The Pristine Culture of Capitalism
A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States
Wood, Ellen Meiksins
Publisher: Verso
Year First Published: 1991
Year Published: 2015
Pages: 200pp ISBN: 978-0-6091-572-0
Dewey: 321.09
Resource Type: Book
Capitalism was born in England, yet the dominant Western conceptions of modernity have come from elsewhere, notably from France, the historical model of 'bourgeois' society. Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that what is supposed to have epitmoized bourgeois modernity, especiallythe emergence of the 'modern' state and political culture in Continental Europe, signalled the persistence of pre-capitalist social property relations.
Abstract:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
1. England, Capitalism and the Bourgeois Paradigm
The Bourgeois Paradigm
Marxism and the Bourgeois Paradigm
The Pecularities of the English and the Decline of Britain
2. The Modern State
Absolutism and the Modern State
The Idea of the State
The Peculiarities of the English State
State and Nation
The State-Nation of Ukania
The British Monarchy as General Will: Nation or Class?
Bourgeois Revolution and a Thoroughly Modern State?
3. The Missing Idea of Sovereignty
Legislative Sovereignty and the English Common Law
Common Law vs Roman Law: Rationality and Property
Thomas Hobbes and the Defence of Absolutism
4. Popular Sovereignty, Democracy and Revolution
Popular Sovereignty
The Danger of 'Levelling'
Republicanism or Constitutionalism?
Revolution and Tradition
5. Components of a Capitalist Culture
An Economy of Language
The 'Absent Centre' in English Social Thought
Social Theory and the Legacy of Absolutism
Social Totalities and Philosophical History
The Fragmentation of the Social World
6. A National Economy
A Classical Trading Interest or a New Commercial System?
An Incomplete Industrialization?
The State and Industry
London: Heart of a Capitalist Economy
Urbanism and Ruralism
Land and Commerce
7. No Great Transformation, Model I: England as Ancien Régime
The No-Social-Change Model
J.C.D. Clark: England an Ancien Régime?
An Ancien Régime is an Ancien Régime is an Ancien Régime
Parliament and Crown
The Theological Idiom
Patriarchalism
A 'Lockeian Consensus'?
8. No Great Transformation, Model II: England as Perennial Capitalism
Perennial Capitalism?
English Individualism and the Common Law
From Feudalism to Capitalism
Was There a Great Transformation?
Conclusion: Capitalism and the Ambiguity of Progress
Capitalism and Production
Capitalism and the Modern State
Capitalism and Democracy
Notes
Index
Subject Headings
