===================== HES POSTING ======================
> One can find examples in Ancient Greece, in Rome, in Florence, in
> Muscovy, and throughout Japan, China, and Europe, of INDIVIDUALS who
> made fortunes in commerce and rose in society. But one cannot find,
> prior to the 19th century, any society in which the MAJORITY OF THE
> POPULATION'S STATUS AND LIFE-CHANCES WERE DETERMINED BY THEIR SUCCESS
> IN A FREE MARKET FOR LABOR.
I am not sure about much earlier periods, but the labour market surely
dominated long before the nineteenth century in England. Serfdom
was gone before the end of the medieval period. Agriculture was
thoroughly commercialized by the sixteenth/seventeenth century. There
was a spectrum of farm size, but smallholders worked for others to
supplement their incomes and larger farmers hired help. The labour
market penetrated deeply from early on. I have seen it claimed that a
considerable proportion of the rural labour force worked for wages as
early as the thirteenth century in England. (Memory says 30% of the
labour force, but I haven't checked that. The only reference I have to
hand is to Banaji, Capital and Class, 1977, which is about India but
draws the comparison with medieval England.) There was a fair bit of
social mobility in early modern England. It is, incidentally, still
true that many people in the countryside, at least in England, have
their fingers in many pies. I think of people I know who may have some
entrepreneurial role, maybe in high technology modern industries, but
who also raise a few animals, let rooms/cottages to tourists, and help
out on neighbouring farms. Different roles in lots of different
markets. That is a tradition which goes back a long way. Oversimple
capitalis/pre-capitalist distinctions aren't very helpful.
----------------------
Tony Brewer ([log in to unmask])
University of Bristol, Department of Economics
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