The Agrarian Roots Of European Capitalism

							The Return Of The Other

  Eurocentrism vs. Globalism


          Presentation by Juliana and Judit
                   PLAN
• Eurocentrism – I round:
   Civil society as a Western concept
• Eurocentrism – II round:
  Euromarxism as a context
   Brenner’s argument
• Critique
• Synthesis
                   DEFINITION
EUROCENTRISM:
• Form of ethnocentrism
• Being centered on Europe or the Europeans, especially
  reflecting a tendency to interpret the world in terms of
  western and especially European values and experiences
• The belief that European culture is superior to all others
• An inability to appreciate Non-European cultures
• An inability to see a common humanity and human condition
  facing all women and men in all cultures and societies beneath
  the surface variations in social and cultural traditions
                 Civil Society
           EUROPEAN CONCEPT
• Free market and Democracy
 Representation
 Parliamentary government
 Pluralistic – individualistic
 Justice and laws
 Human rights
 Rationality and
 Modern knowledge system
                Civil Society
   WESTERN CONCEPT OF THE OTHER
• Formulated as “lack”, which means:
  Authoritarian
  Absolutist regime
  Static
  Despotism
  Irrational
  Stagnant and oriental mode of production
    Goody’s Critique on Eurocentism
•   Extreme universalism vs. cultural relativism
•   Achievements of Mesopotamia and Arab Near East
•   Indian and Chinese trade systems in Antiquity
•   Eastern knowledge systems – Sung encyclopedias
•   Different kinds of democracy and representation
•   Not identical but similar regimes
•   Examples:
    Civil society in pre-colonial Africa
    Communities with alternative lifestyle in Asia
     Euromarxism as a Context

• Post Vietnam radical thought
• Reactionary Euromarxism

• Brenner’s article needs to be placed in the
  context of this debate
            Brenner on Capitalism

• "Agrarian class structure and economic development in
  pre-industrial Europe” (1976)
   Marxist critique
• "The origins of capitalist development: A critique of
  Neo-Smithian Marxism” (1977)
   restatement of the theory about the European origins of
    capitalism
   critique of "Third-Worldist" deviations in modern radical
    scholarship
   Two main characteristics: eurocentrism and diffusionism
      R. Brenner’s “Agrarian Roots of
          European Capitalism”
• Social-property systems (class & property):
  Historically developed
  Impose the course of the economic evolution (income
   distribution & productive forces development)
• Feudalism case – economic stagnation and involution:
  Class reproducing strategies, incompatible with
   requirements of growth
  Declining productivity and socio-economic crisis
   Feudalism mechanism of class
           reproduction
                                                MORE!

                        lords               [surplus extraction by means of
                                            extra-economic compulsion]

classes
                                            FOOD, MASTER…

                       peasants
                                            [production for subsistence]



          •No specializations of productive units
          •No systematic reinvestments of surpluses
          •No technical innovation
          The Breakthrough



• SELF-SUSTAINING GROWTH
  Breakthrough of the system of lordly surplus
  extraction by means of extra-economic compulsory
 Undermining the process of full peasant ownership
  of the land
    Novel social-property system

ORGANIZERS
    OF                       MEANS OF
PRODUCTION                REPRODUTION/                  MARKET
                            SUBSISTENCE          SELL   /COMPE
                          (especially land and   /BUY   TITION
                                 labor)




         •Specializations of productive units
         •Systematic reinvestments of surpluses
         •Technical innovation
        Differences within Europe
• Different long-term processes of class formation in
  the various regions
  Demographic growth and declining labor productivity
  Various property settlement in different places
  Different forms and outcomes of the class conflicts as
   response to it
• There was no simple “unilinear drift” towards
  capitalism by economic evolution – no trans-historical
  laws
                       England
• Aristocracy
  High level of solidarity
  Self-organization (military obligatory)
  Common interests
  Need of their mutual relationship regulation
  Total law domination on peasantry
• Monarchy
  Increasing capacity as a reflection on the aristocracy
   coherence
  King’s law to freeman (exception of the unfree peasants)
  Reintensification of the seigneur power
  Decentralized surplus extraction by extra-economic
   compulsion
                       England
• Peasantry
  Highly dependant on aristocracy
  Even density of the population
  Separated from the land
• Economy development
  Competitive rates of land
  Export (wool, cloth production)
  Industrial employment based on wage labor
  Increase of agricultural production
  Economic differentiation of the peasantry – no choice but
   compete and innovate
• End of political and economical fusion
                              France
• Aristocracy
    Competing feudal lords
    Involved in the king’s court as employed
    Conditional domination over the peasantry
• From monarchy to absolutism as new form of centralism
    Extreme fragmentarisation
    Lack of effective political organization
    Centralized system of surplus extraction over the aristocracy (king’s
     household)
    Accepting peasants’ appeals on lords
    Custom laws
    Tax office state
    Loyalty through private proper rights – private property in public
     sphere
                        France
• Peasantry
  United peasantry community which can not be expelled
   from land
  Peasant mobility
  Royal taxes, collected by peasantry
  Greater consumption possibilities – more surplus of their
   own to reinvenst
  Population growth
  Strengthening of the peasantry brought renewal of the old
   peasant-base economy
  Pulverization and leveling of the peasantry
              Economy Comparison
• ENGLAND                               • FRANCE
    Capitalistic-agricultural system      Peasant possessors
    Commercial economy based              Static type of agricultural
     on high quality production             system
    Export - import economy
    Independent regional
     specialization
 Once and for all           No qualitative agricultural
  improvement and innovation development for economic
                              growth
               Criticism
• Dobb-Sweezy debate

• Blaut

• Andre Gunder Frank
                        Jim Blaut
• England is nothing special
  Asia, Africa showed the same level of development in
   terms of:
           • Untied peasantry, cash tenancy, rural wage labor, large
             scale production for sale, peasant struggle, urban
             processes, commercial activities
• Why Europe?
  Location and accessibility
  Colonial accumulation was the basic external cause of
   European emergence
               Andre Gunder Frank
• Key point: Belief in the continuous history and development
  of a single world system in Afro-Eurasia for at least 5,000
  years.
• Emphasis on
   trade relations
   process of capital accumulation
   center-periphery structure is one of the characteristics of
     the world system
   alternation between hegemony and rivalry
   long economic cycles of ascending and descending
     phases
     Wallerstein versus Gunder
• Discontinuity versus continuity

”The West first bought itself a third class seat on the
 Asian economic train, then leased a whole railway
 carriage, and only in the nineteenth century managed to
 displace Asians from the locomotive”
                                                  (Gunder)
                     Implications
• European exceptonalism is a myth
• It is no use to talk of modes and transitions
• "The ceaseless quest of modern historians looking for the 'origins'
  and roots of capitalism is not much better than the alchemist's
  search for the philosopher's stone that transforms base metal into
  gold." Indeed, that is the case not only for the origins and roots,
  but the very existence and meaning of "capitalism." So, best just
  forget about it, and get on with our inquiry into the reality of
  "universal history, wie es eigentlich gewesen ist.” (Chaudhuri)
 Has capitalism ever been born?
• The rise of Europe represented a hegemonic
  shift from East to West
• It is impossible to specify what sets the
  present world system apart from previous
  ones
  Ceaseless accumulation
  Trinity of center/periphery, A/B phased cycles, and
   hegemony/ rivalry
          How to do history?


• Gunder’s recommendations

• And yours? What do we gain and lose with each
  approach?