The Origin of Capitalism
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The Origin of Capitalism
Narrated by:
Jo Anna Perrin
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Narrated by:
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Jo Anna Perrin
About this listen
How did the dynamic economic system we know as capitalism develop among the peasants and lords of feudal Europe?
In The Origin of Capitalism, a now-classic work of history, Ellen Meiksins Wood offers a clear and accessible introduction to the theories and debates concerning the birth of capitalism, imperialism, and the modern nation state. Capitalism is not a natural and inevitable consequence of human nature, nor simply an extension of age-old practices of trade and commerce. Rather, it is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the relationship between humans and nature.
©1999 Monthly Review Press; 2002, 2017 by Ellen Meiksins Wood (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
The person hired to read for the audio book doesn’t seem to fully understand what they are reading as they put the emphasis in weird places in a sentence which made the book slightly more difficult to understand
Insightful socialist work on the origin of capitalism
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Clear, cogent review of the origins of capitalism
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The first of three parts is fairly dry and skippable, summarising contending theoretical viewpoints, but without enough detail to make them come to life. The third part ends with an argument connecting capitalism to post modernism, and the conclusion inveighs against so-called "market socialism". Both feel out of place, and more a product of things the author wanted to say about contemporary politics than anything else.
In between, the argument is developed well, albeit without the factual context and detail to make me really feel like I grasp the subject as a whole. The argument is that what is distinctive about capitalism is innovation in the direct process of mass commodity production, motivated by the desire to maximise profit in a competitive market, and drawing on "free" wage labour. Other candidates for the position of first capitalist economy, particularly the Dutch Republic, are considered and rejected for reasons that seem sound given the definition at work. There are some interesting discussions on the relation to each of political ideas (Locke, Petty), colonialism, and the emergence of the modern state.
Overall, it is pretty interesting, albeit light on detail. I was left wanting to know more, so perhaps it works well as an opinionated introduction.
The performance isn't amazing, a bit flat and sometimes loses the rhythm of the sentence, but fine if you're willing to concentrate a bit.
A polemic rather than a historical account
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terrible
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