History of Capitalism

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Below are groups and resources (books, articles, websites, etc.) related to this topic. Click on an item’s title to go its resource page with author, publisher, description/abstract and other details, a link to the full text if available, as well as links to related topics in the Subject Index. You can also browse the Title, Author, Subject, Chronological, Dewey, LoC, and Format indexes, or use the Search box.
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Connexions Library

The Accumulation of Capital
Luxemburg, Rosa
Book
1913
Rosa Luxemburg's analysis of the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation.
The Accumulation of Capital An Anti-Critique and Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital
Luxemburg, Rosa; Bukharin, Nikolai
Book
1924
Rosa Luxemburg's response to the criticisms of her book 'The Accumulation of Capital'. This volume also includes Nikolai Bukharin's reply to Luxemburg, 'Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital'.
Bloody Legislation Against the Expropriated, from the End of the 15th Century. Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of Parliament: Capital, Volume One: Chapter 28
Marx, Karl
Article
1867
Agricultural people: first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline ne...
Das Capital, Volume 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
Marx, Karl
Book
1867
Marx's great work sets out to grasp and portray the totality of the capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that emerges from it. He describes and connects all its economic features, ...
Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil
Frank, Andre Gunder
Book
1967
The four essays in this book offer a sweeping reinterpretation of Latin American history as an aspect of the world-wide spread of capitalism in its commercial and industrial phases.
Capitalism and Slavery
Williams, Eric
Book
1944
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy in...
The Communist Manifesto in Perspective
Hobsbawm, Eric
Article
1998
Eric Hobsbawm’s opening address to the international conference organised by Espaces Marx on the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto.
The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume I: Economic Writings 1
Luxemburg, Rosa (Edited by Peter Hudis
Book
2013
This first volume in Rosa Luxemburg's Complete Works, entitled Economic Writings 1, contains some of Luxemburg's most important statements on the globalization of capital, wage labour, imperialism, an...
The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume II: Economic Writings 2
Luxemburg, Rosa (Edited by Peter Hudis and Paul Le Blanc)
Book
2015
This volume contains a new English translation of Luxemburg’s most important book, The Accumulation of Capital (1913) as well as her response to its critics. Taken together, they constitute one of the...
Connexions Library: History Focus Page
Website
2009
Selected articles, books, documents and other resources on historical topics.
The Economy of Cities
Jacobs, Jane
Book
1970
Ideas about what makes cities rich or poor, how cities grow, and how city growth affects national economies.
Eurocentrism
Amin, Samir
Book
Amin argues that Eurocentrism is an ideological distortion, a myth and historical fallacy and argues for a new social, economic, cultural and political system based on socialist universalism.
The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time
Polanyi, Karl
Book
1944
Polanyi analyzes the social and political upheavals that took place in England during the rise of the market economy. Polanyi contends that the modern market economy and the modern nation-state should...
The History of Canadian Business 1867-1914: Volume I - The Banks and Finance Capital
Naylor, Tom
Book
1975
A comprehensive history of Canadian business and a detailed account of the development of commerce and industry in the formative period from Confederation to the first World War. In Volume 1 on the ba...
The History of Canadian Business 1867-1914: Volume II - Industrial Development
Naylor, Tom
Book
1975
This comprehensive two-volume history of Canadian business is a detailed account of the development of commerce and industry in the formative period from Confederation to the first World War. Volume I...
A History of Canadian Wealth
Myers, Gustavus
Book
1914
Myers lays bare the corruption, swindling, land deals, and bribery that are at the basis of Canadian history. This is Canada's past seen through the eyes of a muckraker.
The Industrial Development of Poland
Luxemburg, Rosa
Book
1898
First published in 1898, under the title Die Industrielle Entwicklung Polens.
The Invention of Capitalism: How a Self-Sufficient Peasantry was Whipped Into Industrial Wage Slaves
Levine, Yasha
Article
Levine reviews the transition from peasantry to industrial labour and the impacts of captitalism in workers.
Karl Marx: Economist or Revolutionary?
Cleaver, Harry
Article
1983
Cleaver illustrates how, in the history of Marxist work on the theory of crisis, many have forgotten the revolutionary content of Marx’s own work and thus left themselves open to the dangers of capita...
Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution: Volume II: The Politics of Social Classes
Draper, Hal
Book
1978
Draper ranges through the development of the thought of Marx and Engels on the role of classes in society.
Man's Worldly Goods: The Story of the Wealth of Nations
Huberman, Leo
Book
1936
Huberman sets out to explain history using economic theory, and to explain economic theory using history. He tries to explain, in terms of the development of economic thought, why certain doctrines ar...
Marx on Economics
Marx, Karl (Freedman ed.)
Book
1961
A systematic compilation of extracts drawn from Marx's publications with brief summaries of their arguments.
A Marxist History of the World part 29: The peculiarity of Europe: e
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2011
Why Europe? Why was it that the second great transformation in human existence - the development of capitalism and industrial society - was pioneered on the western edge of the Eurasian land-mass?
A Marxist History of the World part 34: The new monarchies
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2011
Neil Faulkner looks at how the transition from feudalism to capitalism introduced a new model of unified states, centralised government, royal armies, internal repression and national-dynastic wars.
A Marxist History of the World part 50: The Industrial Revolution
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2011
Frederick Engels was sent to Manchester, centre of the Industrial Revolution, to dispel his radicalism. Instead it made him the revolutionary he is remembered as today, Neil Faulkner explains.
A Marxist History of the World part 53: What is Marxism?
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2011
In his latest instalment, Neil Faulkner explores the complex history of Marxism - and how capitalism produced its own gravediggers.
A Marxist History of the World part 54: What is Capitalism?
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2011
In this critical chapter of his world history, Neil Faulkner explores capitalism and what it means from the Industrial Revolution to the present day.
A Marxist History of the World part 58: The Meiji Restoration
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
An event which would shape the history of the Far East until 1945, Japan’s bourgeois revolution ‘from above’ is explored by Neil Faulkner in this week's Marxist History.
Mining History Written in Blood
Sandronsky, Seth
Article
2018
Domestic coal mining history above and below ground lives on the pages of Written in Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction edited by Wess Harris (PM Press, 2017). The anth...
The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View
Wood, Ellen Meiksins
Book
Ellen Meiksins Wood offers readers 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 nat...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - December 17, 2017: Collective Memory and Cultural Amnesia
Diemer, Ulli
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2017
Our society is obsessed with the short-term present. It devalues memory and the past. But there are those who do remember, and who work to preserve and share our collective memory. But they have to co...
Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations
Marx, Karl (with an introduction by Eric J. Hobsbawm)
Book
1858
Thes notes of 1857-1858 throw light on Marx's views concerning the economic development of human society as a whole, from "primitive communism" to capitalism and socialistm. The notes deal partcularly...
Seeds of Fire: A People's Chronology
Diemer, Ulli
Article
2012
Recalling events that happened on this day in history. Memories of struggle, resistance and persistence.
A Short History of Primitive Accumulation: From Adam Smith to Angela Merkel
Perelman, Michael
Article
2013
In Capital, Smith’s concept of “original accumulation” appeared as a word that could mean either original or primitive. Then in the English translation of the English translation of Capital “primitive...
Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism - Book Review: Edward E. Baptist’s "The Half Has Never Been Told"
Larson, Charles R.
Article
2014
A review of Edward E. Baptist’s examination of slavery, presented in an entirely new way, extensively through the voices of the slaves themselves.
Studies in the Development of Capitalism
Dobb, Maurice M.A.
Book
1947
A Marxist interpretation of economic development in the period of modern capitalism. Starting with the decline of serfdom, the book deals with the beginnings of the bourgeoisie in the rising urban com...
The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism: A Symposium
Sweezy, P.M; Dobb,M; Takahashi H.K; Hilton,R; Hill,C.
Book
1967
What is Economics?
Luxemburg, Rosa
Book
1916
An outline of economics from a Marxist perspective.

Sources Library

A Marxist History of the World part 84: State Capitalism in Russia
Faulkner, Neil
2012
By the end of the 1920s, Stalin's party-state apparatus had become the dominant force in Russian society. A bureaucratic ruling class was formed, and all forms of dissent and resistance were treated a...
Spartacus Educational
Simkin, John
1997
Free educational resource for history teachers and students. With particular focus on Britain, the USA, Russia, Germany, WWI, WWII, Women's history, Black history, Civil Rights.