Genesis Of Capitalism Research Articles

A Racial Theory of Labour: Racial Capitalism from Colonial Slavery to Postcolonial Migration

Abstract A reconsideration of the crucial historical role of slavery in the consolidation of the global regime of capital accumulation provides a vital source of Marxian critique for our postcolonial present. The Atlantic slave trade literally transformed African men and women into human commodities. The reduction of human beings into human commodities, or ‘human capital’ – indeed, into labour and nothing but labour – which was the very essence of modern slavery, served as a necessary prerequisite for the consolidation and perfecting of what Marx called ‘labour in the abstract’, and requires us to re-situate enslaved labour as the defining and constitutive limit for how we comprehend labour as such under capitalism. The production of labour in the abstract, or labour ‘in general’, depended nonetheless upon concrete productions of sociopolitical difference, particularly the branding of race. The term ‘Black’, which was devised to literally and figuratively brand the flesh of enslaved people, was also contrived to signify their particular sociopolitical condition of brutal degradation as the ultimate limit for the subjugation of labour. Blackness names that limit. Thus, Blackness is in fact necessary for apprehending labour as such under capitalism. Marx’s scathing critique of wage labour is always haunted by the long shadow of slavery as its limit figure. If we comprehend labour to be the antithesis of capital, then to the extent that Blackness names the ultimate condition of labour’s subordination and subjection to capital, we need to recognise the tendency for all labour under capital to be pressed toward a sociopolitical condition of Blackness (or approximating Blackness), where Blackness does not name any kind of essential identity but the racialised sociopolitical condition of that subordination/subjection. Consequently, the labour theory of value – which has always been in fact, more accurately, a value theory of labour – must be complemented with what we might posit to be a racial theory of labour. Such an ostensibly historical perspective on the foundational role of slavery in the genesis of capitalism is no mere scholastic exercise in the historiography of ‘primitive accumulation’, however, but rather must be re-purposed toward the ends of elaborating what has remained an as-yet underdeveloped Marxian theory of migrant labour. Extrapolating key insights from Marx’s corpus for the formulation of a racial theory of labour, this essay is ultimately concerned with the ways that slavery supplies capitalism with a defining horizon for all labour, and thus how this insight might instructively serve to comprehend the racialised subordination of migrant labour within our global/postcolonial sociopolitical order.

The First Anti-Criticism on the “Spirit of Capitalism”

A polemical article by the classic of sociology Max Weber in the genre of “anti-criticism” contains his response to a series of critical publications by the principal German historian Felix Rachfahl. As a specialist in the history of the Dutch Revolution in the second half of the 16th century, Rachfahl wrote five articles under the general title “Calvinism and Protestantism” that he sought to rebut Weber’s views on the genesis of capitalism from the spirit of the Puritan work ethic. In a rather harsh retort, Weber in turn tries to show the reader the entire inconsistency of Rachfal’s criticism. On the whole, he assesses the discussion as unfair on the part of his opponent and, therefore, as insufficient from the point of view of the subject itself — the cultural significance of the Protestant economic ethics for the emergence of the capitalist economy of the modern type. He accuses Rachfal of deliberately distorting both Weber’s own argument and the views of his friend and colleague, the eminent theologian and church historian E. Troelch. In attempting to defend his arguments advanced in the articles in the series “Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism”, Weber rhetorically chooses an extremely aggressive tone, while allowing a number of insulting epithets to the recognized expert in his field. His general strategy in the polemic is aimed at discrediting the criticizing historian himself as a typical representative of a related academic discipline, clearly exceeding the limits of his competence. At the same time, Weber assigns the role of objective arbiter in this dispute to his reader, urging him to perceive the arguments put forward impartially. Weber concludes by claiming that Rachfal’s lengthy critique is so off-target that he need not change a single word in his writings.

Seeking the “Spirit of Capitalism”: The German Historical School and the Controversies about the Origins of Capitalism

ABSTRACT The question of the origins or genesis of capitalism preoccupied the writers of the so-called German Historical School and led to fierce disputes between them in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Its “background” was Marx's theory of capitalism and its genesis in Capital, against which the authors under consideration attempted to formulate an alternative historical analysis and theory. The leading figure of the school at the time, Werner Sombart, introduced the notion of the “spirit of capitalism” as an independent, decisive factor in the birth of the capitalist system, which pre-existed capitalism. The birth of capitalism took place, according to Sombart, when the activities of certain economic subjects who owned large amounts of money merged with the activities of other economic subjects already possessing a certain economic spirit, which proved to be pertinent to capitalism. The idea of a pre-existing “spirit” which enabled the genesis of capitalism was later adopted by Max Weber who radically modified Sombart's reasoning in a direction compatible with Nassau William Senior's theory of abstinence. Despite its poor documentation of historical facts and social theory, Weber's approach still fascinates certain social scientists, probably because it is being perceived as constituting an “anti-Marxist Manifesto.”

Max Weber. Stationen und Impulse einer intellektuellen Biographie by Gangolf Hübinger (review)

Book Reviews 269© Max Weber Studies 2021. Gangolf Hübinger, Max Weber. Stationen und Impulse einer intellektuellen Biographie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), xi + 419 pp. (hbk). ISBN 9783 -16-155724-8. €64.00. Can interpretive sociology interpret itself? In other words: if we apply Weber’s sociological concepts to Weber’s works, what do we get then? Weberforschung never gave a satisfactory answer to that question. The epistemic horizon of a hypothetical Weberian meta-sociology could never be limited to the specific case of its founding father. Succumbing to the idiographic ‘temptation’ would mean, here, to contradict itself. In any case, this paradox seems to have at least one exception. The historical sociology of intellectuals is perhaps the only branch of interpretive sociology in which Weber, so to speak, can become an object of himself. Although the German master did not elaborate a sociology of intellectuals stricto sensu, we find in his work the foundations of a sub-discipline whose importance has only grown in recent decades, and in which Gramsci, Schumpeter, Schelsky, and Bourdieu, to name a few, repeatedly looked to Weber for inspiration. Gangolf Hübinger places his new book on the path opened by this ‘exception’. Despite its title, what the reader has before his eyes is not a biography, but rather a detailed historical-sociological reconstruction. As a member of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe editorial board and one of the leading interpreters of Weber’s works, Hübinger grounds his approach on Reinhart Koselleck’s classic study on the relationship between great methodological innovations and the experience of pivotal historical transformations.1 It is a matter of re-reading Weber in a perspective that goes far beyond a traditional contextualization in the political and academic spheres. From a systemic and macrohistorical perspective, Weber’s space of experience coincides with what Hübinger considers to be the advent of a new cultural threshold (Kulturschwelle) that has its epicenter in Western Europe at the beginning of the last century (2). A moment in European history characterized by the affirmation of modern capitalism and democracy, by the so-called crisis of historicism, and by the experience of a civilization increasingly exposed to the urban environment, pluralism of worldviews, and conflicts of interests.2 It may be said that a necessary complement to the historical sociology of intellectuals, as Hübinger understands and practices it, is that same cultural history that Weber claimed for himself when The Protestant Ethic 1. Reinhart Koselleck, Zeitschichten. Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 27-77. 2. Gangolf Hübinger, ‘Max Weber e a história cultural da modernidade’, Tempo Social 24.1 (2012): 119-36 (121-22). 270 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2021. was published. A great connoisseur of the nineteenth-century liberal Protestant milieu that he studied in his Habilitationsschrift, Hübinger situates Weber in dialogue with the literary field of his time (from the brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann to Robert Musil), with the history of the German publishing houses and large editorial projects, and with the flourishing universe of academic journals. The first part of the book is entitled ‘Bourgeois Conduct of Life and Scientific Orientation’. Hübinger revisits the early stages of Weber’s family and academic socialization as a member of the ‘literate bourgeoisie’ in Germany. His rapid academic ascent was interrupted, as we all know, by the continuous nervous crises that led him to withdraw from teaching in 1903. From that moment on, he became a Privatgelehrter, an ‘private scholar’. For Hübinger, it is precisely this condition that allowed Weber to move freely through fields as far apart from each other as the methodology of the human sciences, German agrarian structure, the genesis of capitalism’s spirit and the liberal revolution in Russia. Yet Weber was not a ‘pure’ type of Privatgelehrter (54). Maintaining an honorary professorship in Heidelberg, he was able to influence the choice of new professors. Most importantly, he participated as coeditor of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, where he published some of his most important works, and directed the new edition of the Grundriss der Sozialökonomik. His transition from a historical political economy to...

Sombart in the Turkish Mirror: A Case of Sabri F. Ülgener

In this article the effect of Sombart in Turkish thought will be discussed in two periods; the late Ottoman and the early republican era in the context of Germans and Germany and then specified in the Sabri F. Ülgener case with his research in economic mentality. It will be proposed that Sombart’s effect was limited within the scope of his political writing until Ülgener and his idea on the genesis of capitalism and methodology which was originated from spiritual sciences, are firstly considered with Ülgener.

Methodological discussions of Soviet and Polish historians in the second half of 1950s on problems of history of Russia and Poland in the first half of 19th century: An Episode from the history of the Institute of Slavic studies of Russian Academy of Sciences

The paper focuses on discussions of Soviet and Polish historians on problems of history of Poland and Russia in the Late modern period. It was exemplified in the debate that took place in the Institute of Slavic Studies in April, 1957 over the second volume of the “History of Poland”, that had been prepared by Polish historians. The discussion reflected some fundamental problems: the crisis of the feudal serfdom system, the genesis of capitalism, the Polish nation-building process, the history of Polish liberation movement and Polish culture in the end of the 18th — the first half of the 19th centuries. The whole discussion was very productive both for Russian and Polish historical science, as it contributed to the elaboration of new methods and theories of studies of history.

From Weberian Bureaucracy to Networking Bureaucracy

Max Weber viewed organizational bureaucracy as one of the inevitable premises for genesis of capitalism, and his concept of bureaucracy has been the authoritative instrument in the analysis of organizations for many years. The Fordist Modern social organization cannot be imagined without bureaucratic organization. Up to recent times, bureau-cratic organization, existing as a general pattern of organizing social life, seemed to prove to be the ultimate efficiency as a means of organizing governmental bodies as well as big corporations. Today, Weberian bureaucracy as theory and practice come under criticism as rigid, obsolete, and ineffective. Under the conditions of late capitalism, modern or-ganization is claimed to be more flexible and more adaptive to changes. It is my belief that the phenomenon of bureau-cracy cannot be analyzed in isolation from other theories of social order. With its strict rules and regulations, Weberian bureaucracy is the embodiment of Foucauldian disciplinary power at the organizational level. Foucault’s diagrams expressing power through systematic relations between humans, objects, and spaces could be the perfect study of bu-reaucracy. Bureaucracy changes with the transition from disciplinary power relations to postmodern power relations. The traditional disciplinary instruments (rules, codes, and regulations) give space for more flexible and even (at first sight) democratic inter-organizational relations. However, this supposed freed without freedom has its priceк. Deregu-lation paradoxically leads to even more regulation, which now appears as self-control and self-surveillance. Being microscopic (mostly due to novel technological opportunities) and de-regulative at the same time, this new networking bureaucracy restructures power relations in organizations in a way that produces behavior leading to atomization and individualization without a freedom.

Karl Marx y la transición del feudalismo al capitalismo

The purpose of this article is to revise Karl Marx’s model for the formation of capitalism in light of new research. In Das Kapital, Marx focused his study in England through parliamentary documents. The present article examines not only the English situation, but also that of other areas, especially Castile, through village documents. It demonstrates that the new relations of production developed within the functioning process of feudalism. Therefore, there was only one contradictory logic for the reproduction of feudalism and the genesis of capitalism. This leads to the reconsideration of the role of class struggle in the transition.

Karl Marx and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this article is to revise Karl Marx’s model for the formation of capitalism in light of new research. In Das Kapital, Marx focused his study in England through parliamentary documents. The present article examines not only the English situation, but also that of other areas, especially Castile, through village documents. It demonstrates that the new relations of production developed within the functioning process of feudalism. Therefore, there was only one contradictory logic for the reproduction of feudalism and the genesis of capitalism. This leads to the reconsideration of the role of class struggle in the transition.

The Global “Bookkeeping” of Souls: Quantification and Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Missions

This article combines perspectives of the sociology of quantification and field theory in analyzing the emergence of a field of global evangelical missions. Drawing analogies to Werner Sombart's thesis on the relationship of double-entry bookkeeping and the genesis of capitalism, it shows how the introduction of statistical methods and accounting techniques into the realm of missions in the nineteenth century constructed a visibility of a global distribution of religious adherents that spurred, oriented, and perpetuated an interorganizational sphere geared toward the conversion of the world to Christianity. The article identifies the soteriological and eschatological prerequisites that led to the coalescence of demographic notions and missionary perspectives and draws attention to the extensive reporting system of missionary societies that further consolidated logics of “bookkeeping” in missions. It argues that this ongoing evangelical missionary enterprise is an instance of a more general mechanism of quantification spawning a social field dedicated to the maintenance or alteration of particular “quantities.”

Дискуссия историков (в 1950–1970-ые годы) о роли абсолютизма в процессе развития европейского общества

This article analyzes the debate about the nature of absolutism and the genesis of capitalism that took place at numerous symposiums and conferences during the 1950s and 1960s and on the pages of many specialist journals. The author believes that it is time to return to many of those unresolved issues with new perspectives.

Three Critics of Weber's Thesis of the Uniqueness of the West: Jack Goody, Kenneth Pomeranz, and S.N. Eisenstadt. Strengths and Weaknesses

The paper offers a new discussion of Max Weber's theory on modernity. It is based mainly on the Weber's Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion. The main thesis of the author is: (a) it is not possible to support the Calvinist thesis and its role in the genesis of capitalism; (b) the methodology of different rationalizations proposed and utilised by Max Weber in his essays on the sociology of religions is valid and offers a very good example of comparative sociology. In the first part of the paper the author briefly presents the Weberian analysis of the rationalization process and the general view of Western society proposed by Weber. In the second part are discussed the critique against Weber proposed by J. Goody and K. Pomeranz. In the third part Eisenstadt's theory of multiple modernities is discussed. The article concludes noting the relevance of Weber's comparative sociology.

The Spirit of Capitalist and Primitive Accumulation

The paper aims to analyse critically Weber's famous thesis on the genesis of capitalism. The thesis is found wanting on both sociological and historical grounds. It is fair to say that historical reality is much better approximated by a narrative in terms of primitive accumulation.

Racionalizmo sociologija: M. Vėberis prieš K. Marksą

Straipsnyje analizuojama kapitalizmo problema M. Weberio sociologijoje. Pagrindine ekonomikos problema M. Weberis laiko optimalų (racionalų) ribotų resursų panaudojimą poreikiams tenkinti. Verslovinis kapitalizmas – tai ūkinė veikla, kurios tikslas yra gauti maksimalų pelną, panaudojant konkurencinės kovos rinkoje teikiamus šansus. Adekvati versloviniam kapitalizmui ūkinė etika yra kapitalizmo dvasia bei profesinės pareigos etika. Politiniam kapitalizmui būdingas siekis gauti pelno neatsižvelgiant į priemones. Palyginamos M. Weberio ir K. Marxo kapitalizmo bei jo genezės koncepcijos. K. Marxui kapitalizmas yra gamybinių santykių, ekonominės struktūros tipas. Šios struktūros sąvoka remiasi darbine vertės teorija; ekonominių struktūrų tipai skiriasi vieni nuo kitų pridėtinio darbo pasisavinimo ir realizavimo būdais. M. Weberis kapitalistinėje ekonomikoje mato ekonominę veiklą (gamyba, valdymas, pirkimas-pardavimas, kreditavimas ir pan.), institutus (įmonės, pinigai, birža ir kt.) bei pasiūlos-paklausos santykio svyravimą. M. Weberio verslovinio kapitalizmo sąvokos ekstensionaliu ekvivalentu galima laikyti K. Marxo pramoninio kapitalo, pramoninio kapitalizmo sąvokas.

Industrialisation before industrialisation? rural industries in Europe and the genesis of capitalism

Industrialisation before industrialisation? rural industries in Europe and the genesis of capitalism

No Paradise for Workers. Capitalism and the Common People in Australia 1788-1914

Written for a popular audience, this is the first radical history of capitalism in Australia. It analyses the social and political relations of that economic system imposed on the original Australians by British imperialism 200 years ago. It traces its evolution from colonial prison to a neo-colony of international finance capital, caught in the vortex between the two contemporary empires of the Pacific, the USA and Japan. The first of two volumes deals with the formation of the system from its beginnings as a prison farm to the consolidation of pastoral capitalism, and the emergence of an organized working class and incipient manufacturing industry to 1914. Hence it covers such topics as the expropriation of the original Australians; the genesis of capitalism as a police state based on forced labour; the origins of the colonial ruling class of pastoralists and merchant capitalists; the rise of the bourgeoisie, the making of the working class; struggles between and within social classes; nationalism and federation by the men of property; populism, racism, monopolies, imperialism, and war. Economic historians; students of Australian history.

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

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

Industrialization before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis of Capitalism

1. The origins, the agrarian context, and the conditions in the world market 2. The proto-industrial family economy 3. The structures and function of population-development under the proto-industrial system 4. Relations of production - productive forces - crises in proto-industrialization 5. Excursus: the political and institutional framework of proto-industrialization 6. Proto-industrialization between industrialization and deindustrialization.

Introduction

The genesis of capitalism, a theme embracing the social, economic, and political transformation of feudal society, an "old society pregnant with a new one" (1), is a central problem in Marxist scholarship. In the study of Russian history by Soviet historians this concept has served as a framework for research on the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. Yet, the Marxist theory of the transition is only a very general guide to current research, for the moments of the transformation are open to competing interpretations. Primitive capital accumulation, differentiation of the peasantry, and change in the mode of production are evaluated in various ways and variously dated by different historians. The diversity of opinion has centered especially on the chronological issue — whether capitalism first appeared in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth century, or even earlier (2) — which in turn affects a range of related issues, for example the interpretation of peasant revolts. (3) Thus, to follow Soviet research on the genesis of capitalism is to observe the formation of autonomous schools of thought, each with its own literature.

The Genesis of Capitalism Amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil's Labor and the Baptism of Money

What does wage labor and capital mean to a peasantry that is subjected to rapid rural proletarianization and what is the basis of that meaning?I wish to discuss an aspect of this question in the light of certain ideological reactions manifested by a South American lowland peasantry as expanding sugar plantations absorb their lands and peasants are converted into landless wage laborers. In the southern extremities of the Cauca Valley, Colombia, it is commonly thought that male plantation workers can increase their output, and hence their wage, through entering into a secret contract with the devil. However, the local peasants, no matter how needy they may be, never make such a contract when working their own plots or those of their peasant neighbors for wages. It is also thought that by illicitly baptizing money instead of a child in the Catholic church, that money can become interest bearing capital, while the child will be deprived of its rightful chance of entering heaven.