Have at it, but just be clear about what the implications are: you’ve just abolished the capitalist mode of production as an explanatory device and embraced a techno-whiggish perspective of historical development. Welcome to liberalism.
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In any case, when you treat Marx as scripture and use Marxology as a substitute for historical evidence to support your argument, you look fucking ridiculous. (And that goes for any Marxist debate, by the way).
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(2) No Brennerite disputes that capitalism couldn't have happened without robust commercial networks. In this regard, the formation of a world economy in the ‘early modern’ period acted as necessary infrastructure for the transition. This is uncontroversial.
Ellen Wood 👇
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What Brennerites do say is this: though capitalism couldn’t have happened without a pre-existing market infrastructure, it also didn't happen because of it. It was ultimately a necessary but insufficient cause of the transition.
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The problem is that, even as a nascent Atlantic economy beefed up urban-mercantile economies of early-modern Europe, there is no clear connection between that and the subsequent economic performance of their enclosing countries (Quote below is from Epstein, 2000)
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(3) Fyi - you can think that colonialism had an ambivalent relationship with the emergence of capitalism and still condemn colonialism and capitalism. There is a lot of fake outrage around this issue that is just quite absurd.
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The fact that some empires ended up squandering the wealth that they stole (e.g. Spain) does not in any way erase or diminish the atrocities of colonial conquest and imperial domination. The crimes of empire remain there either way.
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(4) Markets, up to quite a high degree of sophistication, have existed for millennia without setting in motion, or even approaching, anything like modern economic development. This is the real puzzle that commercialisationists insist in avoiding.
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However, any commercialisation theorist worth its salt should be able to be able to deal with the problem that this poses for their theory. Imo, there are only two logical responses. Either:
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(a) You save face by separating ‘capitalism’ from self-reproducing growth; i.e. capitalism is basically trade and has existed as long as merchants, but it couldn’t deliver modern economic development until its ‘industrial’ phase, presumably bc the tech wasn’t there yet
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This is where Gunder Frank ended at (‘capitalist world system is 5,000 years old’) and Banaji will be there soon, if he isn’t already (he talks about ‘Roman capitalism’ in a recent piece).
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Or (b) you accept that the transition to capitalism wasn’t automatically set in motion by the formation of an early-modern world economy and proceed to further specify a causal mechanism that does not end up supporting, or putting you in the vicinity of, the Brenner thesis.
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Good luck with (b). I have yet to see a commercialisation theorist do this successfully without eventually giving up and sliding back into (a).
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There is a (c) option, which is where many of you end up: clinging uncritically to 1492 as the turning point, all while beating your chest and hoping that no one notices that you’re sitting on a fence.
We see right through it though.
You’re just not ready, son.
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By the way, I made this meme you chumps. And it’s not a critique of political Marxism, it’s a celebration💫
Team Brenner-Wood all the way.
Don't do it kids, it's a gateway drug.
Still think political Marxism is cool?
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