The whole truth?
George Gale
The Origins of Capitalism Jean Baechler. Translated by Barry Cooper (Basil Blackwell, £4.75) The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism Introduced by Rodney Hilton (NLB, £4.75) The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism Daniel Bell (Heinemann Educational Books £5.75) Twilight of Authority Robert Nisbet (Heinemann, £4.80) Here, for once, is an exciting and elegant thesis, written with conceit and conceits: 'Though I am ready to ask the indulgence of the reader for the solution I have given to the problem posed, I am less inclined towards concessions over the method I have followed. To speak plainly, I attach greater importance to the method than to the illustration I have given of it.' I am not too sure that I believe M. Jean Baechler in the disclaimer with which he prefaces this marvellous essay on the problem posed by the origins of capitalism. It is an old problem. M. Baechler puts forward a new solution which is expressed in a powerful method, and which contains within it very considerable possibilities of intellectual growth. In my view we have here a major work, which is no less powerful because it is short, and no less relevant because it lacks doctrine.
The problem of the origins of capitalism is itself more central than might appear to those who are neither historians nor sociologists. Any discussion of 'the predicament of our time' or some such—and there are countless numbers of them—will find near or at its centre the question of capitalism: its nature, its past, its future. Marxism is a critique of capitalism. The dominant culture of the West is capitalist, and the object of communist states is to reproduce a copy of the wealth produced by capitalist states; and this is true, whether you like capitalism or not, and Whether you like western culture or not. But it is impossible to study capitalism today, for that would be to study not only the economic society but the political society also and much of the social society besides. Capitalism is too much with us to be studied. To study is to select. Thus, we find that aspects of the politics or of the economics of capitalism are studied, as are aspects of the communist and fascist reactions against it.
This is well enough appreciated by the Marxists themselves, who need to know Who their enemy is before they can hope to establish their own position. They argue constantly among themselves on the origins
of capitalism, much as medieval theologians argued. Such arguments, as they are put forward in the NLB's anthology for example, are not really for non-Marxists, but their continuation does something to emphasise the crucial character of the problem Baechler confronts, which is nothing less than to show, not the how, the when and the where (which traditional historians have concentrated upon) but 'the why of this phenomenon which has governed the destiny of western men for several centuries, and will do so for humanity in the future'.
Baechler starts with Marx's own considerations of the problem, which he shows to be circular: Marx has not succeeded in escaping from the circle within which he has enclosed himself by defining capitalism in terms of the system of wage-labour. The basis of the system is a part of the system; thus it cannot constitute its foundation.
That is, it cannot constitute its historic foundation, and this is its difficulty, since Marxism is presented 'as a philosophy of history and bases every explanation upon historical evolution and the particularity of historical stages'. Marx recorded the way in which he thought capitalism happened to arise, but Marxists have had to argue that things did not just happen that way but, rather, had necessarily to evolve, that way : Marx's 'was a thought that wished to be historical but, in order to remain coherent, saw itself obliged to eliminate history by establishing itself upon a non-historical principle, the principle of evolution'.
Next, Baechler considers Max Weber; taking the view that Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 'is in no way a theory of the emergence of capitalism from a basis in Protestantism', but a demonstration that the expansion of capitalism and some of the particular forms it has taken have been assisted and affected by Protestantism. Some kind of capitalist activity is found in most societies and very elaborate capitalist activity has been shown to have existed in many societies. Baechler suggests, having glanced at examples of such societies, that the degree of capitalist activity achieved by any given society is defined by the economic size of that society and by the degree of autonomy its ruler (`the State') grants to trading activities; and, since both size and trading autonomy are influenced by politics, 'the solution to the problem of the origins of capitalism must be sought within the political system'. Here I have brutally condensed an already very tight argument: I do so to indicate this part of Baechler's thesis rather than to seek to establish it. And now, having put this unfashionable thought into our heads. Baechler proceeds to inquire into 'the essence of capitalism', declaring that 'the most original feature of Western capitalism, which distinguishes it radically from all other economic systems, is its real efficiency'.
The question thus now poses itself: 'why has the West, and it alone, known an economic system characterised by the real maximisation of efficiency?'
The second half of Bacchler's essay endeavours to answer this question in an historical dontext which began in the Dark Ages, that period of catastrophic decline which he does not attempt to explain. He argues that but for two institutions, the West itself would have disappeared, those two institutions being the church and feudalism. The church preserved a religious and cultural order; feudalism was society pulling itself up by its bootstraps out of anarchy into some condition of political order. By the eleventh century the Western world was made, not broken. Its towns began; its bourgeoisie developed. And what was unique to the Western world in its developing towns and their new inhabitants? This, says Baechler: the organisation of medieval society had not provided for the merchant: 'Thus did Western society produce this bizarre individual, the bourgeois, devoted exclusively to profit and fundamentally dissatisfied because his way of life was not recognised by society'. Here Baechler, like Marx, could run around in circles, but he sees the danger, and, I think, avoids it. He finds it peculiar to the West that, for more than a thousand years, it has never succeeded in constructing a political. order for itself: and 'the absence of political order prevents all economic order'. He finds the West culturally homogenous and politically anarchic, and in this situation capitalism has the opportunity to expand.
I am very conscious that what I have given here is a very bald summary of a method and a thesis which seems to me to be of very great importance. Put crudely, what Baechler argues is the necessity to seek political explanations for economic changes. His thesis should be widely discussed; his book should be required reading for historians and sociologists, Marxists and non-Marxists alike. The Americans, too, could do with reading it, partly because of its sustained exercise of intelligence; and partly because he has more to say about capitalism, its nature, its origins, its future, and, by inference, its 'problems' (and 'the present predicament'), in almost any one of his pages than in any of the books which flood out of American universities with such titles as The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism and Twilight of Authority.
Such books are well-meaning only in the sense of being well-intentioned. They are filled with other people's sentences, as if quotation served for argument. So many names. So many quotations. So many views. But where is the view? Where is the piece of sustained thinking? Where even is the piece of sustained academic digestion? There is no view among all these views. There are, instead, opinions. Some of Daniel Bell's opinions are sensible and some of Robert Nisbet's have force. It may be that what both of them are striving to say is worth saying, but if so, is it worth the effort of sorting through the dross to find out? I doubt it, if I .am to take the two views these two university men take about the university. Thus Daniel Bell of Harvard. declared: 'The university, because it is the place where theoretical knowledge is codified and tested, increasingly has become a primary institution ,of society. To that extent, the university has become burdened with tasks greater than it has ever had to carry in its long history'. Whereas Robert Nisbet of Columbia opines: 'The full significance of the university's sudden change and strikingly diminished place in the social order has not yet been grasped by scholars, intellectuals, and other guardians of culture. It is thought, even by those most sensitively aware of the nature of the change, to be a phenomenon largely confined to the area of higher education, without significant impact upon other areas of society'. Pundits such as these are apt to say the first thing that comes into somebody's else's head, so it is not at all surprising that they should disagree; nor it is at all surprising when they agree, either. Nothing is surprising; nothing is thought through.,
Previous page
