Property and Progress: The Historical Origins and Social Foundations of Self Sustaining Growth

by Robert Brenner

In writing these celebrated essays Robert Brenner had an electric impact on the debate regarding the transition from feudalism to capitalism. His epochal 1976 essay in "Past and Present" launched what became known as the "Brenner debate." His 2007 lecture at the British Academy was an elegant synthesis of his views and has generated a new discussion. The magnitude of Brenner's contribution to the world of ideas cannot be underestimated. This series of brilliant essays represent what is probably the most powerful single contribution from a materialist viewpoint to historical thought of the past half century. "Property and Progress" brings these texts together in a single volume for the first time. Intellectually audacious and academically rigorous, they vary in range, offering novel perspectives on the nature of pre-capitalist and capitalist societies, socio-economic evolution in the medieval and early modern period through to the industrial revolution and a provocative comparison between England and the Yangtze Delta in China.

Genres: History, Economics

400 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Robert P. Brenner is a Professor of History and Director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA, editor of the socialist journal Against the Current, and editorial committee member of New Left Review.

He is also Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at the New School University and author of many books and papers on the early development of capitalism and the current economic crisis. His research interests are Early Modern European History; economic, social and religious history; agrarian history; social theory/Marxism; and Tudor–Stuart England.