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Socio-economic factors leading to the emergence of modern capitalism in the West.
George G Clark, May 2002
Versions rtf 10KB; pdf 16KB
There is nothing absolute or inevitable about modern capitalist modes of production.
They emerged from a particular cultural context in Europe, flourished for a while on the
global stage and may soon fade away.
Max Weber (1864-1920) famously reckoned that the conditions for
the growth of modern capitalism were as set out in the following table. Korten
and Chomsky have more recent views.
![bullet](_themes/nature/nabull1.gif) | The separation of the productive enterprise from the household which, prior to
the development of industrial capitalism, was much more advanced in the West than it ever
became elsewhere. |
![bullet](_themes/nature/nabull1.gif) | The development of the Western city. In post-medieval Europe, urban communities
reached a high level of political autonomy, thus setting off bourgeois society
from agrarian feudalism. |
![bullet](_themes/nature/nabull1.gif) | The existence, in Europe, of an inherited tradition of Roman Law, providing a
more integrated and developed rationalisation of juridical practice than came into being
elsewhere. |
![bullet](_themes/nature/nabull1.gif) | The Juridical system was one factor making possible the development of the
nation-state, administered by full time bureaucratic officials, beyond anything
achieved in the Eastern civilizations. The rational-legal system of the Western state was
in some degree adapted within business organisations themselves, as well as providing an
overall framework for the co-ordination of the capitalist economy. |
![bullet](_themes/nature/nabull1.gif) | The development of double-entry book-keeping in Europe. In Webers view,
this was a phenomenon of major importance in opening the way for the regularising of
capitalistic enterprise |
![bullet](_themes/nature/nabull1.gif) | That series of changes which
prepared the way for a free mass of
wage-labourers, whose livelihoods depends on the sale of labour-power in the market.
This presupposes the prior erosion of the monopolies over the disposal of labour which
existed in the form of feudal obligations (and were maximised in the east in the form of
the caste system) |
|
In China extended kinship units provided the major forms of economic
co-operation, thus limiting the influence both of the guilds and of individual
entrepreneurial activity |
In the Eastern civilisations, partly because of the influence of kinship
connections that cut across the urban-rural differentiation, cities remained more embedded
in the local agrarian economy |
|
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In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it
triumphed over democracy and the market economy. For those of us who grew up believing
that capitalism is the foundation of democracy and market freedom, it has been a rude
awakening to realize that under capitalism, democracy is for sale to the highest bidder
and the market economy is centrally planned by global megacorporations larger than most
states.
(David C. Korten , The Post-Corporate World, 1999)
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The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit
the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum
even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense
that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system
are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
(Noam Chomsky, quote from www.thirdworldtraveler.com)
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- Weber, Max (1930, 1991)
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism;
- (Translated by Talcott Parson, Introduction by Anthony Giddens);
- Harper Collins Academic ISBN 0 00 302070 3
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