Origins of Capitalism
Capitalism, as a social system, where production is organised for exchange in the market for profit.
The novelty of this form of social organisation, historically specific.
Different accounts of the rise of capitalism
Commercialisation model: assumes rational individuals, markets as arenas of opportunity, associates capitalism with cities, continuity in history, bourgeois as the agent of change.
Critiques of the commercialisation model
Karl Polanyi: from markets to the market society
The rise of the market society in historically specific conditions and the necessary intervention of the state
The transition from feudalism to capitalism
England
France
The dynamics of agrarian relations: the agrarian origins of capitalism.
Mercantilism and Free Trade
Mercantilism as economic nationalism, protectionism
Rise of the absolutist states in Britain and France, and mercantilist policies
Colonialism and mercantilism
Adam Smith and laissez faire
The idea of a natural order: the invisible hand, division of labour
English industrialisation and free trade policies
The Industrial Revolution
Technological development is the result, not the cause
Agricultural origins
Creation of markets in land, labour and goods
English industrialisation:
the role of enclosures for the creation of a market in labour power, dispossession of peasants, emergence of a gentry and a class of wage labourers, the role of the Tudor monarchy, creation of a home market
The factory system
The family firm
Continental industrialisation as a reaction to English industrialisation
Latecomers
Protectionism
The role of railway construction
German industrialisation
Imperialism (1875-1914)
Imperialism and capitalism
Imperialism and industrialisation
The distribution or redistribution of the world as colonies among half a dozen European states
(land grab)
Economic motives
White settler communities
Raw materials
Markets
Protectionism
The fusion of economic and political motives
Impact on the colonized world
Impact on the metropolitan countries
The Working Class and the Bourgeoisie
Democratisation of politics at the turn of the 20th century
Expansion of the electorate
Participation of the poor and the unprivileged to politics
Rise of mass working class parties
Trade unions
Suburban lifestyle as symbolic of the waning of middle class influence on politics
The link between the bourgeoisie and puritan values broken: spending as important as earning, the birth of the leisure class, tourism, sports
Changing structures of the bourgeois family
Who is middle class?
lifestyle and culture, leisurely activities and education as class markers
The growth and insecurity of the lower middle classes
Radical right in politics
Imperialism, war and nationalism
