The Origins of Capitalism
It’s hard, as the saying goes, to imagine the end of capitalism. But how did it begin? While some, conflating capitalism with markets, say human society has always been capitalist, most historians—Marxist and non-Marxist alike—are prepared to distinguish something prior, like feudalism, from the socioeconomic system that prevails today. Yet the questions of when, where, how, and why capitalism emerged remain deeply controversial, answerable not simply by reference to historical facts, but by how we understand the workings of capitalism itself. In studying the origins of capitalism we’re made to ask: What makes capitalism historically unique? How did it emerge in a particular locality and, thereafter, come to dominate the globe? And what can a conceptualization of capitalism as historical and specific mean for how we think about not just the capitalist present, but also the future? If capitalism has a beginning, can it also have an end?
In this course, we will investigate the origins of capitalism, tracing its early emergence, global expansion, and revolutionary transformation of social relations, spanning from the late feudal period to the early modern age. Examining some key debates surrounding the main features and causes of capitalism as a socioeconomic system, this course will examine how its uneven development subsumed pre-capitalist social relations and gave birth to the modern world. Along the way, we will interrogate how the onset of capitalist social relations introduced new practices of land tenure, labor, social reproduction, hegemony, and colonialism, thereby also marking transformative shifts in class, race, and gender. Beginning with the decline of feudalism and the formations of the modern world system, we will define key terms like mode of production, social formation, primitive accumulation, agrarian capitalism, and merchant capital. We will consider the following questions: What was feudalism and why did it decline? What were the mechanisms through which capitalist relations began to emerge in the feudal period, and at what point did they start to congeal? How did different forms of labor (waged, enslaved, indentured) all contribute to the uneven development of capitalism, in Europe and across the rest of the world? How much did colonial-capitalist extraction and colonial drain shape this system, compared to local changes in agrarian and urban class relations? What was the role of the modern state in facilitating these shifts and consolidating the hegemony of a new ruling class? How did shifts in culture, values, meaning, and signification contribute to the rise of capitalist hegemony during this transition from one mode of production to another? And what sorts of residual, dominant, and emergent cultural formations characterized this transition? Readings will include selections from Karl Marx, Max Weber, Rosa Luxemburg, Robert Brenner, Jairus Banaji, Silvia Federici, Maurice Dobb, Paul Sweezy, Chris Chitty, Utsa Patnaik, Jason W. Moore, Cedric Robinson, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Raymond Williams, among others.
Course Schedule
Thursday, 6:30-9:30pm ETNovember 14 — December 12, 2024
4 sessions over 5 weeks
Class will not meet Thursday, November 28th.
$335.00
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