The Tudor revolution
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No it doesn’t since as you have hinted at, once capitalism developed in one part of the world ( that happened for various reasons to be Europe) it could spread to other countries by diffusion rather than internal evolution, and did. Other parts of the world could leap into capitalism whatever their social structure or the stage of social evolution they happened to be at.
The same applies to socialism of course. Once socialism became historically possible it could be established all over the world whatever the stage of social evolution existing in some parts.
“Feudalism did not exist in China it only existed in Europe”
https://www.britannica.com/place/China/The-Zhou-feudal-system
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429447808/chapters/10.4324/9780429447808-9
Most Marxist Leninist organizations in Latin America still believe that the European transferred their feudal system to the region, I don’t agree with that analysis
There were many ignorances about the works of Marx and Engels and their later development and writings , including the Paris notebooks and the ethnological notebooks
They were heavily influenced by Stalinism Castroism and Maoism
Lately with the creation of the institute of Latin America philosophy and anthropology and xxi century socialism they are studying the Incas and the mayas mode of production.
They are also applying Marx concept of the uneven development of capitalism
Sone groups and historians are saying that due to the scientific influence of the Arabian in Spain it created the basis for capitalist production
Personally I believe that the renaissance started in Spain and they had a tremendous cultural development it was a cultured empire
Robbo, this appears to be about a period before the emergence of the Chinese Empire and its bureaucracy (“oriental despotism” ?). It appears that it had come to a demise by about 200 BC, even before feudalism was ever heard of in Europe and so nearly 2000 years before the period we have been discussing here. The Europe of that time was still in the state of what Marx called “ancient slave society” at least around the eastern Mediterranean; elsewhere there were tribal societies. In any event, there was no possibility of the Chinese feudalism of the time evolving into capitalism. I don’t think it’s really a relevant comparison.
You can cite one hundred enciclopedia , Wikipedia and dictionary and they are going to be wrong because they are eurocentered. Feudalism is an European phenomenon if capitalism would have been established first in China Marx would have been forced to write capital and the communist manifesto in a different way. There are hundred Europeans inventions and part of the cuisine which came from China and from the Arabians
A fascinating read though. The whole kit and caboodle.
https://www.britannica.com/place/China/The-Zhou-feudal-system
In Latin America the pre columbians historians are saying that when the Europeans were throwing rocks the Chinese were using firecrackers
The mayas and the Incas had a system similar to china or Asia because their ancestors came from Asia They had noting to envy from the invaders
Hustorian Juan Bosh wrote that two different societies confronted each other and violence emerged like Engels wrote about the use of force in history
“feudal tenure was not abolished in England until 1660″
Wez, you are right about England but it wasn’t until 20 years ago in 2000 that feu duties were abolished in Scotland !!!…So was it only then that Scotland became capitalist.
Actual slavery in the Scottish coal mines (mostly owned and run by the aristocracy) only ended the turn of the 18thC-19th C
Shetland’s land law remains based on its Viking heritage called Udal Law and has been upheld under modern law in that it declares that the Shetland community owns the sea and seabed around its isles and not the Crown Estate
Marcos, the Inca economy was a unique non-market one similar in the terms that those who were not nobles were levied to perform compulsory public work.
Alan -that’s why I say ‘if’ the main income of the conservative landlords was derived from feudal tenure. Truth is I can’t find any reference to the origin of the income of the main supporters of Charles I with the exception of Christopher Hill. If feudal tenure had become obsolete by 1642 and it generated no revenue for such landowners then TM is correct that they were all bourgeois and we have to disregard the Marxist theory of class struggle generating historical change (at least when it comes to arguably the most important event in history). I need evidence before I take that drastic step.
That would be a drastic step but I don’t think that showing that some bourgeois sided with the absolutist state would disprove that the class struggle ( together with technological developments) is the driving force if history.
I don’t think that the materialist conception of history says that every single member of a particular class has to support the objective interests of that class. That would be more economic determinism than the MCH. Surely it suffices that the main force behind a particular historical change should come from the members of the class that is going to benefit from it. Which is demonstrably the case in what happened in England in the 1640s. Parliament was led by bourgeois property owners who wanted to free capitalism from the restrictions that the state was placing on its development and, with the “middling sort” as their mass basis, did seize political power in what was a political revolution.
Part of the issue is the situational logic. Someone once pointed out to me that when England and Portugal made their trade agreement, instead of investing their side of the profits, the Portuguese lords built cathedrals. They didn’t engage in productive accumulation (though in plenty of extractive accumulation). So, latter day while lords who squandered their rents on gaming and gambling could hardly be said to like their puritanical bourgeois partners who did forego, invest and expand their wealth.
The legal superstructure is not insignificant, but the real basis remains the thing we look to. feudalism was characterised by surplus extraction (even if this took the form by the 13th C. of money payments) rather than surplus value. A lordling collecting rents from his tenants may well be collecting surplus value (if the tenants employ waged labourers, but even into the 20th C. there were barriers to the agricultural labour market that meant custom and tradition were as important – if not more so – than market forces) but that would be indirect (in England).
Robbo, this appears to be about a period before the emergence of the Chinese Empire and its bureaucracy (“oriental despotism” ?). — In any event, there was no possibility of the Chinese feudalism of the time evolving into capitalism. I don’t think it’s really a relevant comparison.
That may be so but it still refutes the claim that “Feudalism did not exist in China it only existed in Europe”
Incidentally, feudalism did not just exist in China- what about Japan?
https://www.ancient.eu/article/1438/feudalism-in-medieval-japan/
I think Marx’ advice in a letter to a Russian publication in 1877 is relevant here:
“The chapter on primitive accumulation does not pretend to do more than trace the path by which, in Western Europe, the capitalist order of economy emerged from the womb of the feudal order of economy. It therefore describes the historic movement which by divorcing the producers from their means of production converts them into wage earners (proletarians in the modern sense of the word) while it converts into capitalists those who hold the means of production in possession. (…)
[M]y critic … feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man. But I beg his pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.) Let us take an example.
In several parts of Capital I allude to the fate which overtook the plebeians of ancient Rome. They were originally free peasants, each cultivating his own piece of land on his own account. In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. The same movement which divorced them from their means of production and subsistence involved the formation not only of big landed property but also of big money capital. And so one fine morning there were to be found on the one hand free men, stripped of everything except their labour power, and on the other, in order to exploit this labour, those who held all the acquired wealth in possession. What happened? The Roman proletarians became, not wage labourers but a mob of do-nothings more abject than the former “poor whites” in the southern country of the United States, and alongside of them there developed a mode of production which was not capitalist but dependent upon slavery. Thus events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings led to totally different results. By studying each of these forms of evolution separately and then comparing them one can easily find the clue to this phenomenon, but one will never arrive there by the universal passport of a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical.“
Alb,
“by divorcing the producers from their means of production converts them into wage earners”
And:
“Roman proletarians became, not wage labourers but a mob of do-nothings more abject than the former “poor whites” in the southern country of the United States, and alongside of them there developed a mode of production which was not capitalist but dependent upon slavery”
And this is the current condition of most of the World’s population. If we take a broad sweep of the means of ownership (really means of production), then it is owned by some, and controlled by… some.
The loss of the commons for tilling, even if it was the last bastion of subsistence to survive the ravishes of ownership, is repeated right through the globe- alienation from the means of production.
The current age, and I dare say the Tudor vagabond laws agree-” let us put the idle to work and for profit! ”
And now we have a culture of ‘dole bludger’ blaming the unemployed for their own alienation, the best welfare is a job!
The Tudor Vagrancy Laws seem so similar. The Capital Revolution seems old indeed- starting with ownership of the means to live…
The Spirit of Capitalism has it phases- but it is the successive alienation through history that seems to continue our current ‘wage slave problem’. Or indeed, bonded labour in parts of the world that some in the West say: oh my gosh!
I wanted to discuss the Tudor rev- and put some of history to some use- but for some reason, needed to say this!
I have appreciated seeing this thread unfold- and in its unfolding, ownership and accumulation of wealth and privilege seems older than the perceived start date…
Another thing for me to research!
LB
Wasn’t Marx relying on newspapers and deduction? Or is he expert on everything, all cultures and societies and histories worldwide? He had the modesty, it seems, that others lack on his behalf.
The several Wiki statements on “Chou feudalism” are completely new to me, and I have studied China since I was 12. The Chinese state has it that Chou was a slave-owning society with Confucius its mouthpiece, and that the Ch’in introduced feudalism. I don’t hold with that, but I never heard of Chou feudalism until yesterday on the internet. I always read that feudalism was consolidated by the Han.
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