The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation

Rating:
Summary: Work Makes Free (!)
Review: An impressive study of the significance of Primitive Accumulation in the development of the refined and reified slavery that we call Capitalism. Through Primitive Accumulation, in its pure, somewhat abstract "original sin" form, the ancestors of those who today control the wealth and power in the world robbed- by violence and brute coercion- the means of autonomous livelihood from the majority of peoples. It was the brutal process of "separating people from the means of providing for themselves" to turn them into instruments of production for profits, as in factories. This process evolved into more habitual and masked "market relations" to institutionalize and render more permanent the status of workers as wage quasi-slaves. In contrast to Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and other apologists and defenders of the system. Marx described this process with historical concreteness describing such historical events as the English Enclosure and Game laws. The conventional view has been that primitive accumulation was substituted by subtle and less exploitative reified market relations. But, as Perelman explains with resolute clarity,the two aspects of Capitalism are dialectically and continuously interlocked. After all, between Bentham's struggle to subdue the poor into military work prisons with lives rigidly controlled in the service of the Masters' profits- shades of Auschwitz- and Greenspan's concerns (!) about the "wealth effect" reducing the willingness of workers with some minimal invested savings to get back to the "labor force" for "flexible" wages and the new regulator of "markets" concern for "unacceptably low levels of unemployment"- is there, really, that much difference ? The brutal process continues with such slogans as "buy when there's blood in the streets", and Michael Perelman has done a great service in describing it.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I came at this work with an open mind and an independent background in the history of economic thought. I was severely disappointed. Occasional inconsistencies of argument or a few personal correspondences noting the short comings of the markets do not turn the classical political economists into dyed-in-the-subsidized-wool interventionists.

Far from being a "secret history" of primitive accumulation, this book is a work of theory plain and simple. I was really expecting more concrete evidence of the collusion of the classical political economists in the final phases of primitive accumulation in Great Britain, but this book does not present much compelling evidence to support its over-hyped premise. Primitive accumulation was all over but the shouting in Great Britain by the time the philosophers turned their attention to matters economic. The idea that intervention was required to move "self-provisioning farmers" (generously defined) into the factories as wage slaves is an appealing one. But the book simply does not cite enough historical evidence to prove the point.

The author is half way through the book before he addresses Adam Smith's supposedly interventionist tendencies to promote the "early" capitalists. Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill merit bare mentions. I did give the book two stars for introducing the reader to some of the neglected political economists of the early period. Overall, Marx receives the spotlight throughout the work.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I came at this work with an open mind and an independent background in the history of economic thought. I was severely disappointed. Occasional inconsistencies of argument or a few personal correspondences noting the short comings of the markets do not turn the classical political economists into dyed-in-the-subsidized-wool interventionists.

Far from being a "secret history" of primitive accumulation, this book is a work of theory plain and simple. I was really expecting more concrete evidence of the collusion of the classical political economists in the final phases of primitive accumulation in Great Britain, but this book does not present much compelling evidence to support its over-hyped premise. Primitive accumulation was all over but the shouting in Great Britain by the time the philosophers turned their attention to matters economic. The idea that intervention was required to move "self-provisioning farmers" (generously defined) into the factories as wage slaves is an appealing one. But the book simply does not cite enough historical evidence to prove the point.

The author is half way through the book before he addresses Adam Smith's supposedly interventionist tendencies to promote the "early" capitalists. Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill merit bare mentions. I did give the book two stars for introducing the reader to some of the neglected political economists of the early period. Overall, Marx receives the spotlight throughout the work.

Rating:
Summary: Flies in the Face of Received Wisdom
Review: Perelman's painstaking analysis of 'Primitive Acculumation' is an absolute masterpiece. I've never seen a more trenchant and well researched piece on the birth of capitalism. One does not have to possess of leftist orientation to appreciate this powerful critique of the origins of capitalist system. It vividly demonstrates the 'ahistoricalness' of so much of the classical free market theology, and exposes the real ideological underpinnings of capitalism's brutal rise to eminence. Perelman analyzes not only the familiar texts, but also the private writings of several well-known and not so well-known political economists and other figures (fans of Adam Smith may be a little let down!). The other review was quite excellent so I needn't continue with the accalaides; but I seriously recommend to all those interested the history of capitalism and political economy to take a look at Perelman's well written and balanced perspective.

Rating:
Summary: Classical Economists: Liberty lovers or Control Freaks?
Review: This is the first book I've read that goes into much detail about the subject of primitive accumulation, and I'm impressed. Having an American History perspective, when I think about the social engineering behind a capitalist economy, I think about protective tariffs, slavery, moving Indians off the land, subsidies to canals and railroads, etc. It's fascinating to see that coercion and government involvement goes back much farther than that. And it's good to learn about some of the more forgotten political economists like James Steuart.

One does not have to be particularly leftist appreciate this book. Whether means to capitalist economic development was wrong or a "necessary evil", it's still extremely useful to know that things just didn't evolve naturally out of free exchange. The system was consciously engineered so that the "right sort" of people would be successful, and there's nothing sinister when people, through democratic choice, re-engineer things to bring about a reduction in income inequality, environmental protection, etc.

While not all leaders and thinkers in the 18th century were economists, I have a slight problem with the portrayal of Adam Smith. Now perhaps I've been seduced by his charm, but it seems as though he has a more complex view of the common good. Of course he wasn't a modern leftist or a cultural relativist, but at the same time, he wasn't a William Graham Sumner-style Social Darwinist of the late 1800s either.

"Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters. "

The author doesn't use quotes like this from Smith, perhaps he assumes the "pro-worker" statements are well-known enough not to repeat. But how many ways can we interpret this?

"The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquility of any body but themselves."

Pretty strong language. The author would say that he's talking only about a certain class of merchants, perhaps.

Some leftists like Noam Chomsky will talk favorably about Adam Smith, as part, I think, of a larger argument to show that market fundamentalism and Social Darwinist "class warfare" are a departure from Classic Liberalism. Maybe I'm being naïve but I'm more sympathetic to this view. I feel it unwise to throw away so much of classic liberalism when it seems that most 18th century liberals wouldn't support modern corporate capitalism. From reading this book, I partly get the sense that you should either be a supporter of "invisible hand" market economics, or a Marxist. But that isn't the case.

Benjamin Franklin, a friend of Adam Smith, wrote a lot of contradictory statements, it is true. But this quote, I think, shows the concept of civic virtue that many of America's "founding fathers" had:

"Private property is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just Debt."

This is a superb refutation of the warmed-over 1890s Social Darwinist mentality. Wealthy people aren't being punished when they pay higher taxes. Nor are they doing an act of benevolence. They are paying a "just debt" because in the long run, large-scale private-property is socially engineered, and the rich man depends on government more than the poor man.

Overall I have few disagreements with this book, and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Setting the Record Straight
Review: You're self-employed, with many religious holidays, and while you're not rich, at least you're getting along. So why give this up to become a wage worker for somebody else, with little spare time, and a struggle for subsistence. Despite obvious simplifications, this is a core problem confronting capital at the dawn of the modern era, known also as primitive accumulation. How, that is, can self-sufficient peasants and others of similar status be converted into subservient factory hands, an obvious degradation. Yet without some such conversion, where would the labor for fields and factories come from if not the rural economy. To meet the need, New World colonies imported slaves and indentured servants. But Great Britain needed a new social division of labor, one that would stock emerging markets with commodities from a work force employed by a new social class. As conditions stood, the capitalist equation was only half complete--a wage labor class was needed.

Perelman examines the problem through the eyes of early political economists such as Adam Smith. What he finds is disturbing. Smith and followers generally suppress the real historical conflict, replacing actual coercive measures (game laws, etc.) with imaginary allusions to voluntary choice, as though worker autonomy was willingly swapped for a dependent wage rate. Nonetheless, voluntarism preserves the fiction of an immaculate conversion, and comports with market relations as an irresistable harmonizing force --the Smithian paradigm. However, other early thinkers primarily James Steuart are more candid than Smith, arguing that state intervention is necessary to separate working people from their subsistence, forcing them into the labor pool. As an analyst of the period, the obscure Steuart stands as a more accurate guide, in Perelman's view, than the celebrated author of The Wealth of Nations. Nevertheless, all the early economists, it appears, are eager to assist a nascent capitalist class in its quest for primitive accumulation. Yet, among them, Smith offers the most elegantly stated and publicly palatable version. Therefore, it is his version of a bloodless voluntarism that dominates an official record which even now continues to mislead. In short, orthodox opinion to the contrary, Smith and company operate as apologists of capital first, social scientists second.

This is an important and controversial contention. Perelman marshalls considerable evidence to support the thesis. Moreover, he argues that despite common impressions, primitive accumulation is not an historical relic, but continues in many parts of the globe. An important -- though unargued--theoretical point also emerges. Smithian thought characterizes market relations as a kind of natural necessity, like Law of Gravity; Marxian thought characterizes them as an historical necessity, a stage on the way to communism. According to both popular schools, there is something inevitable--beyond choice--about capitalist production relations . If I understand Perelman correctly, these same relations are understood as in no sense inevitable. Instead they are invented. History could have taken a non-capitalist course, and still can-- a key step in confronting the inequities of a post-Cold War world.

The author's style is accessible to the serious but non-professional. And except for a really murky last chapter on Smith and Lenin, the work stands as a solid and provocative piece of research. Recommended.