Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy

509 Pages·1996·54.29 MB·English

by  Terence J. Byres (auth.)

CAPITALISM FROM ABOVE AND
CAPITALISM FROM BELOW
Also by Terence J. Byres
FEUDALISM AND NON-EUROPEAN SOCIETIES (editor)
FOREIGN RESOURCES AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (editor)
INEQUALITY: India and China Compared, 1950-70 (with Peter Nolan)
SHARECROPPING AND SHARECROPPERS (editor)
THE GREEN REVOLUTION IN INDIA (with the assistance of Ben Crow)
THE STATE AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING IN INDIA (editor)
Capitalism from Above
and Capitalism from
Below
An Essay in Comparative Political Economy
Terence J. Byres
Professor of Political Economy
School of Oriental and African Studies
University ofL ondon
Palgrave
macmillan
© Terence J. Byers 1996
* Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1996
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ISBN 978-1-349-25119-3 ISBN 978-1-349-25117-9 (eBook)
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For Anne,
Catriona and Liam
Of course, infinitely diverse combinations of elements of this or that type of
capitalist evolution are possible, and only hopeless pedants could set about
solving the peculiar and complex problems arising merely by quoting this or
that opinion of Marx about a different historical epoch.
[Lenin, 1964a: 33]
In the effort to understand the history of a specific country a comparative per
spective can lead to asking very useful and sometimes new questions. There are
further advantages. Comparisons can serve as a rough negative check on accept
ed historical explanations. And a comparative approach may lead to new histori
cal generalizations.
[Barrington Moore, 1967: xiii]
There is a deep inner relationship between the agrarian question and industrial
capital, which determines the characteristic structures of capitalism in the
various countries. For our part, what the author of Capital wrote about his
fatherland in 1867, in the preface to the first edition, still holds true, despite the
different stage of world history: •A longside of modem evils, a whole series of
inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes
of production, with their inevitable train of social and political anachronism.'
[Takahashi, 1976: 96-7]
Contents
List of Tables xi
Preface xii
Foreword xv
Map of the Pre-1871 Provinces of Prussia xx
Map of the United States ofA merica in 1912 xxii
PART I THE PROBLEMATIC
1 Origins, Context and Method 3
1 Models to Analyse the Agrarian Question in
Contemporary Poor Countries: Too Few, Too Stereotyped
and Too Narrow 3
2 Some Central Propositions of Political Economy:
The Primacy of Class Analysis and the Role and Nature
of the State 6
3 The Comparative Method within a Political Economy
Framework and Some Caveats 8
4 Historical Puzzles IS
2 The Agrarian Question, Diversity of Agrarian Transition
and the Two Paths: 'Capitalism From Above' and
'Capitalism From Below' 20
1I The Diversity of Successful Agrarian Transition 20
2 The Agrarian Question: The Kautsky-Lenin View and the
Development of Capitalism in the Countryside 22
3 A New Layer of Meaning and the Broad Reading of
Agrarian Transition 25
4 The Prussian Path: A Second Transition and Its Suggested
Broad Nature 27
5 Lenin and the Broad Nature of the American Path:
Capitalism From Below 30
PART II THE PRUSSIAN PATH: CAPITALISM FROM ABOVE
3 From 'One of Europe's Freest Peasantries' to Feudalism
and the Eve of Abolition of Serfdom 43
1 Prussia East of the Elbe, Prussia as a Whole, and
Post-1871 United Germany 43
vii
viii Contents
2 Feudalism, Capitalism and the Prussian Feudal Landlord
Class 46
3 One of Europe's Freest Peasantries: From the Late Tenth
to the Early Sixteenth Century 48
4 The Prussian Junkers and the Long-Term Rise of Prussian
Feudalism: c. 1400 to 1600 56
5 Why the Prussian Outcome?: A 'Balance of Class Forces'
Explanation 62
6 The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Correspondence
Between Forces and Relations of Production, 'New Lease
of Life' for Gutsherrschaft, and Intensification of Labour Rent 68
7 The Eighteenth Century and Through to the Early
Nineteenth Century: (i) Bauernlegen, the Contradiction
Between State and Junkers, and Bauernschutz 71
8 The Eighteenth Century and Through to the Early
Nineteenth Century: (ii) The Developing Contradiction
Between Forces of Production and Property Relations 75
9 Peasant Differentiation and the Burden of Surplus
Appropriation: East of the Elbe in the Late Eighteenth Century 81
10 Peasant Struggle: Its Nature and Implications 90
4 The Prussian Transition: Full-Blooded Capitalism From
Above and Its Consequences 104
1 The Prussian State, the Abolition of Serfdom, and the Aftermath 104
2 The Post-Emancipation Class Structure: 1807-71 114
3 Capitalism From Above and the Productive Forces: 1807-71 126
4 Capitalist Industrialisation and Prussian Agrarian Transition. 137
A Note on Writing on Prussian Agrarian History 157
PART III THE AMERICAN PATHS
5 Attempted Feudalism, Primitive Accumulation and
Eradication of Native Populations 161
Lenin, Diversity, and the Division Between North and
South 161
2 The 'Absence' of Feudalism 165
3 American Indians and Primitive Accumulation in North
America 186
4 The Labour Problem and Two Dramatically Different
Solutions 211
6 The South: Slavery 217
1 The Colonial Era: Beginnings, the Rooting and Growth
of Slavery, and the Regional Slave Economies 217
Contents ix
2 The Antebellum Era 222
3 The Agrarian Class Structure in the South and the
Dominance of Slavery 228
4 The General Nature of Slavery: Surplus Extraction via
the Most Extreme Form of Unfree Labour 229
5 The Nature of the Planter Class in the South 230
6 The Nature of Slaves as a Class and The Implications of
Slavery for the Productive Performance of Agriculture and
for Accumulation 239
7 The Class of Yeoman Farmers 263
8 Slavery and the Implications for Technical Change in
Agriculture and Rising Agricultural Productivity 266
9 Slavery and the Implications for Capitalist Industrialisation 267
10 Why Slavery? Embracing a 'Class-Based' Explanation 274
7 The Postbellum South: From Slavery, Through Unfree
Labour to Wage Labour 282
1 The Demise of Slavery 282
2 From Planter Class to Landlord Class and from Slave
Labour to Sharecropping :via a Brief Interlude of
Attempted Capitalism 285
3 Sharecropping 295
4 The Sharecropping Relationship 306
5 Sharecropping and the Productive Forces in Agriculture 312
6 Yeoman Farmers in the Sharecropping Milieu of the
Post bellum South 325
7 Sharecropping and its Implications for Industrialisation
in the South 327
8 The Sweeping Away of Sharecropping 332
8 The North and the West: From Early to Advanced Petty
Commodity Production 342
1 The Broad Questions and the Need for Regional Specification 342
2 The Jeffersonian Vision 342
3 Some Recapitulation and a Note on Charles Post's Work 346
4 The Colonial and Antebellum Eras: From Early Simple
Commodity Production to Advanced Simple Commodity
Production 348
5 Contesting the 'Independent Household Production'
Categorisation: The Notion of Early 'Simple' Commodity
Production 361
6 Transition to a New Social Form in the Countryside of the
North 363
7 Advanced Simple Commodity Production 367