The Utopia of Rules

by David Graeber

Giovanni Arrighi, the Italian political economist, has observed that after the South Sea Bubble, British capitalism largely abandoned the corporate form. The combination of high finance and small family firms that had emerged after the industrial revolution continued to hold throughout the next century—Marx’s London, a period of maximum scientific and technological innovation; or Manchester; or Birmingham were not dominated by large conglomerates but mainly by capitalists who owned a single factory. (This is one reason Marx could assume capitalism was characterized by constant cutthroat competition.) Britain at that time was also notorious for being just as generous to its oddballs and eccentrics as contemporary America is intolerant. One common expedient was to allow them to become rural vicars, who, predictably, became one of the main sources for amateur scientific discoveries.