Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism

312 Pages·1995·5.3 MB·English

by  Ellen Meiksins Wood

Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that, with the collapse of Com-
munism, the theoretical project of Marxism and its critique of
capitalism is more timely and important than ever. Current
intellectual fashions of the left which emphasize 'post-modern'
fragmentation, 'difference', contingency and the 'politics of
identity' can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let
alone subject the capitalist system to critique. In this book she
sets out to renew the critical programme of historical material-
ism by redefining its basic concepts and its theory of history in
original and imaginative ways, using them to identify the
specificity of capitalism as a system of social relations and
political power. She goes on to explore the concept of democ-
racy in both the ancient and modern world, examining the
concept's relation to capitalism, and raising questions about
how democracy might go beyond the limits imposed on it by
capitalism.

DEMOCRACY AGAINST CAPITALISM

DEMOCRACY AGAINST
CAPITALISM
Renewing historical materialism
ELLEN MEIKSINS WOOD
| CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 1995
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1995
Reprinted 1996, 1999, 2000
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data applied for
ISBN o 521 47096 x hardback
ISBN o 521 47682 8 paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2003
For Peter, Joyce and Robin

Contents
Acknowledgements page x
Introduction i
I HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THE SPECIFICITY
OF CAPITALISM
1 The separation of the 'economic' and the 'political'
in capitalism ig
2 Rethinking base and superstructure 49
3 Class as process and relationship 76
4 History or technological determinism? 108
5 History or teleology? Marx versus Weber 146
II DEMOCRACY AGAINST CAPITALISM
6 Labour and democracy, ancient and modern 181
7 The demos versus 'we, the people': from ancient to
modern conceptions of citizenship 204
8 Civil society and the politics of identity 238
9 Capitalism and human emancipation: race, gender
and democracy 264
Conclusion 284
Index 294
ix
Acknowledgements
This volume is, and is not, a collection of essays. It is a collection in
the sense that the volume is in large part based on articles already
published or in press, but I hope it is more than 'merely' a collection.
This is so both because I have not simply included these essays just as
they were but have revised and integrated them, or in some cases
only parts of them, and also because I regard them as from the start
a coherent body of work. The unifying themes and the ways in
which one essay builds upon another will, I think, be more or less
self-evident, though in the Introduction there are some general
reflections on the dominant themes and their historical context, as
well as some comments on what I have done to the essays for the
purposes of this volume. Here, I simply wish to thank all the original
publishers and the many people who have, in one way or another
and at one time or another, helped me with one or more of the
chapters.
Chapter i is a modified version of 'The Separation of the
Economic and the Political in Capitalism', originally published in
New Left Review 127 (1981); chapter 2 is an edited version of'Falling
Through the Cracks: E.P. Thompson and the Debate on Base and
Superstructure' from Harvey J. Kaye and Keith McLelland eds.,
E.P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990);
chapter 3 is a revision, with some new material, of 'The Politics of
Theory and the Concept of Class: E.P. Thompson and His Critics',
first published in Studies in Political Economy 9 (1982). Chapter 4
contains new material, together with several combined and integra-
ted essays, or parts of them, from the New Left Review. 'Marxism and
the Course of History', NLR 147 (1984); some small sections from
'Rational Choice Marxism: Is the Game Worth the Candle?', NLR
177 (1989), and 'Explaining Everything or Nothing?', NLR (1990).
Chapter 5 is a new essay, intended for a volume on Marxist historio-