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The Ellen Meiksins Wood Reader 2012 The Ellen Meiksins Wood Reader i-xiv_PATRIQUIN_F1_prelims.indd 1 8/9/2012 3:00:34 PM Historical Materialism Book Series Editorial Board Sébastien Budgen, Paris – Steve Edwards, London Marcel van der Linden, Amsterdam – Peter Thomas, London VOLUME 40 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/hm i-xiv_PATRIQUIN_F1_prelims.indd 2 8/9/2012 3:00:34 PM Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Ellen Meiksins Wood reader / edited by Larry Patriquin. p. cm. — (Historical materialism book series ; v. 40) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-23008-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Political sociology. 2. Political science—Philosophy. 3. Political science—Philosophy— History. I. Patriquin, Larry. II. Title. JA76.W66 2012 306.2—dc23 2012008346 ISSN 1570-1522 ISBN 978 90 04 23008 8 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 23009 5 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. i-xiv_PATRIQUIN_F1_prelims.indd 4 8/9/2012 3:00:34 PM Contents Preface .............................................................................................................. ix Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ xi Introduction: The ‘Method’ of Ellen Meiksins Wood ................................ 1 1. Capitalism ................................................................................................... 18 The ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ in capitalism ................................ 18 Class-power and state-power ............................................................... 21 Feudalism and private property .......................................................... 23 Capitalism as the privatisation of political power ............................ 26 The localisation of class-struggle ......................................................... 27 England vs. the dominant model of capitalism ................................. 30 The bourgeois paradigm ....................................................................... 32 Begging the question ............................................................................. 37 Opportunity or imperative? .................................................................. 39 The commercialisation-model .............................................................. 40 Marx on the transition ........................................................................... 42 Towns and trade ..................................................................................... 44 Agrarian capitalism ................................................................................ 46 Market-dependent producers ............................................................... 50 A different kind of market-dependence? ............................................ 58 Competitive markets .............................................................................. 59 2. Precapitalist Societies ................................................................................ 62 Class and state in China and Rome ..................................................... 62 Rome and the empire of private property .......................................... 66 The city-states of Florence and Venice ................................................ 69 Master and slave vs. landlord and peasant ........................................ 72 Free producers and slaves ..................................................................... 74 Slavery and the ‘decline’ of the Roman Empire ................................ 76 The ‘logic’ of slavery vs. the logic of capitalism ................................ 77 The ‘slave-mode of production’ ........................................................... 79 i-xiv_PATRIQUIN_F1_prelims.indd 5 8/9/2012 3:00:34 PM vi • Contents Agricultural slavery and the peasant-citizen ..................................... 82 The nexus of freedom and slavery in democratic Athens ................ 88 3. The State in Historical Perspective .......................................................... 92 Class and state in ancient society ......................................................... 92 The emergence of the polis in ancient Athens .................................... 94 The ‘essence’ of the polis ........................................................................ 97 Class in the democratic polis ................................................................. 101 Village and state, town and country, in democratic Athens .......... 106 The rise and fall of Rome ...................................................................... 109 The culture of property: Roman law ................................................... 114 From imperial Rome to ‘feudalism’ ..................................................... 120 Absolutism and the modern state ........................................................ 131 The idea of the state ............................................................................... 132 The peculiarities of the English state ................................................... 135 Contrasting states: France vs. England ............................................... 136 4. Social and Political Thought ................................................................... 141 The social history of political theory ................................................... 141 Political theory in history: an overview .............................................. 146 Plato .......................................................................................................... 150 The Greek concept of freedom ............................................................ 156 Jean-Jacques Rousseau .......................................................................... 163 John Locke ............................................................................................... 172 Revolution and tradition, c. 1640–1790 ............................................... 178 5. Democracy, Citizenship, Liberalism, and Civil Society ....................... 183 Labour and democracy, ancient and modern .................................... 183 From ancient to modern conceptions of citizenship ......................... 185 Capitalism and democratic citizenship ............................................... 189 The American redefinition of democracy ........................................... 192 A democracy devoid of social content ................................................ 196 From democracy to liberalism .............................................................. 198 Capitalism and ‘liberal democracy’ ..................................................... 202 Liberal democracy and capitalist hegemony ..................................... 206 The idea of ‘civil society’ ....................................................................... 210 The civil-society argument .................................................................... 213 ‘Civil society’ and the devaluation of democracy ............................. 217 i-xiv_PATRIQUIN_F1_prelims.indd 6 8/9/2012 3:00:34 PM Contents • vii 6. The Enlightenment, Postmodernism, and the Post-‘New Left’ ........... 221 Modernity vs. capitalism: France vs. England ................................... 221 From modernity to postmodernity ...................................................... 224 Modernity and the non-history of capitalism .................................... 226 Themes of the postmodern Left ......................................................... 228 Enlightenment vs. capitalism: Condorcet vs. Locke ......................... 232 Enlightenment-universalism ................................................................ 236 The periodisation of the Western Left ................................................. 238 Left-intellectuals and contemporary capitalism ................................ 241 7. Globalisation and Imperialism ................................................................. 244 Globalisation and the nation-state ....................................................... 244 Nation-states, classes, and universal capitalism ................................ 246 The indispensable state ......................................................................... 248 Precapitalist imperialism ....................................................................... 250 The classic age of imperialism .............................................................. 254 Globalisation and war ........................................................................... 256 Globalisation and imperial hegemony ................................................ 260 The contradictions of capitalist imperialism ...................................... 262 8. Socialism .....................................................................................................
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