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Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism
This edited volume builds and expands on the groundbreaking work of Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood on the origins of capitalism. Whereas Brenner and Wood focused mostly on the emergence of capitalism in the English countryside (agrarian capitalism), this book utilizes their approach to offer original, theoretically sophisticated, and empirically informed accounts of transitions to capitalism – both agrarian and industrial – in a wide range of countries in order to provide within a single volume a diverse collection of relatively brief yet detailed case studies of the historical transition to capitalism distributed across three continents. Offering a new and highly original analysis of the global spread of capitalism, this book will be a unique contribution to the longstanding debate on the transition to capitalism.
372 pages, Paperback
Published December 22, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 13, 2026
Dry as a brick. Buckle down and read this shit. It is essential
March 31, 2020
Took me a while to get through this.
A very educational edited collection of 'Political Marxist' analyses of the emergence of capitalism in various regions and countries, bookended by two useful chapters by the editors summarising the 'Political Marxist' methodology and where the research programme can go from here. Brazil, Canada, Cataluña, England, France, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, and the US all feature. Given that it's an edited collection the quality of writing and argumentation is uneven, but the majority of contributions either competently introduce the reader to the nuances of a lesser-known case study or offer an original and conceptually fresh take on a familiar topic (e.g. the transition to agrarian capitalism in England, the industrial revolution, Japan's successful 'revolution from above', etc) .
There is also an interesting, more purely theoretical, chapter on the (potential) synthesis of Political Marxism and social reproduction/Marxist feminism.
A very educational edited collection of 'Political Marxist' analyses of the emergence of capitalism in various regions and countries, bookended by two useful chapters by the editors summarising the 'Political Marxist' methodology and where the research programme can go from here. Brazil, Canada, Cataluña, England, France, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, and the US all feature. Given that it's an edited collection the quality of writing and argumentation is uneven, but the majority of contributions either competently introduce the reader to the nuances of a lesser-known case study or offer an original and conceptually fresh take on a familiar topic (e.g. the transition to agrarian capitalism in England, the industrial revolution, Japan's successful 'revolution from above', etc) .
There is also an interesting, more purely theoretical, chapter on the (potential) synthesis of Political Marxism and social reproduction/Marxist feminism.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews