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The Invention of Capitalism

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time, the incontestable fact remains that most people in Britain did not enthusiastically engage in wage labor—at least so long as they had an alternative. — location: 188 ^ref-37135

the dispossession of the majority of small-scale producers and the construction of laissez-faire are closely connected, so much so that Marx, or at least his translators, labeled this expropriation of the masses as “primitive accumulation.” — location: 192 ^ref-1086

the underlying development strategy of the classical political economists was consistent with a crude proto-Marxian model of primitive accumulation, which concluded that nonmarket forces might be required to speed up the process of capitalist assimilation in the countryside. — location: 205 ^ref-53407

classical political economy advocated restricting the viability of traditional occupations in the countryside to coerce people to work for wages. — location: 212 ^ref-43100

Even though the new institutionalist school concerns itself with the social division of labor, its theories are of no use in analyzing the coercive nature of primitive accumulation, since this school sees the economy arranging itself through voluntary contracts. — location: 229 ^ref-39464

The classical political economists were unwilling to trust market forces to determine the social division of labor because they found the tenacity of traditional rural producers to be distasteful. Rather than contending that market forces should determine the fate of these small-scale producers, classical political economy called for state interventions of one sort or another to hobble these — location: 236 ^ref-28072

If efficiency were of great importance to them, the classical political economists would not have ignored the law permitting the gentry to ride across small farmers’ fields in pursuit of foxes while forbidding the farmers from ridding their land of game that might eat the crops. — location: 241 ^ref-56651

efforts to create a capitalistic social division of labor. — location: 251 ^ref-62899

The subject typically cropped up when they were acknowledging that the market seemed incapable of engaging the rural population fast enough to suit them—or more to the point, that people were resisting wage labor. — location: 261 ^ref-20299

Just as a psychologist might detect a crucial revelation in a seemingly offhand remark of a patient, from time to time classical political economy discloses to us insights into its program that the classical political economists would not consciously welcome. — location: 265 ^ref-11388

All too often, seemingly open-minded reviews of the past are merely a means to justify preexisting views of the present. — location: 276 ^ref-47264

In the early stages of the development of a technology, seemingly trivial accidents can determine which of several technological paths is chosen. Once industry becomes locked into a particular technological standard, it may continue to follow that line of development even though hindsight shows that the neglected paths might have been superior — location: 292 ^ref-52331

Smith’s Wealth of Nations, as we shall see, was not a particularly influential book until a generation after its publication. Once opinion leaders found the book useful in promoting their desired political outcomes, its popularity soared. — location: 304 ^ref-64190

Adam Smith becomes less original. His importance appears to emanate from the vigor of his ideological project of advocating laissez-faire and obfuscating all information that might cast doubt on his ideology. — location: 312 ^ref-45742

Edward Gibbon Wakefield and John Rae, took a more realistic view about the nature of accumulation, but later economists set their analyses aside to create the impression of a humanitarian heritage of political economy. — location: 314 ^ref-27420

Steuart. According to Smithian theory, the social division of labor would evolve in a satisfactory manner without recourse to outside intervention. — location: 325 ^ref-30948

even Smith’s celebrated discussion of the invisible hand was developed as a means of avoiding the challenge that primitive accumulation posed for his system. — location: 326 ^ref-64384

Smith himself advocated practices that were not in accordance with his theory. This chapter also indicates that Smith was far more interested in changing human behavior than he was with matters of economic development. — location: 329 ^ref-65142

despite the adherence to the doctrine of laissezfaire in theory, classical political economists maintained a strong interest in promoting policies that furthered primitive accumulation. — location: 342 ^ref-37555

classical political economy conforms to a consistent pattern of almost always supporting positions that would work to harness small-scale agricultural producers to the interests of capital. — location: 372 ^ref-6542

Indeed, the history of the recruitment of labor is an uninterrupted story of coercion either through the brute force of poverty or more direct regulation, — location: 431 ^ref-27089

The disorienting introduction of the individualistic ways of the market cut people off from their traditional networks and created a sense of dehumanization — location: 434 ^ref-19801

Employers were quick to perceive the relationship between poverty and the chance to earn handsome profits. — location: 441 ^ref-46375

classical political economists joined in the chorus of those condemning the sloth and indolence of the poor. Although they applauded the leisure activities of the rich, they denounced all behavior on the part of the less fortunate that did not yield a maximum of work effort. — location: 446 ^ref-19663

was there ever a nation in which the rich found the poor to be sufficiently industrious? — location: 458 ^ref-8372

In the utopia of early classical political economy, the poor would work every waking hour. — location: 498 ^ref-11418

knit.” Many were concerned that children’s time might go to waste. William Temple called for the addition of four-year-old children to the labor force. — location: 502 ^ref-37781

John Locke, often seen as a philosopher of liberty, called for the commencement of work at the ripe age of three — location: 505 ^ref-43414

No source of labor was to be overlooked. For example, in a movement that Foucault has termed “the great confinement,” institutions were founded to take charge indiscriminately of the sick, criminal, and poor (Foucault — location: 510 ^ref-7789

“the very children after four or five years of age, could every one earn their own bread.” — location: 514 ^ref-53217

if social life [a term that Say used almost like the social division of labor] were a galley, in which after rowing with all their strength for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, they might indeed be excused for disliking social life…. I maintain no other doctrine when I say that the utility of productions is no longer worth the productive services, at the rate at which we are compelled to pay for them. — location: 519 ^ref-13943

Classical political economy frequently couched its recommendations in a rhetoric of individual liberty, but its conception of liberty was far from all-encompassing. Liberty, for capital, depended on the hard work of common people. — location: 523 ^ref-30448

“the necessity of a framework of law and an apparatus of enforcement is an essential part of the concept of a free society.” — location: 525 ^ref-24210

The entire judicial edifice was erected with an eye toward making ownership of capital more profitable — location: 529 ^ref-59462

he was intent on subordinating all aspects of life to the interests of accumulation. Bentham limited his passionate concern with laissez-faire to those who conformed to the norms of a capitalist society; a jarring confrontation with state power was to be the lot of the rest. — location: 538 ^ref-16943

fabled Panopticon, a prison engineered for maximum control of inmates in order to profit from their labor. — location: 553 ^ref-9090

Jeremy Bentham, vigorous advocate of freedom of commerce that he was, dreamed of the profits that would accrue from the use of inmate labor: — location: 560 ^ref-43352

According to classical political economy, all social conditions and all social institutions were to be judged merely on the basis of their effect on the production of wealth. — location: 566 ^ref-60334

Bentham was not the least concerned with furthering the bounds of human freedom, but with ensuring that the inmates would have as many offspring as possible — location: 570 ^ref-43090

Despite their antipathy to indolence and sloth, they covered themselves with a flurry of rhetoric about natural liberties. — location: 577 ^ref-25122

Poverty is that state and condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, or, in other words, no property or means of subsistence but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various occupations of life. Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilization. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth. — location: 585 ^ref-40202

“it is childish … to expect … to see anything else than the utmost screwing and grinding of the poor, till you quite overturn the present system of landed property” — location: 595 ^ref-26225

“Instead of working only six days a week we are obliged to work at the rate of eight or nine and yet can hardly subsist … and still the cry is work—work—ye are idle …. We, God help us, have fallen under the hardest set of masters that have ever existed” — location: 598 ^ref-53476

This statement was eloquent enough to earn its — location: 601 ^ref-65173

author a sentence of three years’ imprisonment after its publication in 1803—a result typical of the fate of those who challenged the capitalist order. — location: 601 ^ref-50395

Spence’s biographer asserts that Owenism and the subsequent heritage of British socialism stands in direct line of descent from Spence’s critique of capitalism — location: 605 ^ref-61092

No society went so far as the British in terms of primitive accumulation. This aspect of capitalist development is all but forgotten today. — location: 608 ^ref-47867

“nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped forms.” — location: 691 ^ref-50336

once capitalism had taken hold, capitalists learned that purely market pressures were more effective in exploiting labor than the brutal act of primitive accumulation. — location: 712 ^ref-62476

The advance of capitalist production develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of that mode of production as self-evident natural laws. — location: 718 ^ref-18887

The organization of the capitalist process of production, once it is fully developed, breaks down all resistance. — location: 719 ^ref-4417

worker. Direct extra-economic force is still of course used, but only in exceptional cases. In the ordinary run of things, the worker can be left to the “natural laws of production,” — location: 722 ^ref-31474

Centuries are required before the “free” worker, owing to the greater development of the capitalist mode of production, makes a voluntary agreement, i.e. is compelled by social conditions to sell the whole of his active life. — location: 731 ^ref-41259

All-out primitive accumulation would not be in the best interests of capital. Instead, capital would manipulate the extent to which workers relied on self-provisioning in order to maximize its advantage. — location: 752 ^ref-60207

land was already scarce for the majority of people during the Middle Ages. — location: 780 ^ref-54320

medieval usury, often simply dismissed as a parasitic intrusion into the economy, prodded the economy to advance — location: 788 ^ref-28215

the conversion of small-scale farmers into proletarians continued throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. — location: 790 ^ref-41038

In the case of the destruction of small-scale farming in the United States, the federal government was central in developing the transportation and research systems that tipped the balance in favor of large-scale agriculture — location: 792 ^ref-12218

the share of life years available for wage labor for the average adult has expanded from 39 percent in 1900 to 44.4 percent in 1970, despite rising education levels, better — location: 806 ^ref-61693

child labor laws, and a shorter workweek. — location: 807 ^ref-48125

Juliet Schor (1991, 29) estimates that the average person worked 163 more hours in 1987 than in 1969. — location: 808 ^ref-7711

Just as a factory combines living labor with other commodities (constant capital) in order to produce goods for sale, a working-class household also mixes living labor with other commodities (variable capital) to produce a salable product, labor power — location: 1534 ^ref-36651

“From a social point of view, therefore, the working class, even when not directly engaged in the labour-process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour.” — location: 1539 ^ref-1788

“Labor-power itself is, above all else, the material of nature transposed into a human organism” — location: 1540 ^ref-37826

“Nature seems to have intended that mutual dependence should unite all the inhabitants of the earth into one great commercial family.” — location: 1562 ^ref-38732

household be broken down in order that it would become doubly dependent. First, it was to become dependent on commodities that were, in general, produced with wage labor. Second, to acquire these commodities, members of the household would have to supply the market with wage labor. — location: 1564 ^ref-64418

the working class was left with the responsibility of laboring to earn its wages, then exchanging those earnings for its means of subsistence, and finally efficiently combining these commodities with household labor in order to renew its supply of labor power. In this sense, no other form of social organization went so far in “transform[ing]… lifetime into labortime” — location: 1569 ^ref-45052

Marx (1977, 517–18n) wrote of the common use of opiates for want of time for breast-feeding and described the — location: 1572 ^ref-8233

consequences of leisure insufficient for families to teach the young to cook or sew. — location: 1573 ^ref-54905

This crisis [during the cotton famine that the English textile industry experienced during the American Civil War] was also utilized to teach sewing to the daughters of the workers…. An American revolution and a universal crisis were needed in order that working girls, who spin for the whole world, might learn to sew! — location: 1575 ^ref-47138

Classical political economists never addressed the transformation of the household. Some formally dismissed activities performed in the household as “unproductive labor” when discussing the aristocratic household, largely because, as we shall see with Smith, they did not — location: 1581 ^ref-6883

want to dignify the spending patterns of the gentry who commonly employed servants to do their household labor. — location: 1583 ^ref-60405

As Marx (1963–1971, 3:166) once noted, “largest part of society, that is to say the working class, must incidentally perform this kind of labor for itself.” — location: 1584 ^ref-60893

the linkage between the production of commodities in the factory and labor power in the household proved to be a most profitable combination. — location: 1587 ^ref-61342

Simultaneously several pamphlets explored the means of relieving the burden of the high costs of provisions. Eden devoted almost forty pages of his study of the poor to the frugality of the north, and in 1806 Colquhoun promised that “a greater boon could not be conferred upon the labouring people, than a general circulation of the art of frugal cookery.” — location: 1592 ^ref-29302

“the number of inhabitants who may be supported in any country upon its internal produce, depends almost as much upon the state of the arts of cooking as upon that of agriculture.” — location: 1596 ^ref-30448

Because of the savings associated with the self-maintenance of their human working machines, employers took an active interest in the most personal of acts of their employees. — location: 1599 ^ref-39783

This ability to leave labor with the responsibility to fend for itself when wages are insufficient to support a family is an immense boon to capital. — location: 1604 ^ref-22121

the effort labor expends in organizing and arranging its own affairs relieves capital of much responsibility (Marx 1977, 1033). In fact, in his chapter on “Wages of Labour,” Smith suggested that this factor accounted for the superiority of wage labor relative to slavery — location: 1605 ^ref-61564

many observers made much of the operational similarity between wage labor and slavery. — location: 1610 ^ref-49012

“What is the difference, in the case of a man, who operates by means of a labourer receiving wages (instead of by slaves)? … The only difference is, in the mode of purchasing.” — location: 1611 ^ref-38759

In one respect, slaves were more fortunate than wage earners. Some slave owners felt an obligation to care for their sick and aged chattel. Employers of wage labor were generally unburdened by such thoughts. — location: 1614 ^ref-47502

words of one forthright American manager: “I regard my work-people just as I regard my machinery…. They must look out for themselves as I do for myself. When my machines get old and useless, I reject them and get new, and these people are part of my machinery” — location: 1616 ^ref-48719

From the perspective of capital, working-class families — location: 1620 ^ref-26592

merely sold their labor power to purchase commodities marketed by profit-maximizing firms. — location: 1620 ^ref-37227

modern economics does not generally regard the household as a locus of production, but as an agent of consumption instead. — location: 1622 ^ref-35676

“As it is the business of man to provide the means of living comfortably, so it is the province of women to dispose judiciously of those means, and maintain order and harmony in all things” — location: 1623 ^ref-33438

Marshall related household consumption to the total production process. — location: 1632 ^ref-12694

Although Marshall might have simply been reflecting a Victorian echo of the movement to increase the productive efficiency of the household to further capital accumulation, at least he acknowledged it as an agent of production rather than limiting it to a locus of consumption. — location: 1639 ^ref-30559

Accordingly, teachers expect their students to apply the theoretical apparatus of utility maximization to explain such diverse phenomena as the extent of food waste, reading, sleeping, or even family size — location: 1643 ^ref-61386

all too often marxist works rely on a formal scheme in which precapitalistic formations are identified with the production of use values, in contrast to capitalism, in which production is simply treated as commodity production. — location: 1652 ^ref-46707

the attitude toward household production depends on the stage of capitalist development. At a time when self-provisioning was a serious barrier to the extension of the capitalist mode of production, classical political economy expressed an unremitting hostility toward conditions that would support the working-class household’s ability to provide for itself. Once political economy became confident that the household economy was sufficiently hobbled that its role as a producer would be subordinated to capitalist commodity production, economists seemed to lose all interest in the evolution of the social division of labor. Instead, they exhorted households to become more efficient producers of labor power. Finally, after problems of effective demand gained more prominence, economists treated the household as a locus of consumption. As a result, the role of the household as a site of production generally fell into oblivion. — location: 1658 ^ref-52453

Toady, we regard these household appliances as an aspect of consumption rather than production, even though they are industrial in scope. — location: 1674 ^ref-35133

As capitalism itself became more complex, so too did the demands put on the household. The process of renewing the energies of workers is complicated by the particularly difficult stresses created by work and life in modern capitalist society — location: 1678 ^ref-36173

In spite of the labor-saving appearance of the modern household, those tasks that do remain within the realm of its economy have frequently become much more demanding. — location: 1680 ^ref-50390

Moreover, the physical separation of workers reduces the risk that they might organize themselves. — location: 1699 ^ref-8268

we measure the value of labor power by the value of the commodities that are consumed in the course of reproducing that labor power. — location: 1714 ^ref-3517

division of time between the production of necessities in the household and the production of necessities while working for wages is the only variable in the system. Why would the capitalists be concerned about the division of the working day between household labor, or self-provisioning, and wage labor? After all, the amount of luxuries is identical in either case. — location: 1761 ^ref-38291

Now let us change the conditions so that households work two and a half hours on their own account. Households now need only half as much in wages to maintain their standard of living because of what they produce on their own account. Nonetheless, the amount of time devoted to luxuries does not decline, however. Consequently, for each hour spent working for wages, the household sector receives a payment equivalent to only one-third of an hour of labor. As a result, the rate of exploitation jumps to 300 percent. — location: 1772 ^ref-40291

Since capitalism had not developed technologies that were superior to the traditional methods of production, the creation of surplus value depended on capital’s success in creating absolute surplus value by lengthening the working day. As a result, the more affluent members of society strenuously condemned all those who chose to remain true to their preindustrial ways. — location: 1780 ^ref-12152

while increasing self-provisioning augments the maximum possible rate of exploitation, it can restrict the actual production of surplus value by making people cling even more tenaciously to their traditional employments. — location: 1790 ^ref-57098

Excessive pressure could create an exodus from the subsistence sector capable of overwhelming the capacity to employ wage labor. Too little pressure could allow too many people to remain in the traditional sector to satisfy the demands of would-be employers. — location: 1793 ^ref-25352

even after capitalist technologies progressed to the point that self-provisioning became less technologically efficient than wage labor, workers were often still loathe to engage in wage labor. They frequently opted instead to withhold their labor, preferring to substitute leisure for commodities that they might potentially purchase. — location: 1797 ^ref-34330

model. Increasing variable capital increases the demand for commodities. Higher demand offers substantial advantages for capital, although it also implies a lower potential rate of surplus value. — location: 1804 ^ref-6181

Ignoring the differences between prices and values, the more that households provide for themselves, the less that employers would have to pay for an hour of work. — location: 1809 ^ref-40869

The key to avoiding the curse of a comfortable life was to create artificial scarcity for the rural poor. As Arthur Young observed in 1771, “everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious” — location: 1966 ^ref-10189

that if “by converting the little farmers into a body of men who must work for others [by enclosing the commons] more labor is produced, it is an advantage which the nation should wish for” — location: 1984 ^ref-35014

“not one of all the many thousand English factory workers has a square yard of land on which to grow food if he is out of work and draws no wage” — location: 2004 ^ref-23977

as Marx (1977, 911) reminded his readers: “This transformation had already begun in part under the feudal mode of production. For example, hand mills were banned to make people dependent upon the mill belonging to the lord.” — location: 2007 ^ref-38768

Even counting transport costs, as late as 1780, Indian producers of calico and muslin fabrics had a 60 percent cost advantage over British producers — location: 2322 ^ref-58297

According to Cooke, Chinese costs were so low that British exports often had to be sold in China at prices that barely covered their freight — location: 2324 ^ref-14241

“The substantial economy and saving in time afforded by the association of agriculture with manufactures put up a stubborn resistance to the products of the big industries, whose prices included the faux frais of the circulation process which pervades them.” — location: 2327 ^ref-35375

Peasants who were part-time artisans and artisans who were part-time peasants were a frustrating combination for the mills, the reason why neither Manchester, nor Bombay, could accomplish their long desired objective, namely monopoly of the immense market for piecegoods in India. Except towards the very end of our period (1929), handloom production kept pace uniformly with mill production. — location: 2342 ^ref-32612

“only the destruction of rural domestic industry can give the home market of a country the extension and stability which the capitalist mode of production requires.” — location: 2347 ^ref-2182

Eventually, the technological capacity of the capitalist sector increased by leaps and bounds, especially with the tapping of the power of fossil fuels. Even so, some traditional methods of production can be relatively economical even in modern times. Their relative efficiency must have been considerably greater during the age of classical political economy. — location: 2350 ^ref-22908

the purpose of enclosures and other forms of primitive accumulation was not technical. Primitive accumulation appealed to the ruling classes because it was so effective in subordinating the working classes. — location: 2352 ^ref-11766

James Kay-Shuttleworth charged that in England, “the aristocracy is richer and more powerful than in any other country in the world, the poor are more oppressed, more pauperized, more numerous … than the poor of any other European nation (cited in E. Smith 1853, 152; see also Sismondi 1827, 195). We should not be surprised that the rich and powerful did painfully little to ameliorate the lot of the poor. After all, the victory of the one group came at the expense of the other. — location: 2400 ^ref-4185

The well-to-do, in fact, go to great lengths to avoid confrontations with poverty. For example, Engels (1845, 348) noted how the physical layout of Manchester served to protect the sensitivities of the bourgeoisie: — location: 2411 ^ref-37996

Since the bourgeoisie generally spared itself a direct encounter with poverty in its daily life, it often first witnessed squalor on visits to the Continent or Ireland. There, poverty appeared to be something foreign. The shock of viewing poverty abroad confirmed the belief of the British bourgeoisie in the correctness of the British system. — location: 2419 ^ref-60996

Dickens scholar, claims the wretchedness of early-nineteenth-century Manchester was so extreme, neither Dickens nor the others could even write articulately about what they had seen. — location: 2423 ^ref-7570

For some, the study of political economy promised a false hope of finding an answer to the misery of the poor. — location: 2425 ^ref-19496

accuracy. In every case, classical political economy called for action with respect to self-provisioning that would maximize the production of surplus value. — location: 2435 ^ref-33099

the classical political economists did not treat self-provisioning as a theoretical category. Instead, they camouflaged their hostility to it under a theoretical apparatus that denied legitimacy to all activity that did not conform to the norm of production by wage labor. — location: 2445 ^ref-64489

Classical political economy often identified the working classes with savages (see Berg 1980a, 136–44). For example, John Rae (1834, chaps. 7, 9) faulted both savages and the working class for an inadequate effective desire for accumulation. — location: 2451 ^ref-24874

discipline that associated hunting for one’s food with — location: 2454 ^ref-40771

savage life could hardly be expected to display a great deal of sensitivity to the restrictions on hunting that society enforced at the time. — location: 2454 ^ref-21619

On reviewing the major figures in the pantheon of political economy, an unremitting hostility toward self-provisioning of all kinds emerges—at least insofar as it interferes with the recruitment of wage labor. — location: 2456 ^ref-18541

Petty’s scientific activities led him to extreme technological optimism. In his enthusiasm, he predicted that the day would come “when even hogs and more indocile beasts shall be taught to labour; — location: 2461 ^ref-14883

when — location: 2463 ^ref-20659

all vile materials shall be turned to noble use” — location: 2463 ^ref-48234

Not only did he perceive that a more rational organization of society could increase the quantity of labor, but he also seems to have been the first writer to describe how the division of labor within the workshop results in improved efficiency — location: 2467 ^ref-39638

Petty’s analysis is particularly valuable. His broad experiences put him in touch with some of the most dynamic forces of his era. — location: 2482 ^ref-33778

one of the downsides of specialization. At least when it is done to the extent that one can't learn enough about other things

Whereas most observers were reluctant to move against the peasant society too quickly because of its ability to produce inexpensive foot soldiers (see Marx 1977, 880–81n; Smith 1976, V.I.a.6, 692–93; Weulersse 1910, 1:246), Petty insisted that England’s military future lay with a strong navy rather than an infantry. — location: 2485 ^ref-5996

England could thus afford to sacrifice some of her peasantry in the course of forming a new society in which defense would rest primarily on a navy — location: 2489 ^ref-34660

Indeed, the navy became the eventual foundation for the British imperial system — location: 2493 ^ref-10943

Given the diminished need for infantry troops and the importance of increased exports, Petty called for an intensification of primitive accumulation. — location: 2496 ^ref-38504

a central feature of Petty’s work was an attempt to explain the material basis for the contrast between Irish poverty and Dutch success based on his experience living in those two countries. — location: 2498 ^ref-44468

in reality Holland mostly exported services rather than material products. — location: 2501 ^ref-23176

For Petty, however, individual choice was not an issue. Rather, he assigned the government the responsibility for the creation of a new social division of labor. — location: 2507 ^ref-7018

Petty closely associated universal wealth with the rise of a new social division of labor. — location: 2513 ^ref-33459

Petty recommended that the law “should allow the Labourer but just wherewithal to live; for if you allow double, then he works but half so much as he could have done, and otherwise would” — location: 2521 ^ref-24295

Toward this end, he insisted that food be kept sufficiently scarce; surplus grain was to be put into granaries rather than allowing it to be “abused by the vile and brutish part of mankind to the prejudice of the commonwealth” — location: 2523 ^ref-18321

More practically, Petty (1687, 560; see also 1927, 58–61) called on the government to hasten the development of a proletariat by removing a million Irish to England, leaving the remaining population to manage Ireland as a cattle ranch or in his words as a “Kind of Factory.” — location: 2528 ^ref-25935

“Individuals are supported not only by the produce of the Land which is cultivated for the benefit of the Owners but also at the Expense of these Same Owners from whose property they derive all that they have.” — location: 2549 ^ref-26115

land generates a surplus, over and above the sustenance of the people who work it. For Cantillon, this surplus represented the material from which all other classes lived. This — location: 2562 ^ref-48702

“all politics emanates from a grain of wheat” — location: 2580 ^ref-28402

the locus of “principal contradiction” (see Mao 1937, sec. 4) of French society was the agricultural crisis. — location: 2581 ^ref-5022

The great number of their holidays not only encourages this lazy behavior, but actually robs them of what their labour would otherwise produce…. Very nearly half of their time, which might be profitably employed in the exercise of industry, is lost to themselves and the community, in attendance upon the different exhibitions of religious mummery. — location: 2586 ^ref-38325

“It is possible to consider the long-term development of France as a more humane transition and perhaps a not less effective one in the transition to industrial society.” — location: 2591 ^ref-58518

Unfortunately, a humane transition had less attraction for the primitive accumulationists than the great profits to be had from coercing labor into submission. — location: 2595 ^ref-49239

These officials could not easily cease to be bourgeois. They were too poor to ape the aristocracy and treat their estates as playthings. They had to earn revenue. — location: 2600 ^ref-4285

The Physiocratic identification of surplus and rent reflected the prevailing opinion within the French middle classes, as well as Cantillon’s theory. At the time, the French bourgeoisie was incapable of imagining any other source of wealth and power than landed property (Nallet and Servolin 1978). For instance, their legal framework gave no indication of an awareness of the potential expansion of capital — location: 2611 ^ref-46639

Although almost everybody in polite society agreed that the French peasants were lazy (Weulersse 1910, 1:321), the Physiocrats did not adopt an ostensibly hostile attitude toward them. Unlike the British, whose typical tone was contentious at best when discussing the common people, the French often expressed concern about the well-being of country folk. — location: 2625 ^ref-4314

To begin with, much of the improved economy of labor was not at all due to the production of more output with a lesser quantity of labor. Instead, it was nothing more than the result of an intensification of labor. — location: 2650 ^ref-38206

Thus, although in the long run, a far-reaching expansion of the productive powers of labor accompanied the new agricultural technology, the major attraction at the time appeared to be the reduction in the expense of maintaining labor over the extensive periods that rural workers had previously devoted to household production. Workers, who had formerly divided their hours between the production of grain and the production of their other domestic needs, were now required to more or less specialize in grain. As a result, the net product would increase, since fewer workers would be required on the farm to perform those tasks specifically directed to the production of grains — location: 2658 ^ref-22465

According to the Economists the function of the state was not merely one of ruling the nation, but also that of recasting it in a given mold, of shaping the mentality of the population as a whole in accordance with a predetermined model and instilling the ideas and sentiments they thought desirable into the minds of all. — location: 2686 ^ref-44638

classical political economists generally called for state action to sweep away traditional barriers to capitalism, although they generally did so more discreetly. — location: 2691 ^ref-4744

All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned to pasturage. British soldiers enforced this mass of evictions, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of her hut she refused to leave. It was in this manner that this fine lady appropriated 794,000 acres of land which belonged to the clan since time immemorial…. By 1825, the 15,000 Gaels had been replaced by 131,000 sheep. — location: 2767 ^ref-16025

Just as Hobbes attempted to persuade his readers that a sovereign was necessary to maintain political harmony (see Macpherson 1962, 89), Smith proposed that the market would ensure economic harmony. Unlike Hobbes, Smith did nothing to show how this “harmony” of wage labor originated. — location: 3785 ^ref-54401

Smith is a far less attractive figure—one who was intolerant of all but a narrow swath of society. Smith expressed antagonism toward large capitalists, who in his view connive and conspire against workers. He called for the destruction of the nobility, and displayed an unpleasant contempt for the masses of workers and small farmers. — location: 3839 ^ref-27894

Only small capitalists and ambitious artisans won his unalloyed admiration. — location: 3841 ^ref-37336

Smith strongly resented the low regard that well-off people had for the mores of lower-middle-class people with whom he identified. — location: 3915 ^ref-39343

He must acquire dependents to balance the dependents of the great, and he has no other fund to pay them from but the labour of his body and the activity of his mind. — location: 3937 ^ref-7533

Smith commended the prudent man to take on dependents, but that this sort of dependency was somehow superior to the dependency associated with the despicable nobility. — location: 3942 ^ref-3235

The man of rank and distinction, on the contrary, whose whole glory consists in the propriety of his ordinary behaviour, who is contented with the humble renown which this can afford him, and has no talents to acquire any other, is unwilling to embarrass himself with what can be attended either with difficulty or distress. To figure at a ball is his greatest triumph, and to succeed in an intrigue of gallantry, his highest exploit. — location: 3955 ^ref-19329

A traditional world view that subordinated the individual to the community and justified him or her according to social function yielded to a modern world view that subordinated society to the individual and justified social institutions as serving individual needs. The rights of the group and the obligations of the individual gave way to the obligations of the group and the rights of the individual. — location: 4005 ^ref-29606

“Democratic institutions have a very strong tendency to promote the feeling of envy in the human heart.” — location: 4008 ^ref-1103

Unlike many of the less educated populists, Smith was usually able to sublimate his rage into his charming theory of the invisible hand, in which competition and even aggression is channeled into harmonious actions that better the world. — location: 4016 ^ref-1639

Macbeth requested that the darkness of night, “with thy bloody and invisible hand,” cover up the crimes he was about to commit — location: 4022 ^ref-47772

It is with man as it is with the tree. The more he aspires to height and light, the more strongly do his roots strive earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep—into evil. — location: 4026 ^ref-9722

Smith (1978, 333) began this section by commenting that the state had an obligation to maintain the cheapness of commodities. He then went on to note that in spite of the rarity of some materials, advances in technology could make things much more affordable (ibid., 337). Such progress requires the enforcement of the law, which is necessary for the preservation of “that useful inequality in the fortunes of mankind” — location: 4033 ^ref-39033

“the labour and time of the poor is in civilized countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury,” — location: 4039 ^ref-39845

Ojibwas who visited London in the 1840s. They reportedly told the English who attempted to engage them in conversation: [We are] willing to talk with you if it can do any good for the hundreds and thousands of poor and hungry children we see in your streets every day…. We see hundreds of little children with their naked feet in the snow, and we pity them, for we know they are hungry…. [W]e have no such poor children among us. (cited in Tobias 1967, 86) — location: 4049 ^ref-64697

Smith did not have much patience with such uncomfortable intrusions of reality. His goals were more ideological. — location: 4053 ^ref-50448

Amongst the savages there are no landlords nor usurers, no tax gatherers, so that every one has the full fruits of his own labours, and should therefore enjoy the greatest abundance; but the case is otherwise. — location: 4057 ^ref-24065

The poor laborer has more commodities, but also less leisure than the savage. Smith was aware of the importance of leisure in primitive society. Nonetheless, he ended his lecture without speculating about why the laborer would rationally choose to substitute commodities for free time. Smith did not even raise the possibility that this transformation may not have been voluntary. — location: 4059 ^ref-63886

The labour and time of the poor is in civilized countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. — location: 4067 ^ref-33802

every savage has the full enjoyment of the fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers, no tax gatherers…. — location: 4070 ^ref-43056

Thus he who as it were supports the whole frame of society and furnishes the means of the convenience and ease of all the rest is himself possessed of a very small share and is buried in obscurity. He bears on his shoulders the whole of mankind, and unable to sustain the weight of it is thrust down into the lowest parts of the earth from whence he supports the rest. In what manner then shall we account for the great share he and the lowest persons have of the conveniences of life? — location: 4072 ^ref-34050

“The division of labour amongst different hands can alone account for this” — location: 4082 ^ref-12391

Smith seems to have developed his great work as an attempt to evade the logic of the classical — location: 4088 ^ref-47995

theory of primitive accumulation. — location: 4089 ^ref-7656

Smith attempted to provide a theoretical basis for his contempt of the gentry with his theory of unproductive labor. — location: 4119 ^ref-54197

“Before a man can have the propensity to barter, he must have acquired something somewhat” — location: 4127 ^ref-57522

“the rich … are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life which would have been made had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants” — location: 4129 ^ref-36845

To make this line of reasoning coherent, he should not have addressed the subject in terms of the “distribution of the necessaries of life,” but rather with regard to the distribution of the means of production. — location: 4135 ^ref-4637

he very well understood that consumption goods, in general, were not shared equally among all people. There, he acknowledged that although “the desire of food in every man is limited by the narrow capacity of the human stomach,” other forms of consumption seem “to have no limit or certain boundary” — location: 4138 ^ref-9455

Smith’s discussion of the invisible hand reveals a great deal about his method of analysis. On some level, he recognized the conflict between his class-based explanation of the evolution of the social division of labor and his alternative explanation framed in terms of market forces. Yet when dealing with class antagonisms, Smith continually muddied the issues rather than facing up to the full implications of class conflict. — location: 4150 ^ref-31937

Despite the folly of chasing after material success, the vain desire for ostentation ultimately served a noble purpose: — location: 4173 ^ref-42447

it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind. It is this which first prompted them to cultivate the ground, to build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and improve all the sciences and arts which enable and embellish human life; which have entirely changed the whole face of the globe, have turned rude forests into agreeable and fertile plains. — location: 4175 ^ref-59864

For Smith, what counted was their mental state, which he hoped would eventually conform to that of the petit bourgeoisie. — location: 4184 ^ref-39154

Smith (1978, 88) acknowledged to his students that the exclusive privileges of corporations had been able “to bring about … the separation of trades sooner than the progress of society would naturally effect.” — location: 4185 ^ref-29550

a “particular manufacture … may sometimes be acquired sooner” by virtue of encouragement — location: 4189 ^ref-3170

but he alleged that such actions slow down the overall process of accumulation, thereby hindering the “natural evolution” of the social division of labor. — location: 4190 ^ref-9693

by implying that (1) the contemporary social division of labor was the result of mutually advantageous adjustments and (2) that this process is a continuation of social behavior that stretches back into prehistoric times, Smith presented the misleading inference that the creation of the social division of labor was a natural process, devoid of conflict. — location: 4193 ^ref-6065

Indeed, a social division of labor may be seen in preagricultural societies. Harmonious cooperation can even be found among the flora and fauna — location: 4197 ^ref-55515

merely to analyze the social division of labor as a natural history is to sacrifice all hope of understanding the mechanism that governs its evolution in human society. — location: 4198 ^ref-38621

True, market forces could eventually lead to a more elaborate social division of labor. A decline in self-sufficiency could create a home market for mass-consumption goods; yet such a home market begins from a very small base and could not reach a substantial size overnight. Are we to believe that those who stood to profit from the growth of capitalism would stand by and let the social division of labor precede at such a slow pace? — location: 4202 ^ref-63601

The mercantile school, in particular, did not care to wait for the natural maturation of a home market, preferring to tap the riches of world markets as soon as possible. To this end, they were willing to launch an immediate attack on the self-sufficient household as a first step in stimulating the production of commodities for export — location: 4205 ^ref-35076

that the transformation of feudal agricultural societies into industrial ones and the corresponding industrial struggle of nations on — location: 4210 ^ref-26962

the world-market depends on an accelerated development of capital, which is not to be arrived at along the so-called natural path, but rather by means of coercive measures. — location: 4210 ^ref-18672

“trade and manufactures of … sickly and difficult growth; if you do not give them active encouragement they presently die.” — location: 4218 ^ref-45217

Smith, by contrast, saw the acceleration of domestic exchanges as a consequence of the expansion of internal markets. — location: 4221 ^ref-42362

Smith wrote as if he would have preferred to wait for the household economy to atrophy on its own as the market withdrew economic energies away from traditional activities. — location: 4223 ^ref-45678

Smith believed that agricultural society would naturally transform itself into an urban commercial society in short order. In truth, even the towns, which were central to Smith’s theory of economic development, began as artificial units that were granted special privileges by the state — location: 4224 ^ref-12104

If capital were here to rely on the process of slow internal disintegration, the process might take centuries. To wait patiently until the most important means of production could be alienated by trading … [would be] tantamount to renouncing the production forces of these territories altogether. — location: 4233 ^ref-44791

was Smith once again providing ideological cover for the market society that he was witnessing? — location: 4236 ^ref-17604

“It is in the interest of every society that things such as this kind [i.e., the creation of a new social division of labor] should never be forced or obstructed.” — location: 4240 ^ref-31837

Little else is requisite to carry a State to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice; — location: 4244 ^ref-5302

or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point are unnatural and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical. — location: 4246 ^ref-49873

This analogy formed the foundation of Smith’s basic argument: Since within the workshop, a more refined division of labor is economical, surely people would choose to arrange their employments in a manner that would create a more progressive social division of labor. — location: 4255 ^ref-63050

taking both Mandeville and Rousseau to task for “suppos[ing] that there is in man no powerful instinct which necessarily determines him to seek society for its own sake” — location: 4259 ^ref-20420

Smith’s reference to the division of labor in the workshop at first sounds even more substantial, but it substantially fails on one count: it never explains the sudden appearance of workshops where employers who own the means of production hire workers who have no capital of their own. — location: 4263 ^ref-22406

Steuart (1767, 1:109), who advocated extraeconomic measures to create “a free and perfect society which is a general tacit contract, from which reciprocal and proportional services result universally between all those who compose it,” — location: 4265 ^ref-46765

“The accumulation of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to the division of labour.” — location: 4271 ^ref-35553

“Til some stock be produced there can be no division of labour, and before a division of labor stock be produced there can be very little accumulation of stock.” — location: 4274 ^ref-48116

specifically, Smith’s stock referred to means of production held by a group of people who employed other people to use them. — location: 4280 ^ref-27820

“The number of hands employed in business depends on the stored stock in the kingdom…. Many goods produce nothing for a while. The grower, the spinner, the dresser of flax, have no immediate profit” — location: 4282 ^ref-43111

In the next paragraph, however, Turgot began by introducing us to a new individual, the “mere workman, who depends only on his hands and his industry … [who] has nothing but such part of his labour as he is able to dispose to others” — location: 4292 ^ref-21168

Like Smith, Turgot neglected to explain exactly how the transition from an equal ownership of land with which he began his exposition to a situation in which some are reduced to the status of “mere workmen” — location: 4293 ^ref-58326

Smith’s (ibid., I.viii.8, 83) answer was that “the greater part of the workmen stand in need of a master to advance them the materials of their work, and their wages and maintenance.” — location: 4303 ^ref-22179

Instead of picturing a society in which workers voluntarily chose their occupations, Smith (ibid., III.v.12, 362) even lumped together “labouring cattle” and “productive labourers” in his description of a world dominated by stock. — location: 4307 ^ref-48837

John Locke (1698, 307) had written, “Thus the Grass my Horse has bit; the Turfs my Servant has cut; and the Ore I have digg’d … become my Property,” — location: 4309 ^ref-54166

Capital like all the productions of man, has had a beginning; but how that which is the result of accumulation could act before accumulation took place, — location: 4317 ^ref-37545

his superficial treatment of value as the sum of the component parts of wages, profits, and rent. — location: 4322 ^ref-51622

intentions. Wakefield (1835, 1:v) noted that Smith “appears to be composing, not a theory, but a history of national wealth.” — location: 4377 ^ref-17782

“How has the worker been able to pass from being the master of capital—as its creator—to being its slave?” — location: 4384 ^ref-13410

“Freedom of enterprise would lead to disastrous misfortune; all the small masters would be ruined because all would like to be masters and nobody a servant, all subordination and order will disappear” — location: 4386 ^ref-11771

“Political Economy does not recognize that there — location: 4389 ^ref-3864

is a vital distinction between the main mode in which capital grows in England now, and the mode in which countries grew at first.” — location: 4389 ^ref-15475

considering that Smith was engaged in producing a history of wage labor, he should have to account for the forces that would induce self-sufficient households to exchange labor power for wages. He never did. — location: 4394 ^ref-21605

Smith was primarily interested in creating a theory in which the role of class conflict could be obscured by a fable of harmonies. As a result, The Wealth of Nations emerged as an epic poem of a strange world where “things are in the saddle and ride mankind” — location: 4397 ^ref-23041

The material on the colonies is crucial to Smith’s project in The Wealth of Nations because it is the only concrete example that Smith offered in his attempt to prove that labor could prosper without seemingly damaging the interests of capital. — location: 4985 ^ref-24748

Consequently, it played an essential role in the creation of the Smithian ideology of the noncoercive nature of wage labor. — location: 4986 ^ref-36795

The greater tolerance for emigration in Scotland may also be partially explained by the less labor-intensive cropping system used there. — location: 5037 ^ref-29260

Whoever has travelled thro’ the various parts of Europe, and observed how small is the Proportion of People in Affluence or easy Circumstances there, compared with those in Poverty and Misery; the few rich and haughty Landlords, the multitude of poor, abject, and rack’d Tenants, and the half-paid and half-starv’d ragged Labourers; and view here the happy Mediocrity, that so generally prevails throughout these States, where the Cultivator works for himself, and supports his Family in decent Plenty, will … be convinc’d that no Nation that is known to us enjoys a greater share of human Felicity. (Franklin 1905–7, 10:120) — location: 5216 ^ref-23710

“The great Business of the Continent is Agriculture.” Yet in the earlier tract, he concluded, “In short, America is the Land of Labour” — location: 5225 ^ref-24743

say. In presenting the advantages of the state of “happy mediocrity” in which workers could earn relatively high wages while capital profited, Franklin, along with Smith, painted a picture of relative harmony between labor and capital. — location: 5232 ^ref-61571

Franklin’s celebration of happy mediocrity came at a time when this egalitarian age was quickly coming to an end. The period in which Smith was completing his Wealth of Nations witnessed a significant increase in the concentration of wealth in the northern colonies — location: 5234 ^ref-64346

“May not Luxury, therefore, produce more than it consumes, if without such a Spur People would be as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent?” — location: 5244 ^ref-30681

The transition from Franklin’s happy mediocrity (of free workers) to an increasing commercialization of agriculture was especially powerful in the regions that served large urban areas. — location: 5255 ^ref-20885

Smith attempted to use the experience of the New World as an object lesson in the virtues of laissez-faire. — location: 5339 ^ref-51327

Smith falsified the political economy of the wage relationship, a relationship that appears clearly in the writings of Franklin and Steuart. — location: 5377 ^ref-53138

According to Malthus (1820, 381–82), to allow people the means to produce for their own needs would generate a widespread pattern of indolence among the masses. — location: 5973 ^ref-37467

“although the greatest — location: 5993 ^ref-58692

resource of the labouring classes for their own happiness must be in those prudential habits” — location: 5993 ^ref-5073

Malthus continued to revise the Essay to address other problems. He ceased arguing for the futility of charity for the victims of primitive accumulation; instead, he was developing the position that the poor could share in the prosperity of capitalism, provided that they worked hard. — location: 6042 ^ref-53265

By the fifth edition, he suggested that “the comforts of the lower classes do not depend solely upon food, nor even upon strict necessaries” — location: 6045 ^ref-29740

Malthus recognized that supply and demand were inadequate guides for economic action. Underlying his concern was the realization that, should the economic situation deteriorate too much, workers would be likely to raise a political challenge to the system—a challenge that even the promise of a future of ribbons, lace, and trinkets would be inadequate to prevent workers from raising a political challenge. — location: 6049 ^ref-40339

it is the countries comprising the Russian empire, to the two continents of America, to our colonial possessions, to India, and to China, that we must look for new and extending markets. The measure which should be adopted, in order to open these vast regions to our commerce, must, however, be the subjects of future communications.” — location: 6072 ^ref-52042

Torrens warned that colonies would most likely suffer from their relationship with imperial England, — location: 6074 ^ref-32346

“unless timely and energetic measures of precaution be adopted, Ireland, in advancing towards wealth and prosperity, must necessarily pass through a period of the most aggravated and intolerable distress” — location: 6075 ^ref-50477

a study of Senior not only shows how classical political economists analyzed primitive accumulation, it also clearly demonstrates the manner in which they attempted to avoid responsibility for what they wrote. — location: 6153 ^ref-6018

Gourlay (1822, 145–46), noted: “It is not the intention to make labourers professional gardeners or farmers! It is intended to confine them to bare convenience.” — location: 6182 ^ref-40676

As late as 1814, skilled mechanics employed in the British machine-making industry were prohibited from emigrating on pain of severe punishment — location: 6288 ^ref-22493

where land is to be had cheaply, workers “cease to be labourers for hire; they … become independent landowners — location: 6301 ^ref-58513

The scarcity of labourers was an insuperable bar to any mode of cultivation that requires the employment of many hands! — location: 6303 ^ref-21880

The French Revolution made the classical political economists — location: 6312 ^ref-55697

put a premium on discretion. As a result, the classical political economists extolled the virtues of the freedom of market relations, even as nonmarket pressures on workers and peasants intensified. — location: 6312 ^ref-63826

the classical political economists were concerned about the difficulty that employers had in finding enough tractable workers. Those economists were intent of corralling workers into wage labor. Only Steuart and Malthus in his later works indicated an awareness that an excessive amount of labor could present a problem. — location: 6314 ^ref-7807

He recommended these measures on account of their encouragement of “natural slavery … that natural subordination in which the greater part of mankind always has been and probably always will be” — location: 6331 ^ref-27019

Wakefield (1835, 1:46) was convinced that slavery, whether “natural” or enforced, had the advantage of allowing a more advanced division of labor. — location: 6333 ^ref-34775

offer. Wakefield even called on English workers to join with him in a program to restrict access to land in the colonies. — location: 6336 ^ref-14661

Wakefield’s essential message was that, where workers found alternatives to wage labor, capital would even resort to slavery. — location: 6345 ^ref-20677

Even in church, where some of them solemnly preach that all are equal, they sit on cushions, in pews … sheltered by curtains from the wind and the vulgar gaze…. Every where they are ostentatious. — location: 6356 ^ref-54168

“The capitalist mode of production and … capitalist private property have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of that private property which rests on the labour of the individual himself; in other words, expropriation of the worker.” — location: 6412 ^ref-51880

Wakefield’s key assumption in this work was the requirement that the stream of immigrants would be sufficiently large that the expanding population of employers could continue to have a satisfactory supply of labor. Such a condition would be rather unlikely. — location: 6418 ^ref-11270

Given the alternative of producing for itself, the peasant household displayed a marked aversion toward wage labor. — location: 6443 ^ref-5668

household members valued their chance to avoid exchanging many hours of labor for the equivalent of the value of fewer hours. — location: 6444 ^ref-57990

even when wage labor offered pecuniary advantages, workers still frequently chose the independence of a less regimented life — location: 6445 ^ref-28097

this question of the social division of labor represented a theoretical challenge to political economy: “One cannot use capital merely by wishing to use it, nor can a single workman practice ‘division of labour,’ but the capital and the ‘division of labour’ arise from some anterior improvement.” — location: 6449 ^ref-959

Peter Temin (1971; see also David 1975, 19–91), who excels at the application of economic tools to historical material, — location: 6455 ^ref-24143

In reality, by restricting the growth of the industrial reserve army, the homestead was a great threat to profits. — location: 6460 ^ref-48220

that the export of capital can improve the rate of profit, providing the proper climate for colonization exists—namely, the absence of access to cheap land. — location: 6475 ^ref-7540

In describing his manner of presentation, he explained, “By dwelling altogether on the former question [of the distribution of shares], we make bad blood between the two classes; … by examining the latter question [of the total product], we may prove that masters and servants have one and the same interest” — location: 6478 ^ref-17067

Kinda like GDP doesn't give the full picture

Despite Wakefield’s brutal clarity in dealing with colonial economies, he carefully obfuscates the cleavage between those who employ labor and those who labor when dealing with the British economy. Once he has gone that far, he can simply slide into the technical advantages of the division of labor. — location: 6483 ^ref-16510

“Why does any man ever produce of anything more than he himself can consume,” — location: 6487 ^ref-46729

“Mankind has adopted a simple contrivance for promoting the division of labour: they have divided themselves into owners of capital and owners of labour” — location: 6491 ^ref-55212

Rousseau, who sarcastically wrote: “I will allow you,” says the capitalist, “to have the honour of serving me, on the condition that, in return for the pains I take in commanding you, you give me the little that remains to you” — location: 6496 ^ref-30054

Wakefield was easily able to recognize that where small, self-contained households predominated, leisure would take precedence over production. — location: 6504 ^ref-31772

Wakefield’s importance did not depend on his analytical gifts, but rather on his ability, generally, to keep from getting confused by the ideology around him, including his own. — location: 6509 ^ref-21466

We might note that Smith himself recommended taxes on alcohol (Smith 1976, V.ii.k.7); however, we have already seen that the people who invoke the authority of Smith are often more extreme than the great master. — location: 6548 ^ref-9707

Rather than merely railing against the market as an amoral institution, he analyzed economic activity as a subset of morality. To understand — location: 6550 ^ref-33651

“it will not pay.” In all these cases, and a thousand others that ought to be put, the answer is abundantly sufficient as regards the individual, but is no answer at all as regards the society. — location: 6557 ^ref-20012

Rae criticized the lower classes for a failure to give sufficient attention to the future. — location: 6664 ^ref-47788

Rae did not oppose self-sufficiency as such. Instead, he kept his eye on the social relations of self-sufficiency, — location: 6682 ^ref-51891

Rae fell from favor because he, like Steuart, advocated state action to further economic development. Consequently, like Steuart, he was slighted. — location: 6724 ^ref-17953

all three saw much that classical political economy preferred to obscure. They brought the subject of primitive accumulation to the fore. All three were rewarded with silence. — location: 6737 ^ref-29534

Consequently, in the agrarian question and the agrarian crisis the heart of the matter is not simply the removal of obstacles to the advance of agricultural technique, but what way these obstacles are to be removed, what class is to effect this removal and by what methods.—V. I. Lenin, The Agrarian Question in Russia at the End of the Nineteenth Century — location: 6740 ^ref-58366

Lenin had an eye for the positive developments in the countryside, but without Smith’s blind spot for the harsher aspects of rural development. — location: 6778 ^ref-21583

“The rapid development of commodity economy and capitalism in the post-Reform epoch has caused a rise in the level of requirements of the peasantry.” — location: 6780 ^ref-33975

Lenin, like Smith, welcomed the potential of such capitalist development to eliminate dependency, — location: 6782 ^ref-36220

The Russian economy suffered from the usual symptoms of a dualistic economic growth pattern. The Narodniks preferred to avoid the costs associated with capitalist development in Russia by building socialism on the basis of the traditional village economy. Lenin denounced their plans. The peasant’s life was a constant round of toil. Maxim Gorky (1922, 370), the novelist, conveyed the sense of the Russian village in the following words: “The technically primitive labour of the countryside is incredibly heavy, the peasantry call it strada from the Russian verb ‘stradat’—to suffer.” — location: 6814 ^ref-49780

like Smith, Lenin insisted that no external measures were needed to separate households from their means of production. If the peasantry were to gain access to the land, “it will not abolish capitalism; on the contrary it will create a broader foundation for its development, and will hasten and intensify purely capitalist development” — location: 6852 ^ref-46215

“in America, it was not the slave economy of the big landlords that served as the basis of capitalist agriculture, but the free economy of the free farmer working on free land, free from all medieval fetters, free from serfdom and feudalism.” — location: 6856 ^ref-31846

early American farming was predominately a process of capital accumulation — location: 6859 ^ref-861

Improved standards of living in the United States — location: 6862 ^ref-23215

awaited the introduction of the intensive use of slavery to produce the exports that formed the economic base of the country. — location: 6863 ^ref-13277

the enormous contribution of earlier slave labor in the process of accumulation in the United States. — location: 6868 ^ref-29719

either the nation could distribute the land to replicate northern American conditions; or, it could give the land to large landholders who could maintain large estates such as were found in Prussia. — location: 6873 ^ref-59281

“the essence of the agrarian question and of the agrarian crisis is not the removal of the obstacles to raise agriculture to a higher level, but how these obstacles are to be removed, which class is to remove them and by what means.” — location: 6877 ^ref-51739

Lenin (1918, 377) also judged the American path to be “the most democratic … [and to cause] the masses less suffering.” Moreover, the American path was the most congenial to capitalist development (see also Lenin 1907, 238–42; 1908, 40–42). Lenin (1974, 91) contended that the American path “would inevitably withdraw the majority of these owners, whose position is hopeless in capitalist society from agriculture, and no ‘right to the land’ would be powerful enough to prevent this.” — location: 6879 ^ref-56381

“peasant farming … evolves in a capitalist way and gives rise to a rural bourgeois and rural proletariat.” — location: 6883 ^ref-5959

Lenin may have underestimated the importance of slavery to the U.S. economy, his imagery of the U.S. path was consistent with the experience of history. — location: 6885 ^ref-4602

result, the U.S. economy began to create a substantial native-born industrial labor force out of the pool of largely self-sufficient producers. — location: 6894 ^ref-30746

Mexican immigration to the United States is highly correlated with inadequate rainfall in Mexico — location: 6905 ^ref-40082

the Soviets constructed the New Economic Policy to foster growth within the peasant sector as a basis for future socialist development — location: 6998 ^ref-5647

“the spontaneous forces of capitalism have been steadily growing in the countryside” — location: 7016 ^ref-39273

Indeed, Marx’s socialism may be said to be the proper heir to the best of classical political economy in this regard. — location: 7023 ^ref-32072

Yet hidden within the works of classical political economy was the uncomfortable truth that capital would profit by attacking the ability of people to provide for themselves. — location: 7046 ^ref-60341

that primitive accumulation was a crucial force in the process of capitalist development—not just during a precapitalist past or even some imagined moment when feudal society suddenly became capitalist. Rather, primitive accumulation played a continuing role as part of capitalist development. — location: 7054 ^ref-14226

Adam Smith becomes less original. His significance emanates from his ideological vigor in advocating laissez-faire and his eventual success in obfuscating all information that might cast doubt on his ideology. — location: 7064 ^ref-4433

Given the social relations of production, the small-scale producer represented an unmistakable barrier to the advance of capital. — location: 7071 ^ref-11103

self-provisioning did not have to be restricted on account of its failure, but rather because of its success. — location: 7072 ^ref-28999

Small-scale production has its own economies, its own efficiencies. In the long run, they may not be equal to those of modern, capital-intensive production, but where capital is scarce, such technologies are particularly competitive. — location: 7075 ^ref-57216

classical political economy was originally written to aid capital in the exploitation of labor, it may, nonetheless, prove to be a crucial source of inspiration. — location: 7080 ^ref-36081