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Published by EH.NET (June 2000)
Richard Grassby, _The Idea of Capitalism before the Industrial
Revolution_. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. ix + 145 pp.
$50.00 (cloth), $14.95 (paper), ISBN: 0-847-69362-1 (cloth), 0-8476-
9633-2 (paper).
Reviewed for EH.NET by Richard F. Teichgraeber III, Murphy
Institute of Political Economy and Department of History, Tulane
University. <[log in to unmask]>
This book appears at a time when the bloody struggle between
capitalism and socialism unexpectedly seems to have ended, and
now we must wonder why capitalism triumphed and where it is
leading us. Yet Richard Grassby, who has written several books on
the economic and social history of early-modern England, and is
currently a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, suggests
almost all our talk of the triumph of capitalism is mistaken.
Investigating the origins and evolution of the term, he reminds us
that "capitalism" did not exist as a distinct idea before the
Industrial Revolution, and that it first gained prominence only at the
turn of the last century as "the essential Manichean bogeyman of
socialist theory" (p. 68). Since then, "capitalism" has been revised
and expanded in various ways to provide explanations for
innovations in almost every field of modern human activity. The
result, according to Grassby, is an idea that retains some
symbolic importance but little historical reality or explanatory
power. "When we try to understand the modern world," he
concludes, " the idea of capitalism constitutes the problem, not the
solution" (p. 61).
Grassby's insistence that even the most refined models of
capitalism fail to account for how change takes place over time
should sound familiar to specialists who know the economic and
social history of pre-industrial Europe. In fact, many historians have
shared Grassby's doubts about the explanatory power of
capitalism, and his argument perhaps would have been stronger
had he directly enlisted their support, rather than assembling a
familiar inventory of ambiguities and inconsistencies that color the
work of those who have refused to heed the call to cut the term
"capitalism" from their vocabulary.
Readers more interested in understanding where capitalism,
currently unchecked by any substantial opposition and giddy with
self-congratulation, may be taking us, will find that Grassby has
disappointingly little to say. Although we are told his book will
explore the influence of this still powerful idea on the formation of
the world in which we live, the issue is never directly or
systematically addressed. Those who recall Andrew Shonfield's
brief yet persuasive justification for the continued use of the word
"capitalism" -- "no one, not even its severest critics, has proposed
a better word to put in its place" -- are not likely to be swayed by
anything Grassby says. (Andrew Shonfield, _Modern Capitalism:
The Changing Balance of Public and Private Power_, Oxford
University Press, 1965, p. 3.) For in rehearsing the complex and
contested history of the word, he too offers nothing to take its
place.
That the biggest questions in history often seem intractable is no
breath-taking insight. What is capitalism? How has it changed over
time? Can various conceptions of capitalism be unified? Grassby
has raised these questions, however, not to open them to further
inquiry, so much as to dismiss them out of hand. He, perhaps,
could have addressed them more helpfully by beginning with a
query of a different order, and one that can be answered: "Why
must capitalism constitute the central problem in any effort to
understand the modern world?"
Richard F. Teichgraeber III is author of _'Free Trade' and Moral
Philosophy: Rethinking the Sources of Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations_ (Duke University Press, 1986).
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contact the EH.NET Administrator ([log in to unmask];
Telephone: 513-529-2850; Fax: 513-529-3308). Published by
EH.NET (June 2000).
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