`Capstones and Organisms: Political Forms and the Triumph of Capitalism': A Critical Comment

Abstract

One of the most important debates during the development of sociology has concerned the question: what were the conditions that promoted the endogenous creation of a broadly capitalist dynamic in the Occident? John Hall presents an original and brilliant analysis, the main thrust of which we agree with (Hall 1985). However, one important element of his analysis, namely the political impact of religion, and specifically the role of the Papacy, is, we contend, faulty, and this fact raises empirical and theoretical issues of significance. Hall draws on Max Weber's sociology, specifically the supposedly stultifying impact of bureaucratic empires on the progress of capitalist economic relations, and Adam Smith's view that there was an elective affinity between liberty and commerce, to provide an answer to the problem of the rise of the modern West. In doing so he rejects the tendencies within Marxist theory to treat the state abstractly, and to reduce political power factors to economic conditions (notwithstanding the recent vogue of gestures towards the 'autonomy of the political') and secondly to produce teleological arguments concerning the supposedly progressive results of class conflict in respect of the genesis of capitalism from feudalism. He also convincingly demonstrates that any appeal to the peculiarity of Western culture, i.e. the 'protestant ethic thesis' and the like, does not provide a satisfactory answer to the problem. In relation to the last two points, Hall shows that the consequence of Chinese feudalism was not a progressive movement to a 'higher mode of productive relationships', namely capitalist ones, but the 'common ruin of both classes' (Marx/Hall 1985) and the formation of a bureaucratic empire. Meanwhile, cultural explanations for the rise of the West fail to account satisfactorily for the brief flourishing of capitalism in the turbulent Sung period, when the principle and reality of empire was weak. This leads Hall to focus on the impact of political forms on the evolution of economic relations, and especially on the triumph of capitalism in the West, rather than in China. The impact of political forms is not discussed via an abstract and ahistorical view of the state, but in terms of a distinction between 'capstone' and 'organic' government. The basis of this distinction, which is similar to that argued by Mann ( 1 977), is in terms of two axes: the degree to which a government administratively penetrates a society, and the degree to which government power is used arbitrarily or consensually. These distinctions generate four political forms, but Hall is particularly concerned with the contrast between capstone government, 'strong in arbitrary power but weak in its ability to penetrate society... and a more organic state ... deprived of arbitrary power, but far more capable of serving and controlling social relations within its territory' (Hall 1985 p. 1 74). The consequence of capstone government in the context of Imperial China was