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The Pristine Culture of Capitalism: A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States
Capitalism was born in England, yet the dominant Western conceptions of modernity have come from elsewhere, notably from France, the historical model of “bourgeois” society. In this lively and wide-ranging book, Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that what is supposed to have epitomized bourgeois modernity, especially the emergence of a “modern” state and political culture in Continental Europe, signalled the persistence of precapitalist social property relations. Conversely, the absence of a “modern” state and political discourse in England testified to the presence of a well-developed capitalism. The fundamental flaws in the British economy are not just the symptoms of arrested development but the contradictions of the capitalist system itself. Britain today, Wood maintains, is the most thoroughly capitalist culture in Europe.
Weaving together economic and political history with the history of ideas, Wood ranges across a broad spectrum of current debates, from the “Nairn–Anderson theses” to the contribution of J.C.D. Clark and Alan Macfarlane, and over a wide variety of the development of British capitalism and French absolutism; the state, the nation and their symbolic representations; revolution and tradition; the cultural patterns of English speech, urbanism, ruralism and the landscape garden; ideas of sovereignty, democracy, property and progress.
This book will be as interesting and provocative to observers of contemporary capitalism as to historians of early modern Europe or Western political thought.
Weaving together economic and political history with the history of ideas, Wood ranges across a broad spectrum of current debates, from the “Nairn–Anderson theses” to the contribution of J.C.D. Clark and Alan Macfarlane, and over a wide variety of the development of British capitalism and French absolutism; the state, the nation and their symbolic representations; revolution and tradition; the cultural patterns of English speech, urbanism, ruralism and the landscape garden; ideas of sovereignty, democracy, property and progress.
This book will be as interesting and provocative to observers of contemporary capitalism as to historians of early modern Europe or Western political thought.
212 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Ellen Meiksins Wood
37 books222 followersEllen Meiksins Wood FRSC (April 12, 1942 – January 14, 2016) was an American-Canadian Marxist historian and scholar. From 1967 to 1996, she taught political science at Glendon College, York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
With Robert Brenner, Ellen Meiksins Wood articulated the foundations of Political Marxism, a strand of Marxist theory that places history at the centre of its analysis. It provoked a turn away from structuralisms and teleology towards historical specificity as contested process and lived praxis.
Meiksins Wood's many books and articles, were sometimes written in collaboration with her husband, Neal Wood (1922–2003). Her work has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Romanian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Of these, The Retreat from Class received the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize in 1988.
Wood served on the editorial committee of the British journal New Left Review between 1984 and 1993. In 1996, she was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, a marker of distinguished scholarship. From 1997 to 2000, Wood was an editor, along with Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, of Monthly Review, the socialist magazine.
With Robert Brenner, Ellen Meiksins Wood articulated the foundations of Political Marxism, a strand of Marxist theory that places history at the centre of its analysis. It provoked a turn away from structuralisms and teleology towards historical specificity as contested process and lived praxis.
Meiksins Wood's many books and articles, were sometimes written in collaboration with her husband, Neal Wood (1922–2003). Her work has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Romanian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Of these, The Retreat from Class received the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize in 1988.
Wood served on the editorial committee of the British journal New Left Review between 1984 and 1993. In 1996, she was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, a marker of distinguished scholarship. From 1997 to 2000, Wood was an editor, along with Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, of Monthly Review, the socialist magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 16, 2016
Wood explores one of the great paradoxes of European history – the birth of capitalism in England and modernity in mainland Europe – to challenge the idea of the capitalist state as pure and new to argue that it retains large elements of pre-capitalist social relations. This is an analysis that has profound implications for our understanding of contemporary politics and activism.
One of Wood's real strengths is her ability to get beyond the narrow disciplinary conventions of contemporary scholarship and weave together, in this case, history, politics and legal studies to argue that much of what we take to be modernity (ideas of the modern nation state grounded in the bourgeoisie, for instance) is a continuation of pre-modern and pre-capitalist social and economic forms. Challenging and unsettling of much of the taken-for-granted of current scholarship and many of the orthodoxies of the left as well.
One of Wood's real strengths is her ability to get beyond the narrow disciplinary conventions of contemporary scholarship and weave together, in this case, history, politics and legal studies to argue that much of what we take to be modernity (ideas of the modern nation state grounded in the bourgeoisie, for instance) is a continuation of pre-modern and pre-capitalist social and economic forms. Challenging and unsettling of much of the taken-for-granted of current scholarship and many of the orthodoxies of the left as well.
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May 27, 2021I should have read this before Origins of Capitalism...
March 8, 2026
Kapitalizmin beşiği olan İngiltere'de, burjuva kültürünün neden kıta Avrupası'ndaki gibi "akılcı" veya devrimci bir aydınlanma üretmediğini, aksine monarşi ve aristokratik geleneklerle uzlaştığını anlatan eşsiz bir Marksist incelemedir. Wood, İngiliz kapitalizminin toprakta (tarımsal kapitalizm) doğduğu için ekonomik ve siyasi zorun (devletin) birbirinden ayrıldığını, bu yüzden kültürün "arkaik" kaldığını kanıtlar. Burjuvazinin devrimci rolünün sanıldığı kadar "saf" olmadığını, sınıf ittifaklarının kültürü nasıl şekillendirdiğini gösteren dâhice bir tarih okumasıdır. Türkiye kapitalizminin çarpık kültürünü anlamak için de harika bir kıyaslama sunar.
June 12, 2026
Gonna call this the big uno-reverse-card book. It brings you a theoretical argument someone else has made about the history of British capitalism, and simply inverts the argument without adding much new empirical analysis.
She debates the Nairn-Anderson thesis, one of those debates for which I am envious for not being a British historian: the level of theoretical dispute over the characteristics of British capitalism is just unchallenged. The basic insight from this thesis was formative for founding the New Left Review, even more, it was one of the reasons for founding the journal: to bring backward British capitalism and working class movement in touch with the better articulated socialist theories on the continent, that aim to theorise capitalist society as a whole.
Nairn and Anderson tried to explain the slow decline of the British economy. They argued that, because of its early bourgeois revolution and capitalist development, British society offered a smooth transition for pre-capitalist classes. Both aristocratic and merchant classes stayed powerful in the economy. On the superstructure level in particular, they could secure their interests. It is a reason why, although an early capitalist power, British economy and society remained "pre-capitalist" in many ways. The King, the landowners, merchants, small scale industry, were never overthrown and Britain increasingly became "backward" as other countries took steps forward.
Meiksins Wood makes a distinction in two versions of the thesis, one of which she has more sympathy. The first one is that of an early British capitalism comin to fruition, but also stunted by its aristocratic and agrarian origins. It never experienced the clear antagonism between aristocracy and bourgeoisie, and thus never overcame some of its pre-capitalist dimensions. The second one does not see the development of British capitalism as determined by its pre-capitalist influences. Instead, early British capitalism had no barriers for its unbridled expansion, and its contemporary defects are consequences of the lacking barriers for capitalist expansion. More than continental European countries, British capitalism did not need the intervention of other institutions to push forward development (such as the modern state for France, or the interventionist state for Germany), instead having a homegrown capitalism. It has archaic forms, sure, but this is not incompatible with capitalism, indeed sometimes even pushes forward capitalist development (such as the German case shows as well).
Wood makes her point often by comparing England to Absolutist France, as she does with the concept of the Modern state. In France, the main contradiction was that between monarchical centralisation and feudal parcelisation, which it nevery really conquered. Napoleon did so, under the economic and military pressure of England, but just as Germany one century later, this modern state was pushed upon from the top, because of the competitive pressure coming from the already developed English capitalist economy and state. France did project more the modern idea of "The Nation", but precisely because it needed a strong ideology to overcome the inherent tension in its absolutist form. Similarly, the so-called "bourgeois revolution" in France needs to be understand from its Absolutist logic, not a kind of pure struggle between aristocracy and capitalists. The main demands of the revolutionary project was the elimination of privilege and equality of taxation. This was not so much the imposition of new forms of appropriation, but a move to improve the position of the bourgeoisie in relation to the old ones. It mostly consisted of state-makers, such as lawyers and office-holders, not of some kind of industrial bourgeoisie. Yes, the revolution set in motion a train of ideological contestations, but the structural level is as followed: First, an aristocracy carrying forward its battle with the centralising monarchy, second, a reluctant bourgeoisie compelled to protect its position and trying to force its way inside the absolutist state.
In England thus, in contrast, there had been feudal centralisation from the start, in which extraction early on happened through economic rather than extra-economic means. The English state was thus also not influenced by extra-economic extraction mechanisms such as selling tax offices to feudal lords (as a way to integrate in the state). The state was much earlier embedded in the idea of a limited power in relation to "civil society", which allowed for some pre-capitalist symbolisms to live on since they had no great power after all. The English lords, integrated in the unified state, did not need feudal jurisdiction precisely because they had legislative power in Parliament through royal justice. Again, because of this early development, there was no need to develop a clear concept of legislative sovereignity. Similarly, the concept of republicanism was embellished by concepts of constitutionalism, because 'the people' were represented in parliament, they did not need a radical ideology of democracy and revolution. Similarly, working class agitation was more early embedded in a purely economic struggle for higher wages: a political battle over 'equality' was not relevant for them, it was a common idea. Overcoming of small scale industrialisation was also indeed a struggle for the English state, but that was not because of its backward character: it was because the state was more profoundly subordinated to civil society and could not intervene. But this is not "backward" at all, it is in contrast a deeply modern force. Did this also proved dysfunctional for further capitalist development? Sure, but Wood does not see the problem. yes, there were less countervailing forces to check the irrationalities of capitalism, or compensate for its inadequacies, which has fucked over the country in the setting of international competitive capitalisms. But there's no theoretical issue here. Again, in Germany, capitalist growth in the 19th century was pushed forward by an imperial monarchy, bureaucratic absolutism, and a subordinate bourgeoisie. Contradictions, contradictions, contradictions!
This book is a uno reverse card well played.
PS: I loved the end quote: "We have yet to see an economy whose driving mechanism is neither direct coercion by the state nor the compulsions of profit but democratic self-determination, which need no longer subordinate all human values to the wasteful and destructive imperatives of accumulation. That kind of advance in democracy would require a system of social relations as different from capitalism as capitalism was from feudalism. This is what used to be called socialism, and now that the worst deformations of the socialist ideal have receded into the historical past we can look forward to a reneweal of its democratic project." (176)
She debates the Nairn-Anderson thesis, one of those debates for which I am envious for not being a British historian: the level of theoretical dispute over the characteristics of British capitalism is just unchallenged. The basic insight from this thesis was formative for founding the New Left Review, even more, it was one of the reasons for founding the journal: to bring backward British capitalism and working class movement in touch with the better articulated socialist theories on the continent, that aim to theorise capitalist society as a whole.
Nairn and Anderson tried to explain the slow decline of the British economy. They argued that, because of its early bourgeois revolution and capitalist development, British society offered a smooth transition for pre-capitalist classes. Both aristocratic and merchant classes stayed powerful in the economy. On the superstructure level in particular, they could secure their interests. It is a reason why, although an early capitalist power, British economy and society remained "pre-capitalist" in many ways. The King, the landowners, merchants, small scale industry, were never overthrown and Britain increasingly became "backward" as other countries took steps forward.
Meiksins Wood makes a distinction in two versions of the thesis, one of which she has more sympathy. The first one is that of an early British capitalism comin to fruition, but also stunted by its aristocratic and agrarian origins. It never experienced the clear antagonism between aristocracy and bourgeoisie, and thus never overcame some of its pre-capitalist dimensions. The second one does not see the development of British capitalism as determined by its pre-capitalist influences. Instead, early British capitalism had no barriers for its unbridled expansion, and its contemporary defects are consequences of the lacking barriers for capitalist expansion. More than continental European countries, British capitalism did not need the intervention of other institutions to push forward development (such as the modern state for France, or the interventionist state for Germany), instead having a homegrown capitalism. It has archaic forms, sure, but this is not incompatible with capitalism, indeed sometimes even pushes forward capitalist development (such as the German case shows as well).
Wood makes her point often by comparing England to Absolutist France, as she does with the concept of the Modern state. In France, the main contradiction was that between monarchical centralisation and feudal parcelisation, which it nevery really conquered. Napoleon did so, under the economic and military pressure of England, but just as Germany one century later, this modern state was pushed upon from the top, because of the competitive pressure coming from the already developed English capitalist economy and state. France did project more the modern idea of "The Nation", but precisely because it needed a strong ideology to overcome the inherent tension in its absolutist form. Similarly, the so-called "bourgeois revolution" in France needs to be understand from its Absolutist logic, not a kind of pure struggle between aristocracy and capitalists. The main demands of the revolutionary project was the elimination of privilege and equality of taxation. This was not so much the imposition of new forms of appropriation, but a move to improve the position of the bourgeoisie in relation to the old ones. It mostly consisted of state-makers, such as lawyers and office-holders, not of some kind of industrial bourgeoisie. Yes, the revolution set in motion a train of ideological contestations, but the structural level is as followed: First, an aristocracy carrying forward its battle with the centralising monarchy, second, a reluctant bourgeoisie compelled to protect its position and trying to force its way inside the absolutist state.
In England thus, in contrast, there had been feudal centralisation from the start, in which extraction early on happened through economic rather than extra-economic means. The English state was thus also not influenced by extra-economic extraction mechanisms such as selling tax offices to feudal lords (as a way to integrate in the state). The state was much earlier embedded in the idea of a limited power in relation to "civil society", which allowed for some pre-capitalist symbolisms to live on since they had no great power after all. The English lords, integrated in the unified state, did not need feudal jurisdiction precisely because they had legislative power in Parliament through royal justice. Again, because of this early development, there was no need to develop a clear concept of legislative sovereignity. Similarly, the concept of republicanism was embellished by concepts of constitutionalism, because 'the people' were represented in parliament, they did not need a radical ideology of democracy and revolution. Similarly, working class agitation was more early embedded in a purely economic struggle for higher wages: a political battle over 'equality' was not relevant for them, it was a common idea. Overcoming of small scale industrialisation was also indeed a struggle for the English state, but that was not because of its backward character: it was because the state was more profoundly subordinated to civil society and could not intervene. But this is not "backward" at all, it is in contrast a deeply modern force. Did this also proved dysfunctional for further capitalist development? Sure, but Wood does not see the problem. yes, there were less countervailing forces to check the irrationalities of capitalism, or compensate for its inadequacies, which has fucked over the country in the setting of international competitive capitalisms. But there's no theoretical issue here. Again, in Germany, capitalist growth in the 19th century was pushed forward by an imperial monarchy, bureaucratic absolutism, and a subordinate bourgeoisie. Contradictions, contradictions, contradictions!
This book is a uno reverse card well played.
PS: I loved the end quote: "We have yet to see an economy whose driving mechanism is neither direct coercion by the state nor the compulsions of profit but democratic self-determination, which need no longer subordinate all human values to the wasteful and destructive imperatives of accumulation. That kind of advance in democracy would require a system of social relations as different from capitalism as capitalism was from feudalism. This is what used to be called socialism, and now that the worst deformations of the socialist ideal have receded into the historical past we can look forward to a reneweal of its democratic project." (176)
August 9, 2020
"The inherent logic of capitalism is not, of course, an impulse to produce but a drive to produce capital, which need not take the form of material commodities; and even when it does take this material form, the impulse to improve the forces of production is determined not by a compulsion to produce efficiently, nor to alleviate toil, nor to create general prosperity, but simply, as Marx so sharply put it, to increase the ratio of unpaid labour to paid."
July 1, 2026
Ellen Meiksins Wood continues to show me what Marxist historiography should look like. In this book (she calls it an essay), she sets out to clarify the distinction between the concepts "bourgeois" and "capitalist", a distinction that has largely been flatted by mainstream historians who have incorporated both concepts under the umbrella term of "modernity". She calls this mainstream historical view the "bourgeois paradigm" and spends a good chunk of the book responding to both Marxist historians (Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson) and neo-conservative "revisionist" historians (J.C.D. Clark and Alan Macfarlane) whose interpretations of British history have all, in one way or another, understated or flat out ignored the capitalist transformation that occurred in England between the 15th and 17th centuries, the period roughly during which agrarian capitalism originated.
Her main argument is that English and French (sometimes Continental history in general) history saw very different changes in class relations in their respective histories. For Wood, England is where capitalism originated, specifically in an agrarian form, and England saw a transition from feudalism to capitalism without the interlude of absolutism, which predominated in France, Germany, etc. In England, corporate principles were weak and a strong centralized unitary state shared in common between the Crown and the aristocracy (acting through Parliament) emerged early on. The growing concentration of property ownership among capitalist landholders whose land was worked on by tenant farmers and propertyless wage-laborers coincided with the development of this state which served a (relatively) unified capitalist aristocracy, which subordinated the state to its interests in a way that never occurred in Continental absolutist countries. It was only because the English aristocracy could directly exploit farmers and laborers economically that their political unity as a class was possible. In France, on the other hand, corporate interests constantly competed with each other for the means of exploiting the peasantry which was located in the state itself via privileges to extract rent from them. Wood emphasizes that in France, the state was a form of property ("politically constituted property") that served as the means for the aristocracy to exploit the peasantry. Under absolutism, politically constituted property remained, but the state's centralizing project incorporated these formerly feudal corporate interests into a centralized absolutist state, now extracting taxes from the peasantry instead of rent. Unlike in England, civil society (or specifically, the aristocratic section of it) was too divided and did not experience the material economic transformation necessary to subordinate the state to its interests.
The "bourgeoisie" which are so often conflated with capitalists were the office holders of absolutism who wanted to open up access to the corporate privileges that guided the state. They had nothing to do with capitalism, since capitalism did not yet exist in France. It only existed in England, which lacked a "bourgeois" culture in the French Revolutionary sense of the term.
Wood's purpose in disentangling these terms and illustrating the unique development of capitalism in England, which was a transformation of property relations rather than a simple replacement of one ruling class with another, is to show that capitalism is not the transhistorical economic system or "natural order of things" that the bourgeois paradigm or neo-conservative economic historians (or even some Marxist historians) claim it is, but rather a system emerging from specific historical circumstances. Her final chapter on the ambiguity of the relationship between democracy and capitalism is also very illuminating, showing that capitalism does not require bourgeois democracy to exist, but that bourgeois democracy requires capitalism to exist because the development of capitalism eliminated the "politically constituted property" that kept political participation out of the hands of the many. Nevertheless, capitalism's displacement of class relations from the political to the economic sphere has limited the democratic effects of political equality, since the sphere governing class relations remains largely undemocratic.
Her main argument is that English and French (sometimes Continental history in general) history saw very different changes in class relations in their respective histories. For Wood, England is where capitalism originated, specifically in an agrarian form, and England saw a transition from feudalism to capitalism without the interlude of absolutism, which predominated in France, Germany, etc. In England, corporate principles were weak and a strong centralized unitary state shared in common between the Crown and the aristocracy (acting through Parliament) emerged early on. The growing concentration of property ownership among capitalist landholders whose land was worked on by tenant farmers and propertyless wage-laborers coincided with the development of this state which served a (relatively) unified capitalist aristocracy, which subordinated the state to its interests in a way that never occurred in Continental absolutist countries. It was only because the English aristocracy could directly exploit farmers and laborers economically that their political unity as a class was possible. In France, on the other hand, corporate interests constantly competed with each other for the means of exploiting the peasantry which was located in the state itself via privileges to extract rent from them. Wood emphasizes that in France, the state was a form of property ("politically constituted property") that served as the means for the aristocracy to exploit the peasantry. Under absolutism, politically constituted property remained, but the state's centralizing project incorporated these formerly feudal corporate interests into a centralized absolutist state, now extracting taxes from the peasantry instead of rent. Unlike in England, civil society (or specifically, the aristocratic section of it) was too divided and did not experience the material economic transformation necessary to subordinate the state to its interests.
The "bourgeoisie" which are so often conflated with capitalists were the office holders of absolutism who wanted to open up access to the corporate privileges that guided the state. They had nothing to do with capitalism, since capitalism did not yet exist in France. It only existed in England, which lacked a "bourgeois" culture in the French Revolutionary sense of the term.
Wood's purpose in disentangling these terms and illustrating the unique development of capitalism in England, which was a transformation of property relations rather than a simple replacement of one ruling class with another, is to show that capitalism is not the transhistorical economic system or "natural order of things" that the bourgeois paradigm or neo-conservative economic historians (or even some Marxist historians) claim it is, but rather a system emerging from specific historical circumstances. Her final chapter on the ambiguity of the relationship between democracy and capitalism is also very illuminating, showing that capitalism does not require bourgeois democracy to exist, but that bourgeois democracy requires capitalism to exist because the development of capitalism eliminated the "politically constituted property" that kept political participation out of the hands of the many. Nevertheless, capitalism's displacement of class relations from the political to the economic sphere has limited the democratic effects of political equality, since the sphere governing class relations remains largely undemocratic.
September 25, 2022
In this book, Wood launches an assault on what she calls "bourgeois paradigm Marxism" -- the popular understanding of capitalism which essentially confuses it with a long list of categories and antinomies that in fact have little or nothing to do with capitalism as such, logically or historically.
Despite the popular imagining of the French Revolution as a capitalist revolution, this was simply not the case. It may have been a bourgeois revolution, though even this is too simple, but bourgeois is not synonymous with capitalist. As Wood repeatedly points out, not only in this book but in all of her other work, capitalism originated as a rural phenomenon in the English countryside, with capitalist tenant farmers, propertyless agricultural wage laborers, and rentier landlords. England never had a "bourgeois revolution" of the sort seen in France that is usually assumed to be the condition of capitalist development, yet England was the first, and according to Wood most thoroughly, capitalist society. Capitalism coexisted smoothly with cultures and institutions typically thought to be "premodern" or associated with the ancient regime, whereas quintessentially "modern states and cultures stemming from the French Enlightenment, for example, developed in a non-capitalist context.
In sum, capitalism, logically speaking, has nothing to do with the bourgeoisie, industry, commerce, markets, urbanism or democracy. Yet for a multitude of historiographical reasons, the public, and many or most scholars, confuse capitalism with these trips of modernity, placing it on one side of a series of antinomies: bourgeoisie vs aristocracy, urban vs rural, industry vs agriculture, reason vs superstition, democracy vs monarchy, etc. In this view, all good things go together, and they comprise modernity's grand march of progress, as set against the backward tug of premodern tendencies. To be sure, Marx himself is partially guilty of this, but there is another Marx that more cautiously disentangles the logic of capitalism from its common associations. The result of all this mystification is to portray capitalism as an unambiguously progressive force, attributing all of its failures to premodern remnants and therefore the incompletenesss of its development, rather than to its inherent contradictions. As Wood puts it:
“Some kinds of Marxist arguments intersect with the bourgeois paradigm, sharing with it a model of capitalism as unambiguously progressive, a model in which the bourgeoisie is by nature capitalist and forward-looking, capital is in its essence productive and industrial, and the ‘bourgeois’ state is ‘rational’ and tendentially liberal, even democratic. Where some might see the inherent contradictions of capitalism, this model sees its imperfect development. The weaknesses of British capitalism are then attributed to its imperfect suppression of pre-capitalist remnants; the strengths of other capitalisms are ascribed to the more perfect completion of their bourgeois revolutions; the working class is castigated for failing to advance the historic mission of capitalist productivity and progress; progressive forces, including and above all socialists, are charged with the task of completing the bourgeois revolution; and so on.”
Despite the popular imagining of the French Revolution as a capitalist revolution, this was simply not the case. It may have been a bourgeois revolution, though even this is too simple, but bourgeois is not synonymous with capitalist. As Wood repeatedly points out, not only in this book but in all of her other work, capitalism originated as a rural phenomenon in the English countryside, with capitalist tenant farmers, propertyless agricultural wage laborers, and rentier landlords. England never had a "bourgeois revolution" of the sort seen in France that is usually assumed to be the condition of capitalist development, yet England was the first, and according to Wood most thoroughly, capitalist society. Capitalism coexisted smoothly with cultures and institutions typically thought to be "premodern" or associated with the ancient regime, whereas quintessentially "modern states and cultures stemming from the French Enlightenment, for example, developed in a non-capitalist context.
In sum, capitalism, logically speaking, has nothing to do with the bourgeoisie, industry, commerce, markets, urbanism or democracy. Yet for a multitude of historiographical reasons, the public, and many or most scholars, confuse capitalism with these trips of modernity, placing it on one side of a series of antinomies: bourgeoisie vs aristocracy, urban vs rural, industry vs agriculture, reason vs superstition, democracy vs monarchy, etc. In this view, all good things go together, and they comprise modernity's grand march of progress, as set against the backward tug of premodern tendencies. To be sure, Marx himself is partially guilty of this, but there is another Marx that more cautiously disentangles the logic of capitalism from its common associations. The result of all this mystification is to portray capitalism as an unambiguously progressive force, attributing all of its failures to premodern remnants and therefore the incompletenesss of its development, rather than to its inherent contradictions. As Wood puts it:
“Some kinds of Marxist arguments intersect with the bourgeois paradigm, sharing with it a model of capitalism as unambiguously progressive, a model in which the bourgeoisie is by nature capitalist and forward-looking, capital is in its essence productive and industrial, and the ‘bourgeois’ state is ‘rational’ and tendentially liberal, even democratic. Where some might see the inherent contradictions of capitalism, this model sees its imperfect development. The weaknesses of British capitalism are then attributed to its imperfect suppression of pre-capitalist remnants; the strengths of other capitalisms are ascribed to the more perfect completion of their bourgeois revolutions; the working class is castigated for failing to advance the historic mission of capitalist productivity and progress; progressive forces, including and above all socialists, are charged with the task of completing the bourgeois revolution; and so on.”
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September 3, 2021Wood, New Left Review'a yazdığı bir makalesinde, kapitalizm ve ulus devletler arasındaki ilişkiyi gözler önüne sererken kapitalizmin doğuşuna odaklanmak gerektiğine dair analitik bir seyir sunuyor bizlere: "To understand the current relations between capitalism and the nation-state, we need to know something about their earlier connections. The emergence of capitalism was closely tied to the rise of the nation-state, and that close link shaped the development and expansion of capitalism thereafter. So I’ll begin by taking readers on a short historical excursion, before considering where we are today."
https://monthlyreview.org/1999/07/01/...
https://monthlyreview.org/1999/07/01/...
July 5, 2026
Specifically liked how the chapters on the different models of the continuity of either the ancient regime or capitalism shows the siloing of the general debate on capitalism at the beginning of Post-Cold War neoliberalism that was certainly dominant when I came of age. Also, the conclusion about capitals the ambiguity of capitalism is excellent and feels very fresh for being over thirty-five years old.
September 30, 2022
in questo saggio emw si interroga sul ruolo che lo "stato" ha avuto nella transizione dal feudalesimo al capitalismo concentrandosi sui due casi opposti di francia e gb.
sicuramente molto più da addetti ai lavori rispetto a retreat from class si lascia comunque leggere.
sicuramente molto più da addetti ai lavori rispetto a retreat from class si lascia comunque leggere.
May 17, 2025
Meiksins Wood stands the Nairn-Anderson theses on their head - the results may surprise you!
October 29, 2024
England: the world's most capitalist society. Or, why Nairn-Anderson got it back to front.
September 13, 2022
Çoğunlukla marksizm içi bir tartışma gibi görünse de çok güçlü bir kitap bu. Bu tartışma hali zaman zaman okuyucuyu sıksa da yazarın düşüncelerini başkalarının iddialarıyla karşılaştırarak aktarması belki daha yararlı olmuş. İki bakımdan çok etkileyici buldum kitabı; birincisi İngiltere'de kapitalizmin ortaya çıkışının kıta Avrupası ile karşılaştırmalı olarak ele alınması tartışmayı çok daha akılda kalıcı yapıyor. İkincisi, 1991 gibi geç bir tarihte bile kapitalizmin ortaya çıkış dinamiklerinin ve ülkeler arası farklılıkların çoğunluk tarafından kabul gören bir sonuca bağlanamamış olduğunu görmek, genel olarak sosyal bilimlerde (ve aslında kontrollü deneylerin mümkün olmadığı tüm alanlarda) varılan yargılara (argümanlar ne kadar ikna edici şekilde ifade edilmiş olursa olsun) her zaman temkinli yaklaşmak gerektiğini bir kez daha hatırlatıyor.
Pek çok kitapta olduğu gibi bu kitap da çeviri kurbanı olmuş. Sayın Oya Köymen, virgül kullanımı konusunda biraz enflasyon olmamış mı acaba?
Pek çok kitapta olduğu gibi bu kitap da çeviri kurbanı olmuş. Sayın Oya Köymen, virgül kullanımı konusunda biraz enflasyon olmamış mı acaba?
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September 5, 2017A brilliant book.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews