Abstract
For progressive academics, knowledge and sciences are not ends in themselves, but important levers for change–it is our self-understanding that ‘before we can change the world, we first have to understand it’ (Hyman 2012: 163). And as Henry Heller writes in this book, ‘if we want to understand the present, and act effectively within it, knowledge of the past is more necessary than ever’, because ‘to understand what is happening now, we have to understand how we got there’. In this tradition, the new series ‘The Future of World Capitalism’ wants to ‘foster intellectual renewal, restoring the radical heritage that gave us the international labour movement, the women’s movement, classical Marxism, and the great revolutions of the twentieth century’. It is therefore no surprise to find, given this understanding of history, that the first book in this series deals with the past. Henry Heller, a professor of history at the University of Manitoba, Canada, sets the stage for the discussions on the future of capitalism as well as making the discussion about the transition from feudalism to capitalism (‘the birth of capitalism’) accessible to the wider public. This is a discussion that has been going on for quite some time, and involves Maurice Dobb and Rodney Hilton as well as Immanuel Wallerstein, Robert Brenner and Perry Anderson. Building on their seminal works, Heller tries to add the political dimension. In his view, capitalism is certainly a mode of production, but must be understood as a political entity too. The author makes the political order central to his account of capitalism’s history, underscoring the role of the state in nurturing capitalism at its beginnings, overseeing its development through mercantilism and through combined and uneven development, and then being itself transformed by revolution.
The book is organised across six chapters, which follow the narrative on the rise of capitalism more or less chronologically from its origins 500 years ago to the present, where it unfolded in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Brenner starts with the decline of feudalism and the first, not fully sustainable experiments with capitalism in Italy, Germany and France. Capitalism was only here to stay in England, which is the focus of Chapter 3. Brenner then looks at the bourgeois revolutions in Holland, England and France, which were in his view indispensable to the full flowering of capitalism. The subsequent chapter deals with the role of the state in supporting or instituting capitalism (political capitalism), for which the author uses the diverse examples of the USA, Prussia, Scotland and Japan. It also treats the issues of free trade, colonialism and slavery, which were important drivers in the development of capitalism. Chapter 6 deals with the industrial revolution from a Marxist point of view, drawing heavily on the works of Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson and Perry Anderson. The final chapter places capitalism in a global perspective, attacking Eurocentrist narratives. Brenner points out the critical role of state-backed colonialism and imperialism in fostering the success of Western capitalism, and blocking its development elsewhere. But the restructuring of social and political relations through war and revolution in the 20th century has produced a model of capitalist accumulation in China and East Asia which is now outcompeting that of the West. According to Heller, there is no reason to believe that such an Asian capitalism would benefit humanity as a whole any more than does that of the West. In fact, the aspiration to replace Eurocentrism with some kind of Asian hegemony will likely run up against the same multiple contradictions of intensifying class conflict, crisis of peak oil, ecological crisis and insufficient demand in the world economy.
What is the conclusion? Heller’s powerful narrative on the development of capitalism underscores the fact that the state and its territorial base continue to be essential to the ongoing operation of capitalism, and yet it has become an obstacle to the further development of capitalism as a global system with an appropriate global means of regulating itself. Indeed, the development of such a worldwide mechanism, necessarily limiting the power of the territorial state, might well constitute a barrier to further capital accumulation. In the light of this crisis of the capitalist state, the objective of the working class should be – according to the author – to organise itself politically in order to advance democratisation of the political order, locally, nationally and internationally, as an alternative to capitalism.
To sum up, this is a very useful book for readers in search of a comprehensive and critical account of the transition debate from a classical Marxist perspective. It pulls together the different strands of the discussion and refers to the important works in the field without neglecting issues of colonialism and slavery and post-colonialism, although feminist theory does not feature prominently. It is a valuable resource as a first, but thorough, introduction into the topic, providing a good overview and encouraging the reader to read some of the original literature on which Heller draws heavily. The Birth of Capitalism may therefore be especially valuable as material on an academic course on capitalism, its origins and its development.