic obstacles created by such parcellisation is reflected in the rapid pace of German transition once they had begun to be overcome. On the other hand, if political centralisation was sufficient by itself to secure transition to capitalism, one would have expected a more considerable developmental thrust outside the West, at certain moments in the history of civilisations in China or the Islamic world for example. While both these areas produced considerable advances in commercialisation, the extent of agrarian transformation to meet problems of population pressure on food supply, and to convert peasants into proletarians was extremely limited. The reasons for this lack of any thrust towards agrarian capitalism are complex, but may relate in part to the use of prebendal forms of land-tenure distribution by centralised states. Such forms encouraged the fiscal rather than productive exploitation of landed estates. There is a sense then in which 'agrarian' and 'political' structures may be seen as profoundly interrelated.

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While it has been argued that political centralisation without agrarian capitalist activity was unlikely to produce any significant degree of transition to capitalism, it should also be noted that the particular form of political centralisation in the West differed from that evident elsewhere. There are two aspects to this. The first is that state centralisation was not so all-embracing as to preclude the existence and further development of private economic activity among autonomous groups of landowners, merchants and industrialists. In this way post-feudal Europe, even in the absolutist states, contrasted with the continuing presence of all-embracing and relatively undifferentiated forms of Imperial political centralisation elsewhere. It is not necessary, however, to explain the greater degree of differentiation between state and society in the medieval West by reference to the experience of feudal parcellised sovereignty or late medieval urban autonomy. As we have seen in the previous chapter, there is good reason to suppose both that the differentiated structure of the Western polity was already evident in pre-feudal distinctions between Church and State, and that feudal parcellisation was too fissiparous and particularistic to act as a plausible model for the development of centralised Western nation-states. It is necessary, therefore, that the competing parcellised sovereignties of feudalism be overcome before state and private capital can act in partnership to create a cohesive and unitary political structure capable of protecting and promoting private economic interest on a capitalist basis. A second political characteristic of the West is that the nation-states of early modern Europe developed as a plurality. This reflects the inability of any single European political force to reinstitute a single imperial focus on the Roman model. Once established, this plurality of states represented an even stronger bulwark against a unitary imperial form of centralisation based on the political coercion of private interests. In addition, it also created the possibility for a European-wide process of transition to occur through mutually beneficial exchanges of skills and resources between the various nation-states. It is to the exogenous conditions of successful transition to capitalism that attention now turns.

9

Endogenous and Exogenous Aspects of the European Transition to Capitalism There are many analytical insights to be gained from an endogenous approach to the problem of European transition to capitalism, focusing upon the internal structures and cultural practices of the various emergent nation-states of post-feudal Europe. The endogenous nation-state framework, inherited from nineteenth-century evolutionary thought, is nonetheless inadequate as a means of investigating the European or international character and context of transition. There are a number of senses in which exogenous influences might be seen as important to an understanding of various 'national' patterns of transition. The first involves the impact of the world beyond Europe on the internal political stability and economic activity of European social development. The security of Europe as a political unit depended, of course, on the successful repulsion of external military challenges, such as that mounted from the fourteenth century onwards by the Ottoman Empire. It is likely that the potential of the AustroHungarian Empire to act as a centre of capitalist development was weakened by the need to meet the Turkish expansion into southern and central Europe. Had the exogenous challenge of such expansionism succeeded, on the other hand, it is extremely doubtful whether the prebendal patrimonial structure that resulted would have been conducive to capitalist development. To this extent the failure of such exogenous military challenges unconducive to capitalist development should probably be counted as establishing an important premise for the successful transition to capitalism in some parts of Europe in the post-feudal period. At the same time, the European success in meeting this challenge depended on such 'exogenous' factors as an increasing

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technological and strategic superiority over the Turks in both land and seaborne warfare (Cipolla, 1965). There are, therefore, 'endogenous' explanations for the successful maintenance of the political coherence of Europe. 'Exogenous' influences were also brought to bear upon the economic development of the 'West'. Quite clearly Europe imported non-European technological and scientific skills such as gunpowder from China, and Arabic mathematics for use in business calculation. African labour was also used in large numbers on the slave plantations of the Americas. At the same time, if the notion of 'Europe' is taken to include both the continent of Europe and areas of European settlement elsewhere, most notably the North American colonies, then the economic impact of the world outside this area upon the nations within it was comparatively limited. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, developmentally significant contact with the non-European world depended less upon economic and cultural exchange than on the active dominating agency of European interests opening up markets and raw material supplies. The utilisation of nonEuropean resources was, therefore, far more an endogenous product of European expansionism than an exogenous product of non-European economic and social innovation. Secondly, as already indicated, the scale of such non-European operations prior to 1800 is, in any case, insufficient to explain the successful European process of transition to capitalism. 'Exogenous' influences can be conceptualised as operating in a second way, namely, within and between the European array of emergent nation-states. Here, exogeneity involves the external impact made by the activities of one nation-state upon other political units within the European region. If exogeneity is used in this sense, it is possible to organise the analysis of transition to capitalism within each nation-state in terms of a combination of endogenous and exogenous 'European influences'. Wallerstein's 'world-system' perspective, while intended to integrate the history of European and non-European regions, nonetheless represents one productive means by which intraEuropean relations between nations may also be pursued. Wallerstein argues that the development of European capitalism is inconceivable without the development of the nation~state. At the same time, 'the history of the modern world' represents a balance

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between 'national' and 'international' levels of analysis. By itself the emphasis on purely 'national' units precludes an awareness of the autonomy of the world system, operating at an international level, from purely national developments. The causal analysis of transition is therefore made up of an interaction between the autonomous expansion of an international capitalist division of labour and the power of individual nation-states in securing unequal shares of the distribution of resources within this world system. While Wallerstein's approach is a very useful methodological defence against purely 'national' levels of analysis, we have already noted in Chapter 3 that it is not at all clear exactly what the conceptual and historical relationships between the 'national' and 'international' components of capitalist development are taken to be. There is, for example, considerable difficulty in establishing whether the world system is a component both of the mature functioning of capitalism and of the transition process itself. This problem is analogous to the tendency of both Marx and Weber to treat certain features of capitalism as both part of the explanandum and the explanans. In the case of Wallerstein, it is not entirely clear whether the world system is presumed as the mechanism creating the strong 'core' nation-states like England, or whether certain endogenous 'accidental' features of the English social structures made it a core state capable of participating in the construction of the world system. At some points he argues that the groups whose interests are served by a strong state 'emerge within the framework of a capitalist world-economy'. At others the implication is that the areas which develop strong states, emerge as it were 'accidentally', according presumably to endogenous influences. When Wallerstein opts for the latter emphasis, he makes the very plausible argument that a 'world division of labour' and international capitalist economy requires inequality between national polities to enable stronger potentially capitalist states to be able to exploit other weaker states and regions. The balance between national or endogenous and international or exogenous analysis within this particular line of argument appears firmly set in favour of the endogenous analysis of nation-states. Wallerstein's own substantive analyses of transition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example, seem to

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place far more significance on endogenous developments within certain key nation-states than on the exogenous impact of the European-dominated emergent world system. Even within Wallerstein's world system perspective, therefore, there is good reason to suppose that exogenous influences from the international context may be of less significance during the early phases of transition than thereafter. Waller5.~ein's work is nonetheless important in suggsting the importance of the plurality of emergent nation-states within early modern Europe. In spite of the greater degree of political centralisation involved in the nation-state as compared with the feudal polity, none of the nations that emerged from the fifteenth century onwards was sufficiently powerful to dominate all of the others. Instead of the reinstitution of something akin to the military political focus of the Roman Empire, what emerged was an irreducible plurality of more of less stable and centralised political units. Warfare continued through the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between nation-states, very often over the territorial control of regions such as northern Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, as yet without independently formed states. A number of monarchs and ideologues still harboured imperial ambitions. At the same time, the underlying trend was towards the development of relatively autonomous nation-states. Within such reasonably ample territorial boundaries, economic innovations could be generated from within or imported from outside by a range of groupings including merchants, landowners and industrialists as well as by the state through bureaucratic agents. Instead of the ultimately conservative monopolistic thrust of the previously dynamic city-states, political conditions were not created for the expansion of economic activity within a more secure and far larger territorial base over whch the state apparatus claimed and practised a monopoly of force. In this perspective it is not so much the status-bound parcellised sovereignty of feudalism that provided the most appropriate political context for capitalist development, as the plurality of centralised and generally rationalised nationstates that emerged in the post-feudal period. This perspective can be linked with a third way of conceiving of exogenous and endogenous influences within European processes of transition to capitalism. This involves a distribution between

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'pioneers' and 'followers' within the set of nations that succeed in making some transition. The argument here is that the exogenous context is very different for the pioneers in capitalist development than for those who 'follow'. Pioneers may import discrete techniques or practices from 'outside', but they do not encounter the combination of benefits and disadvantages that arise for those societies that follow in the wake of the pre-existing consolidation of capitalism in some other nation-state. 'Followers', unlike 'pioneers', may learn from and select those features of the 'exogenous' pioneering experience which seem most appropriate in a manner unavailable to the pioneers themselves. On the other hand, 'followers' also face competition and pressure from already established capitalist nations, pressure which may be sufficient to inhibit or distort subsequent processes of transition to capitalism. Such distinctions between the exogenous context of pioneers and those that come after provide another general reason for doubting the possibility of a general theory of transition. One of the most influential versions of the 'pioneer-follower' argument involves certain 'unique' features believed to distinguish the English pattern that followed. Here the pioneering English case is explained by endogenous influences, while the subsequent European 'transitions' are seen as the 'exogenous' products of the already dynamic presence of capitalism in England. Thus, for Milward and Saul (1973), 'Continental European societies were transformed by events coming from outside', essentially the impact of English technology and 'capital', whereas England achieved successful transition as a result of suitable 'internal' economic and social influences. In assessing this kind of argument it is important to clarify the level of analysis at which terms like 'pioneer' or 'follower' are meant to apply. There is, for example, a distinction between pioneer status at the societal level of transformation and at the level of particular technological, intellectual or organisational innovations. The reasons why writers like Marx focused their analyses of capitalist development on England is that its development was believed to reflect a pioneering transition at the societal level. The late nineteenth-century emergence of the notion of the Industrial Revolution, again based on the English case, also applied at this societal level. There has grown up a tendency to regard England's pioneering Industrial Revolution as

Endogenous and Exogenous Aspects 211 implying endogenous national origins for all the industrial components involved in a societal transformation. The danger of this tendency is that it may obscure the remarkably diverse 'national' origins of various technological and organisational innovations which England itself imported in the centuries prior to the so-called Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These included Italian accounting methods (themselves drawing in part on mathematics developed in the Arab world), German printing innovations, Dutch agricultural methods and so on. In this sense many of the foundations for English development had already been laid before England's own and very prominent thrust of technological changes in the textile and iron industries during the eighteenth century. The English transition clearly involved a number of significant exogenous influences. This suggests that any sharp dichotomy between endogenous pioneering patterns of transition and exogenous 'second-wave' transitions should be treated with caution. A more plausible alternative interpretation is to regard the distinctions between English and continental European transition with respect to exogenous influences as one of emphasis rather than of kind. For there does seem little doubt that exogenous influences were of far greater importance in the 'second-wave' or 'follower' processes of capitalist development than was the case in England. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, the demonstrable increase in England's economic and military power between 1750 and 1850, an expansion associated with capitalist industrialisation, was felt by many European statesmen and intellectuals to demand some equivalent response, whether for reasons of political aggrandisement, economic profit or social reform. Secondly, England's 'head start' also influenced the form of such responses. It is highly likely that the perceived urgency of the English challenge induced governments to take on a more active involvement in economic development and social modernisation than had been apparent hitherto. For reforming Prussian bureaucrats, for example, it was virtually obligatory to make a study tour of England before forming plans for economic and scientific innovation (Henderson, 1958). In the second place, the existing competitive strength of England as 'workshop of the world' made it highly probable that protectionist policies be

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adopted by second-wave capitalist societies, rather than the free trade practices advocated by Adam Smith and developed in England during the nineteenth century. Above all perhaps, England possessed access to new but proven industrial techniques, experience in large-scale economic organisation, and increasing funds of capital available for investment at home or abroad. The extent of such influences and transfers between nations reinforces the case for consideration of the international context to capitalist development. While there may be multilinear 'national' pathways to capitalism, it is also important to note some sense of cumulative development, particularly at the level of technique and resources. Economic actors in the various 'leading' nations and regions at any particular moment may build, and in some cases do build upon, the accumulated wisdom and resources of those who went before. The notion of transition as a cumulative international process has some validity therefore, but only provided that this 'cumulative' process is not imbued with some sense of evolutionary necessity. For quite contrary to theories of productive force determinism, there is no necessity that any national 'set of actors' actually take up the stock of available techniques and resources within the exogenous environment. Whether or not this happens is highly problematic, involving a highly complex interrelationship between the exogenous influence of innovations and the receptivity or otherwise of the endogenous unit in question. There are, therefore, two criticisms that may be made of the endogenous 'pioneer', exogenous 'follower' argument. The first, as we have seen, is that the pioneering English capitalist development did not depend on wholly endogenous influences. The second is that the second wave of continental European nations only took up the exogenous influences from already consolidating English capitalism in such cases where endogenous social and political structures were favourable. This was becoming the case in Prussia and France, but was far less so in other parts of southern and central Europe. In other words, successful transition to capitalism now depended on the capacity of continental nations to respond to the exogenous impact of English capitalism by suitable endogenous capacities and skills with those resources and techniques that could be imported from Britain. While it is misleading to suggest a sharp dichotomy between endogenous 'pioneering' and exogenous 'second-wave' patterns of

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transttwn, contrasts between English capitalist emergence and those that followed remain. These seem best handled in the multilinear approach to socio-economic change developed by Gerschenkron (1962) so as to combine endogenous and exogenous levels of analysis. Gerschenkron, in his important discussion of 'economic backwardness in historical perspective', rejects 'the iron necessity of historical processes', and with it 'the great bridges between the past and the future upon which the nineteenth century mind used to travel so safely and so confidently'. He then goes on to formulate an important counter-proposition. This claims that, 'In a number of important historical instances industrialisation processes, when launched at length in a "backward" country, showed considerable differences with more advanced countries, not with regard to the speed of the development', which is seen as greater in the 'backward country', 'but also with regard to the productive and organisational structures of industry which emerged from those processes'. In such cases 'late-comers' may make far more deliberate use of modern technology and largescale industry, while 'advanced' countries become more technologically conservative and fixed in a slower, more organic, process of change. Such contrasts also tend to involve 'institutional instruments for which there is little or no counterpart in an established industrial country' (Gerschenkron, 1962, p. 7). Thus the pursuit of technological change depended in large measure on the use of 'certain institutional arrangements' usually involving the state, and 'specific industrialisation ideologies' (1962, p. 11). These are seen as far more central in 'second-wave' cases than in the more spontaneous and organic pioneering case. The force of this argument has, to some extent, been confirmed in the preceding chapter. For although the centralised nation-state has been seen as developmentally significant in all successful examples of transition to capitalism, including England, the relative importance of the state vis-a-vis other agents of social change, was especially crucial to the development of Prussia and France. The importance of this 'national' and 'political' focus to continental European capitalist development has nonetheless received a powerful challenge in an important recent study by Sidney Pollard (1981). This is important not only for its 'regional'

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and 'apolitical' account of European capitalist development, but also for the further contribution it makes to analysis of the balance of exogenous and endogenous elements in the continental transition elements. Pollard's argument is that the late eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury European 'industrialisation' process cannot be adequately understood in a political framework based on the nation-state as a unit of analysis, for 'in the early phases, when the foundations were being laid for the industrial transformation of society, governments were at best irrelevant and frequently took a negative part, in a development which drew its main driving force from outside the political and governmental sphere'. (p. vii). Industrialisation was rather a matter of technological diffusion through 'regions operating in a European context' (1981, p. vii). This process of diffusion is seen as a kind of 'peaceful conquest' akin to Herbert Spencer's evolutionary theory of the transition from 'militant' to 'industrial society'. Pollard's approach is founded on the dubious premise that 'stable governments existed over a large part of Europe, but industrialisation in only a few small regions of the Continent' (p. viii). Hence, while he admits that governments may provide certain preconditions for industrial development (such as a 'stable legal framework'), there is no necessity in his view that such preconditions lead inexorably to industrial capitalism. In this way, Pollard appears to reject the belief of writers like North and Thomas that the establishment of state-created 'property-rights' conducive to market transaction is a decisive watershed in the making of the modern Western economy. While there is no automatic relationship between political stability and capitalist development, Pollard's regional framework seems inadequate in so far as it excludes the many important ways in which the 'state', as a set of institutions, and the 'nation', as a distinct social and cultural entity, influenced both market development and the 'supply side climate' in which entrepreneurs took decisions and made innovations. While Pollard, with his 'point of entry' set around 1750, tends to accept these as 'givens', this procedure has the disadvantage of neglecting the ways in which variations in the character of a 'state' and 'nation' continued to be of considerable importance to the process of European transition to capitalism after 1750. In this respect the Spencerian

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vision can be argued to be seriously misleading as a characterisation of the framework of economic activity throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the first place, it is clear that markets continued to be organised within political boundaries and subject both directly and indirectly to state influence. In spite of the shift towards free trade in mid nineteenth-century Britain and France, most states at most times during the period between 1700 and 1900 sought to protect various home markets from home competition, while giving support to market development abroad in some cases as part of war policy. This applies especially to the British Empire whose overseas markets were protected well into the nineteenth century by the Navigation Acts, and on a continuing basis by the Royal Navy. Nineteenth-century Prussia, for its part, succeeded in overcoming political problems of home market fragmentation only through centralised state action. German economic unification cannot be explained simply as a result of private business pressure on an unwilling state, since sections of the Prussian bureaucracy were themselves attracted to the potential of unifying arrangements. In addition, the unintended consequences of war and post-war territorial redistribution form an important aspect of the creation of a unified German nation-state and the closer integration of economic activity. Without the acquisition of much of the Rhineland-Westphalia, for largely political reasons, at the close of the Napoleonic Wars, it is difficult to see how the creation of a unified German nation-state and economy could have emerged. The technological expansion of the Ruhr region of German heavy industry developed from the 1840s and 1850s in large measure as a result of the market stimuli and greater degree of political consolidation represented by the creation of Zollverein and the construction of railways. Neither might have emerged if left entirely to the agency of the state bureaucracy, in spite of its interest in scientific and technological innovation. Without this agency, neither would have been possible. Pollard's notion of 'stable' European governments as 'passive' 'givens', seems particularly inapposite in the case of Germany. The quasi-Spencerian interplay of private, economically liberal activities, between regional 'industrial' centres is more plausible in analysing the 'supply side' context of entrepreneurial activity. For

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'knowledge', 'technique' and 'applied science' were increasingly international in organisation, transcending national political boundaries, and to a more limited extent 'national' cultures. The attitude of various 'states' to the prospect of industrialisation and of changes in the organisation of knowledge and education could make some difference to the process of transition to capitalism. States, especially those engaged in military and territorial conflict, had an interest in improvements in the technology of war or war-related products. The Prussian state, for example, in its direct involvement in iron-making for military purposes, was responsible for the importation of pioneering industrial technology, such as the blast-furnace, into Germany (Henderson, 1958). In the second place, and irrespective of military concerns, the state might also take the lead in encouraging technological innovation and technical education for reasons of 'national' advancement. It seems that this again occurred in Prussia and, to a lesser extent, in France during the period in question. It is also arguable that intellectual cultures and movements significant for the transition to capitalism tend to take national forms and hence to influence 'national' patterns of transition. Mention has already been made of the possible impact of England's pioneering and largely 'spontaneous', 'empirical' process of technological change on subsequent cultural attitudes to entrepreneurship and economic activity. The character of intellectual cultures may have a different developmental importance in the case of those who followed Britain's own transition. The evidence from France and Germany seems to indicate that the economic development of those who followed Britain did place more emphasis on consciously planned development strategies, and hence a greater emphasis on aspects of the rationalistic Weberian spirit of modern capitalism in meeting such challenges. And yet it also seems to be the case that the intellectual movements and institutions that fostered this kind of reorientation in attitudes took 'national' rather than 'regional' forms and depended a good deal on the state. This is true not only for the much quoted case of Prussia, but also for France. Here the Saint Simonian vision of a new industrial society dominated by knowledge-based productive classes was not only hostile to the spirit of feudalism but also to individualistic

Endogenous and Exogenous Aspects 217 liberalism. The Saint Simonian entrepreneurs, located in large measure within the finance capital sector (Palmade, 1961), looked to a far more corporatist solution to the problem of France's retarded economic development. Up until the 1830s 'the French banking structure remained fragile, rigid, and insufficiently organised' (1961, p. 109). Around the 1840s Saint Simonian ideas for a partnership between the centralised state and private capital led to the establishment of a range of new credit institutions to mobilise savings and support investment projects. The state, for its part, supported this effort as a means to improve its own access to funds. The credit provision by Saint Simonian bankers, like the Pereire brothers and Lafitte, were responsible for much of the capital channelled into railway building and other investment projects at this time. Saint Simonianism was, of course, only one of a number of influences on the expansion of the credit provision sector, and the 'Saint Simonian' bankers were themselves only one of several sources of capital for railway building. Others included the state and English capital. Saint Simonianism nonetheless 'supplied formulae, enthusiasm, and personalities in a far more influential way than the liberal school which was only capable of delineating an ideal framework for the working of "natural laws"' (1961, p. 110). It was, therefore, one important component of a more planned and directed policy towards transition in nineteenthcentury France. Even if Saint Simon himself did not call for a transition to a specifically capitalist form of society, it is arguable that the quickening in the rate of French capitalist development from the 1850s owed a good deal to banking reforms and railway building in which Saint Simonian bankers were involved. In this way, economic actors in France did not simply take up industrial innovations from overseas through a process of peaceful osmosis between one group of rational economic individuals and another. Rather, the French transition to capitalism depended on the use of more centralised corporate and planned methods of economic development involving state support in order to overcome the weaknesses of a regionally fragmented economy and a large conservative influence within the agrarian sector. Pollard's 'regional' approach is undoubtedly insightful in examining the geographic location and relocation of industrial

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capitalist activity within nineteenth-century Europe under the impact of the pioneering English transition. The liberalistic Spencerian framework within which this case is argued is largely misconceived as an interpretation of the balance between exogenous and endogenous elements in the European transition to capitalism after 1750. For this period, as for that which preceded it, exploration of the emergence of capitalism makes little sense outside a 'national focus', or outside a framework which downplays the role of government. It is the credentials of the nineteenth-century notion of progress through laissez-faire relationships rather than those of the political analysis of economic development that are brought into question by the 'development' experience of continental Europe.

Conclusion The transitiOn to capitalism remains a problem of continuing scholarly fascination. Debates as to the nature of capitalism and the reasons for its historical emergence endure precisely because they address the concern of so many sociologists, historians and others to find an order in the 'past', so as to give meaning for the 'present' and hope for the 'future'. However this may be, the terms in which such ventures as the transition debate are currently being conducted reflect a profound crisis with the evolutionary paradigm inherited from the nineteenth century. In the language of Thomas Kuhn (1962), social change theory has now moved beyond the phase of 'normal science' in which there exists basic agreement as to the utility of the evolutionary paradigm. At the same time, no 'new' paradigm has emerged. While 'crisis' is a much abused term, it is no exaggeration to say that the proliferation of 'conjunctural', 'multilinear', 'neo-evolutionist', 'contingentist', 'diffusionist' and 'narrative' approaches to the study of social change currently available reflects a crisis of uncertainty as to the possibility of reconstructing the study of social change around some new general idiom. Perhaps this state of uncertainty will be resolved with the appearance of a new paradigm at some point in the future. In the meantime, it is not surprising that most recent substantive analyses of transition have chosen to mount 'immanent' rather than 'transcendent' critiques of the available stock of theoretical and conceptual resources. From Rostow to North and Thomas, from Dobb to Anderson, Wallerstein, Poggi and Marshall, the analysis of transition has generally been in terms of modifications to the 'evolutionary' emphases associated with the intellectual traditions of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Max Weber, rather than upon an explicit break with the evolutionary paradigm itself. In this way, 'history' is still assumed to be directional, proceeding as it were according to a single logic. This general verdict applies, in spite of Wallerstein's important break with the endogenous nation-state framework, and of the convergence of many recent analysts on 'political' rather than exclusively 'economic' explanations of capitalist development.

220 Conclusion From within the 'classical' traditions, Weber's explicit criticism of evolutionary philosophies of history has probably exerted the greatest influence on recent work, seeking to transcend the grosser deterministic versions of nineteenth-century evolutionism in the name of developmental history. Even so, the Weberian legacy is, as we have seen, ambivalent. This is partly because of the 'tension' between his neo-Kantian epistemology which rejects any sense of necessity or immanent order in 'history', and the organisation of his substantive work around the culturally relevant problem of 'rationalisation' as the historical fate of humankind. While Weber's methodology entails that this problem be seen as a 'one-sided' Western preoccupation, one of an infinite number of ways in which historical patterns might be perceived, his historical analyses take rationalisation as an authentic cultural 'fact' within Western history. It is this 'evolutionary' stand, rather than the neo-Kantianism, that many observers see as the unifying feature of Weber's work. Part 1 of this study has itself been organised as an immanent critique of three leading perspectives on the transition to capitalism. One of its main 'aims' has been to show the significant extent of 'residual' problems that cannot be explained within the dominant assumptions characteristic of 'Smithian', 'Marxist' and 'Weberian' perspectives. Such residuals include the weakness of conventional economic theory in dealing with power relations at the level of the state that are unamenable to the postulates of rational choice theory, the weakness of Marxism in dealing with the 'political' and 'cultural' components of social action in a way that does not ultimately rely on economic determinism, and the lack of support for Weber's belief that modern capitalism emerged in part as a product of a decisive shift in mentalities. Such criticisms all rebound on the notion of a 'prime mover' behind the transition to capitalism, a causal force expressed within some material embodiment such as 'market development', 'the productive forces', 'class struggle' or 'rationalisation'. They also bring into question the utility of the ontological and teleological assertions which lie beneath most 'prime mover' arguments. While not in any way announcing a novel paradigm for social change theory, Part II of this study has adopted a postevolutionary idiom. This rejects any sense of teleological necessity in history built around a unitary prime mover. Considerable

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emphasis has then been placed on the explanatory advantages of a causally pluralistic and multilinear approach to transition. At the same time, it is important not to lose sight of certain important general features of the transition process which the different national pathways to capitalism shared in common. The foremost of these concerns the context of the European transition process. While Europe was never successfully united as an imperial political unit, it did nonetheless emerge between 900 and 1500 as an increasingly distinct cultural and geo-political entity. The individual nation-states within which capitalism first developed constituted autonomous yet interdependent parts of this European polity. The scale and degree of centralised political authority and territorial control permitted by the nation-state, when combined with certain supranational cultural legacies of the Graeco-Roman, Christian and Germanic worlds, created a potent European context for transition to capitalism. The expansion of the stock of cultural and material resources favourable to capitalist development through the epochs of the Renaissance, Reformation, nation-state consolidation, and agrarian transformation, continued, moreover, on a European basis. For these reasons it is necessary to resist the temptation to replace notions of the transition to capitalism with that of 'some transitions'. While the pattern of each national transition was in many respects unique, reflecting a contingent interplay of endogenous influences, this does not mean that each such process may be seen as entirely separate and self-contained. Having said this, it is also important to avoid smuggling evolutionary assumptions back into some such refurbished notion of transition to capitalism. A capitalist 'future' cannot be regarded as somehow inscribed within the European 'past' in a deterministic fashion. Rather it represented only one possible historical pathway from the medieval to the modern world. Such conclusions have been reached by rejecting an evolutionary framework based upon a single set of ontological and teleological assumptions. Yet they have drawn freely on research guided by such assumptions. Instead of a demand for the excision of all such elements, therefore, the procedure has been to tolerate a proliferation of them. This procedure is not only justified because presuppositionless selection of research problems and empirical data is epistemologically impossible. It is also illuminating because

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the recognition of ontological and teleological assumptions allows more sense to be made of the structure of competing theories of social change, and the extent to which such theories are amenable to empirical testing. Consideration of such questions presents us with a powerful reminder that the underlying purposes of inquiry into the course of social change pertain to problems of cultural concern and political policy. It is these concerns which make the fruits of such an inquiry worth knowing. The embeddedness of historical sociological inquiry in such concerns, however, produces a profound dilemma in social change theory. On the one hand, value-concerns and cultural preoccupations continue to inspire the search for an underlying meaning in history and a predictable account of how the future may connect with the present and the past. Hypotheses, selectively guided by ontological and teleological assumptions, have thereby been presented for empirical scrutiny. In the absence of any procedural rules which guarantee empirical verification on the other hand, this scrutiny can do no more than establish which hypotheses seem more or less plausible than others. As a result no conclusive 'scientific' resolution of the problem of the 'meaning' of history, or of the debate between competing ontologies or teleologies, or of the potential of contemporary society in shaping possible 'futures', is possible. In this sense the cultural and political expectations made of social change theory cannot hope to be 'scientifically' realised. Such conclusions reinforce the poignant irony of Max Weber's own rejection of the claim that scientific analysis could solve problems of the meaning of history, or resolve questions of moral and political choice. For as Weber points out: The fate of an epoch which has eaten the tree of knowledge is that it must know that we cannot learn the meaning of the world from the results of its analysis be it ever so perfect; it must rather be in a position to create this meaning itself. It must recognise that general views of life and the universe can never be the products of increasing empirical knowledge, and that the highest ideals, which move us most forcefully, are always formed only in the struggle with other ideals which are just as sacred to others as ours are to us. (Weber, 1949, p. 57).

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WRIGLEY,

Index Y5-Y. 164-8. 172-87 ab~olutism agrarian capitalism 42-5. 81. 85-6. 81). 11)2-205 ancient Greece IY. 3Y. 42-3. 4&-7. 135. 141) ancient Rome 19. 39. 42. 4&-7. 75.Y2-3. 102. 107. 129. 134-6. 149-57.201) I. 25-6. 74. Ander~on. P. Yl-102. 123. 139. 145. 152. 177. 183.219 Baxter.R. 114.117 Bloch. M. 20-5. 87 Braude!. F. I Brenner. R. 74. 80-9. 99-100. 158. 194 Bucher. K. 22 Buddhism 111-12. 121 Byzantine Empire 154-5 capital II. 15 capitalism and attitudes to time 117 and cities 45-6. 71. 79-84. 93, 13&-7. 161-7. 189-90. 199 concepts of 5-6. 11-18. 65-6. 104-5. 125-27 and individualism 38. 43-6. 53-4. 153-7 and the Industrial Revolution 50-I. 54. 188-9. 19&-7. 2ll~ll

spirit of 17. 103-25. 21&-17 and the state 5&-8. 87.95-9. 136-8.159-87.203-18 and trade 39-42. 72-9. 207 and warfare 56-8. 123. 154. 171-4. 181-7. 20&-7 Catholicism '114-15. 119. 133 China 35. 3Y. 107. 121.133. 155. 204 Christianity 1)3-4. 123. 132-3.

153-7

see also Catholicism. Protestant

ethic thesis cities see capitalism class struggle 71.82-5.90-1 Confucianism 111. 121. 133

demography 54-7.60.83-4.94. 191 Dobb. M. 12. 17. 74. 79-86. 96-101. 157.219 Durkheim. E. 24. 33 Eastern Europe 75. 83-5. 88-9 economic growth. critique of concept of 31-3 England 42-6.49-50. 57-8. 87-9. . 101-2. 118-20. 129. 158. 170-2. 176-80. 188-92.197. 205.209-212 English Civil War 98. 179-80 entrepreneurship 15. 30-1. 46-51. 119-121.215-17 evolutionism 2-4. 23. 40. 70. 145-6.218-22 feudalism concepts of &-7.18-28. 75-6. 92-3. 127-8. 138-9 as an economic concept 22-28 evolutionism and 7 fiefs and 18.24-7. 139 importance to development of capitalism 147-68 seigneurialism and 20 serfdom and 26. 59. 62. 73-4. 82-5.92.95.158 vassalage and 18. 26. 163 food supply 54-6. 94-5. 191. 200-2 France 19-21.49-50,58.87.137. 158. 163. 170-5. 183. 192-7. 215-17

232

Index Franklin. B. 114-15. 117. 126 French Revolution 1. 11. 20--1. 98. 161-2. 169 Germanic society 19. 43. 92. 132. 134. 152-3 Germany 159. 163. 200. 209. 215-6 see also Prussia Hildebrand. B. 22 HilL C. 101-2. 119 Hilton. R. 25-6. 74. 82-6. 93 Hindess. B. and Hirst. P. 4 Hinduism 111-12. 121 Hintze. 0. 25. 182. 187 Holland 89. 158-9. 182-3. 196. 202-5.211 see also United Provinces India 35. 121 Islam 39,111-13.121-3.134. 156.204 Italy 107. 115. 119. 161. 163. 170. 209. 211 Japan 6.27.89.159-60 Judaism 111-12.133 Konrad. G. and Szelenyi. I.

85

landowners 176--203 Lattimore. 0. 27 Lenin. V. 73-4. 200 LeRoy Ladurie. E. 55. 191 Macfarlane. A. 14. 42-5. 152 Maine. H. 11 Malthus. T. 29. 54-6. 94. 169 Marshall. A. 29-30. 37-S. 48 Marx. K. L 21-5. 36. 50. 52. 64-73. 77. IOll-5. 128. 152. 191.219 Marxism 15. 64-102. 115. 141-2. 147-9 Merton. R. 118-19 MilU.S. 29 Montesquieu 20. 43

233

nation-state 7-8. 54. 137-S. 152. 162-4.169-87.206--18 Nisbet. R. 2-3 North. D. and Thomas. R. 32-3. 41.51-63.77-8. 123. 139. 145. 176.219 Parsons. T. 33-4. 38-9. 101. 133. 155-6 peasantry 43-5. 82-3. 192-7 Pirenne. H. 45. 76. 136 Poggi. G. 137. 165-7.219 Polanyi. K. 34. 40--2 Pollard. S. 213-214 Postan. M. 55. 191 property rights economists' discussion of 52-4 feudal 18ft in France 194-7 Marxist discussion of 79-91 peasant 87-90 Protestant ethic thesis 49. 103-25. 137. 141. 182 Prussia 74. 163. 171-2. 181-5. 194. 20()-5. 21 L 215-6 see also Germany Renaissance 19. 93. 117 Ricardo. D. 29. 54-5 Rodbertus. J. 11 Rostovtzeff. M. 39. 41. 135 Rostow. W.W. 32.46--51. 119. 219 Russia 73-4. 153 Saint Simon. H. I L 21-2.216--17 Schmoller. G. 5. 29 Schumpeter. J. 12.30 science 48-9.62-3.93.117.121. 132.207 Scotland 115-16 SimmeL G. 116 Smith. A. I. 6. 21. 29.34-8.48. 52.61.64. 77.212.219 Sombart. W. 12. 29. 105-8. Ill Spain 57-8. 152. 163. 17tl-3. 183 Spencer. II. I L 37-Y. 6Y. 214 Swcczv. P. 74-81. YY

234

Index

change 39. 4X-50. 50-7. 67-H. 72-3. 100. 160. IH9.207.210-17 teleology 2-4. 35. 69-70. 77. HI. 99. 129. 146 Thomp~on. E.P. 4.102.117 Tocnnie>. F. II. 22 tran>ition to capitali>m outside Europe 7. 122-4 Trc\or Roper. H. 115 Troclhch. E. Ill t~:chnological

Turner. B. ISH

103. 122-3. 135. 138.

United Provinces 57. 173 see also Holland Wallerstein. I. l. 7. 74-9. 99, 13H. ISH, 170. 192.207-9 Weber. Max L 3-6. 12. 15. 17. 33-4. 93, 102-42. 146-8. 150, ISH. 191.219-222