Capitalism and Its Critics: A Long-Term View

Read this article about the history of capitalism. Although the term capitalism was coined in the 19th century, its practices are much older.

Endnotes

* Earlier versions of this text have been presented as lectures at the Germany Institute Amsterdam, 27 October 2016 and at the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts (Class of Humanities) in Brussels, 18 March 2017.

  1. Sven Beckert, "The New History of Capitalism," in Jürgen Kocka and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Capitalism. The Reemergence of a Historical Concept (London/New York, 2016), 235–249, here 235; Seth Rockman, What Makes the History of Capitalism Newsworthy? Journal of the Early Republic 34, no. 3 (2014): 439–466, esp. 439; Friedrich Lenger, "Die neue Kapitalismusgeschichte. Ein Forschungsbericht als Einleitung," Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 56 (2016): 3–37. Early usages of the concept are documented in: Jürgen Kocka, "Capitalism: The History of the Concept," in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed., ed. James D. Wright, vol. 3 (Amsterdam, 2015), 105–110.
  2. Overview and definition based on Jürgen Kocka, Capitalism. A Short History (Princeton, N.J., 2016), 7–24; further elaborated by Marcel van der Linden, "Final Thoughts," in Capitalism, eds. Kocka and van der Linden, 251–266, esp. 255–258.
  3. With many differentiations: Jacques Le Goff, La bourse et la vie: Economie et religion au Moyen Age (Paris, 1986); Martha C. Howell, Commerce before capitalism in Europe, 1300–1600 (London, 2010), 261–297;
  4. Giacomo Todeschini, "Credit and Debt: Patterns of Exchange in Western Christian Society," in Europas Aufstieg. Eine Spurensuche im späten Mittelalter, ed. Thomas Ertl (Wien, 2013), 139–160.
  5. Josef Kulischer, Allgemeine Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit. vol I, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1965), 229–278; M.C. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300–1600 (Cambridge, 2010); K.G. Persson, "Markets and Coercion in Medieval Europe," in The Cambridge History of Capitalism, vol. I, eds. L. Neal and J.G. Williamson (Cambridge, 2014), 225–266; Jacques Le Goff, Marchands et Banquiers au Moyen Age (Paris, 1956); Jacques Le Goff, Le Moyen Age et l'Argent (Paris, 2010); Giacomo Todeschini, "Theological Roots of the Medieval/Modern Merchants' Self-Representation," in The Self-Perception of Early Modern Capitalists, eds. Margaret C. Jacobs and Catherine Secretan (London, 2008), 17–46; Herman Van der Wee and G. Kurgan-van Hentenryk, eds., A History of European Banking, 2nd ed. (Antwerp, 2000), 71–112.
  6. This essentially older argument (Max Weber, Otto Hintze, Kenneth Pomeranz, Peer Vries) is well developed in: E.H. Mielants, The Origins of Capitalism and the "Rise of the West" (Philadelphia, 2007); in another version in: R. Bin Wong and J.-L. Rosenthal, Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2011).
  7. E.g. in: E.E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York, 2014); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York, 2014); Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, eds., Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (Philadelphia, 2015); Karl Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Marx/Engels Werke, vol. 33 (Berlin, 1962), 788.
  8. Last paragraphs based on Kocka, Capitalism, 54–83. On European expansion to Asia: Wolfgang Reinhard, Kleine Geschichte des Kolonialismus, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 2008), 27–65, esp. 42–47 (VOC); P.A. Frentrop, History of Corporate Governance, 1602–2002 (Amsterdam, 2002), 49–114; Newton quote: Patrick Brantlinger, Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain, 1694–1994 (Ithaca, NY, 1996), 44; C.P. Kindleberger and R. Aliber, Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, 5th ed. (Hoboken, NJ, 2005), 42, 58; Van der Wee and Kurgan-Van Hentenryk, eds., History, 117–264, esp. 260; T. Sokoll, Europäischer Bergbau im Übergang zur Neuzeit (Idstein, 1994); P. Kriedte et al., Industrialization before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis of Capitalism (Cambridge, 1981); Robert Brenner, "The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism," Past & Present 97 (1982): 16–113.
  9. Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther. Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs (Munich, 2012), 634.
  10. Most important: Albert O. Hirschman, Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 105–141, esp. 106; very good: Jerry Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought (New York, 2002; paperback 2003), 3–19 (on the older more skeptical perspectives) and 51–83 (on Smith); on changing views in the eighteenth century: J. Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (New York, 2010), 87–120; on changing cultural practices in England: Christiane Eisenberg, The Rise of Market Society in England, 1066–1800 (New York, 2014), 73–100.
  11. Documentation in Kocka, "Capitalism: The History of the Concept". On the temporal structure of capitalist practices and debates about capitalism: Jens Beckert, Imagined Futures. Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics (Cambridge, MA, 2016). On Max Weber's notions of capitalism: Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA, 1978, reprinted 2013), 63–166, 351–54, 1094–110; Max Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight (Glencoe, IL, 1927, reprinted 1950), 275–369; Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (1920), revised, trans. and intro. Stephen Kalberg (New York, 2010); Werner Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 3 vols. 2nd ed. (Munich/Leipzig, 1924–1927).
  12. With reference to the German case: Jürgen Kocka, Arbeitsverhältnisse und Arbeiterexistenzen: Grundlagen der Klassenbildung im 19. Jahrhundert (Bonn, 1990); Jürgen Kocka, Arbeiterleben und Arbeiterkultur. Die Entstehung einer sozialen Klasse (Bonn, 2015); Marcel van der Linden and J. Rojahn, eds., The Formation of Labour Movements 1870–1914, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1990).
  13. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 2nd ed. (New York, 1947), 81–86 ("creative destruction").
  14. The concept "organized capitalism" goes back to Rudolf Hilferding. See his Das Finanzkapital (Vienna, 1910). The concept was successfully tried out for purposes of historical analysis: Heinrich August Winkler, ed., Organisierter Kapitalismus: Voraussetzungen und Anfänge (Göttingen, 1974). Also see Colin Crouch, Industrial Relations and European State Tradition (Oxford, 1993). Relevant debates in the U.S. are analyzed in: H. Brick, Transcending Capitalism: Visions of a New Society in Modern American Thought (Ithaca, NY, 2006). On the movements away from "organized capitalism" in many Western countries since the 1970s/1980s: Claus Offe, Disorganized Capitalism: Contemporary Transformation of Work and Politics (London, 1985); P. Mirowski and D. Plehwe, eds., The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (Cambridge, MA, 2009); G.R. Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance (Cambridge, 2011); Ivan T. Berend, An Economic History of Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, 2013); Jürgen Osterhammel and N.P. Petersson, Globalization: A Short History (Princeton, NJ, 2009). My view on financialization, deregulation, and the changing relations between markets and states in recent decades is presented in Kocka, Capitalism, 114–124, 145–161.
  15. G.S. Becker and G.N. Becker, The Economics of Life: From Baseball to Affirmative Action to Immigration. How Real-World Issues Affect Our Everyday Life (New York, 1997); J. Mackey, Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business (Cambridge, MA, 2013).
  16. Cf. P.A. Hall and D. Soskice, eds., Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford, 2001); B. Amable, The Diversity of Modern Capitalism (Oxford, 2003); R. Dore, Stock Market Capitalism, Welfare Capitalism: Japan and Germany versus the Anglo-Saxons (Oxford, 2000).
  17. Usefully summarized in J.L. Van Zanden et al., How Was Life? Global Well-Being Since 1820 (Paris, 2014). Along a similar line: Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton, 2013).
  18. Amintori Fanfani, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism (Norfolk, VA, 2002); Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi, This Economy Kills: Pope Francis on Capitalism and Social Justice (Liturgical Press, 2015).
  19. Examples can be found in C. Tripp, Islam and the Moral Economy: The Challenge of Capitalism (Cambridge, 2006), though such totalizing condemnations of capitalism are also not unknown in the West.
  20. Basic: Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essays Toward a Global Labor History (Leiden, 2008). Cf. J. Breman, Outcast Labour in Asia: Circulation and Informalization of the Workers at the Bottom of the Economy (Oxford, 2012); Andreas Eckert, "Capitalism and Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa," in Capitalism, eds. Kocka and Van der Linden, 165–185.
  21. C. Honegger et al., eds., Strukturierte Verantwortungslosigkeit: Berichte aus der Bankenwelt (Frankfurt, 2010).
  22. Cf. A.B. Atkinson, Inequality. What Can be Done? (Cambridge, MA, 2015); Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, MA, 2014); Branco Milanovic, Global Inequality. A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (Cambridge, MA, 2016).
  23. Jürgen Kocka, Capitalism is not Democratic and Democracy not Capitalistic. Tensions and Opportunities in Historical Perspective (Florence, 2015); Jürgen Kocka, "Kapitalismus und Demokratie. Der historische Befund," Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 56 (2016): 39–50: Capitalism has existed and flourished under different political systems. There is scope for political choice and shaping. Much depends on the political orientations and energies a community can mobilize.
  24. E.g., Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York, 2014); Jürgen Renn and Bernd Scherer, eds., Das Anthropozän. Zum Stand der Dinge (Berlin, 2015); Michael Mann, "The End May Be Nigh, But for Whom?" in Does Capitalism Have a Future? eds. Immanuel Wallerstein et al. (Oxford, 2013), 71–97. On p. 94 Mann convincingly puts the relationship between capitalism and climate change in a much broader and more complex perspective: "The three great triumphs of the modern period - capitalism, the nation-state, and citizen rights - are responsible for the environmental crisis".
  25. There is something to be learned from very different authors such as Karl Polányi, The Great Transformation, New York, 1944); Schumpeter, Capitalism; M.J. Sandel, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (New York, 2012).
  26. Wolfgang Streeck, "How will Capitalism End?" New Left Review 87 (2014): 35–64; Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (New York, 2015); Paul Mason, PostCapitalism: A Guide to the Future (London, 2016).
  27. Cf. Paul Nolte, "Modernization and Modernity in History," in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 15, eds. Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (Oxford, 2001), 9954 ff.; Peter Wagner, Modernity as Experience and Interpretation: A New Sociology of Modernity (London, 2008).
  28. The Lifework of a Labor Historian: Essays in Honor of Marcel van der Linden