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The
capitalist revolution – why crises recur
The bourgeoisie, historically, has
played a most revolutionary part … Constant revolutionising of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and
agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto 1848.
The
capitalist revolution – a draft outline.
‘The
Capitalist Revolution’ was the revolution in the nature of capital. The study sets
out to distinguish capitals as accumulations of wealth in other modes of
production from capital-within-capitalism where it must expand to survive.
Defining
‘capital’ within capitalism
Utter
muddle prevails inside Historical Enterprises Inc. about slavery, feudalism and
capitalism. Few professionals make any attempt to delineate, still less define
chattel-slaves, serfs, bonded labourers, involuntary labour (eg convict) or
wage-slaves. Should scholars be cornered into providing an explanation for the
genesis of capitalism, they either make one element represent the whole, or
toss wage-labour, credit, factories and steam-engines into the pot after the
manner of the witches in Macbeth:
Surge in
trade, divided skill,
Navvy’s
spade, exchange of bill,
Engine’s
steam, and low piece-rate
Goldsmith’s
loan and factory gate
For
a mode of powerful trouble.
Like
a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Attempts
by many a soi-disant Marxist are
almost as gestural as those from bourgeois ideologues.
Here are a few of the markers needed to
clear a line of sight towards the revolution in capital, how it is produced as
it produces commodities. The preliminary task is to toss out ‘industrial
revolution’ as bourgeois propaganda designed to deflect attention from the
capitalist revolution. That shift will also knock over technological
determinism in favour of the social relations of production – class struggle:
-
usurers’
or merchants’ capitals were not early forms of capitalism;
-
agriculture
is and was an industry and its improvement was the driver;
-
agrarian
revolution(s) at home and abroad;
-
construction,
mining, transport, of fisheries/whaling are all ‘industrial’;
-
not
industrialisation but processing;
-
more
manu-facture than machino-facture;
-
domestic
system survived but organised centrally before factories;
-
re-think
industrialisation in terms of concentration of resources eg enclosure;
-
centralising
of ownership;
-
revolutions
in credit and chemistry as potent as machinery – impact on turnover times;
-
almost
no steam engines driving other machines before 1820s – instead renewable
sources in water, wind, and animals including humans.
Now
to illustrate the approach through the strand of chattel-slavery. Here, we
find:
-
No unilinear march from primitive communism past slavery to feudalism onto
capitalism before striking out onto socialism and communism;
-
Not a transition from feudalism to capitalism - any contrast is with serfdom;
-
by 1400, feudalism had disappeared from England;
- 1500s
Absolute monarchs imposing full-blown serfdom across Eastern Europe, lasting
till the 1860s;
- by
the late 1700s, emerging capitalism cohabited with primitive communism (eg in
Australia), with a remnant serfdom in Scottish coal mines, and with
- all
three modes flourishing under the fist of the East India Company.
Instead of disputing how the world got
from feudalism to capitalism, the task for historical materialists is to track
the accelerating expansion of
capitals across the Eighteenth century through slavery to capitalism, and its
nineteenth-century advance on the back of un-free labour.
To do this, we need to distinguish
four of the ways in which slavery contributed to the genesis of money capital.
First, from the trade in slaves,
the profits made on their sale and the impetus given to the broader economy
through the building and equipping of the ships;
secondly, from the triangular trade
around the Atlantic that was built on servicing that truck in human beings – processing
in Britain of trade goods for Africa and for the plantations;
thirdly, profits out of the plantations
that the slaves worked;
fourthly, profits out of the
processing of their produce in Europe: sugar, tobacco and cotton.
All the profits made from the human-flesh
market could never have generated sufficient money-capitals to lift the British
economy out of the sediment of its previous modes into capitalism. Equally, it
is true that without that trade in human beings, the other three sources of
wealth via the slave system could not have existed. Their connections are how
chattel slavery became the foundation for wage-slavery.
STRUCTURE
Length:
60,000 words
In
twenty or fewer chapters, 2,500 words each in 8-9 pages.
No
footnotes in the book, but an on-line version loaded down with them.
One
or two article-length references to each chapter at the back.
No
illustrations.
J
H Plumb’s Pelican History of England:
Eighteenth Century is model for presentation in terms of the weight of
material and lightness of touch.
SIX
SHORT VANTAGE POINTS
Stop
every 50 years to carry the recurrence of crises of abundance forward to
present through short sections, no more than 1000 words based around prominent
economists:
1767:
Is capitalism possible? Open with a
concocted letter to Turgot from James Steuart outlining his Principles of Political Economy;
1817: Malthus and Ricardo debate possibility of a
general glut in exchange of letters;
1867:
Marx on crises as the driving force in capital expansion as an address to
International Working Men’s Association;
1917:
Lenin on monopolising capitals, war as a form of crisis (aka imperialism) in
notebooks;
1967:
Joan Robinson on monetary crises and end of Bretton Woods;
2017:
bring in Smith in a state of amazement at the changes since Wealth of Nations, that is, that
capitalism was possible after all.
Bring
in the other writers from these slices as a panel at the Edinburgh Writers’
Festival as a mix of quotations or confected statements.
This
final segment could run to 2,000 words
Chapter headings, preliminary list
Part One - Social
capital
Accumulate! Accumulate!
Rate of return, or size of surplus?
Centralising and concentration
Socialised capital leading to
Social capital
Part two - ‘Free’
labour
‘free’ labour
Division of labour
Social labour
Slavery : trade itself; triangular
trade; processing of produce
New systems of slavery: bonded
Part
three – Time
Credit, both retail and wholesale, for
turnovers
Transport - ships, canals, roads,
railroads
Chemistry
Part four The state
London – capital of the world
Empire-market-state
War
: fiscal-naval state.
Part five - Ideas
The Law - partnership, joint-stock, limited liability
‘The Counting House’ book keeping as the ‘spirit’ of capitalism
Literacy and numeracy
Protestant ethic: opulence blocks
accumulation
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