The following text on “The imperative need to move beyond capitalism” is a summary of one of a long series of workshops organized by Chusma Selecta and Floréal Roméro to help us better understand our world. The complete series is entitled “The Kingdom of Money.” Each of these texts will therefore have a sequel…

I. Our first task: defining and situating capitalism

A. Anti-capitalism?

Literary “production” relating to capitalism is so important that attempting to grasp it in its entirety is a mission impossible. Furthermore, if we take a look at the broad spectrum of “anti-capitalism,” the currents prove to be very diverse, and the vast majority of them merely seek to reform capitalism, channel it, direct it, change its course, moralize it, and muzzle it where its teeth are most visible: for example, in its financial aspect. What’s more, the measures they recommend to curb it only attack its symptoms and not its roots, regardless of the original name of these anti-capitalist schools, whether they claim to be Marxist, Buddhist, Islamic, or Keynesian. Ultimately, they all claim to use the state as a tool for change, even if they call for the mobilization of the people.

For our part, in order to understand the excessive power of capitalist imperatives and how to break free from them, we will go back to the systemic roots of capitalism, which imposed a ruthless dynamic structure of forced accumulation, profit maximization, and increased labor productivity.

If we dig deeper (it is undoubtedly radical Marxist literature that has most finely grasped the phenomenon), significant differences also emerge among authors on the origins of capitalism. Moreover, Marx himself had an ambiguous duality, which is why those who claim to follow the “Critique of Value”¹ speak of an “exoteric Marx” and an “esoteric Marx”², the latter being the more radical.

However, although we are not specialists, we must understand which version is most relevant, because our conception of the history of capitalism will determine our “investigation” and, consequently, the development of our strategies to defeat it.

When studying the past, we tend to distort it by looking at it through the “economic” lens of the present. The best prevention is doubt, and we will need a deeper understanding of how we have been, felt, thought, and acted within our various societies throughout history. This is where anthropological and ethnic knowledge are of fundamental importance.

B. Preliminary stages

Each historical stage is prepared by the previous one, which creates favorable conditions for the next. Even if these conditions do not always prove decisive for the advent of capitalism as the culmination of a system of total domination, following its complex evolutionary dialectic allows us to understand it better. We could thus go back roughly (due to lack of time and space) to the end of the Upper Paleolithic and glimpse the seeds of future domination in these egalitarian societies based on services and obligations³. In an environment that had become hostile due to climate change, the emergence of agriculture, migrations, differences between tribes and struggles between them would lead to the formation of the first societies with hierarchies of domination and the emergence of the first empires⁴. (Mumford’s “mega-machine”). The creation of loans and credit also played a fundamental role (see Graeber), as did the invention and, in the long term, the imposition of money, initially created to pay armies in the axial age, or the parallel and contiguous development of trade until the early Middle Ages. In a society highly structured by feudalism, the Church, and craft guilds, the market developed slowly in the interstices until it reached very large dimensions in Europe. Despite this, and despite its undeniable development, this enormous international market could not yet be described as capitalist.

C. The advent of the mercantile society

The structure of trade and the market that preceded capitalism did not mean that practices were above suspicion, quite the contrary. Profit and gain have always been the foundation and driving force behind these commercial practices aimed at the wealthiest, resorting to exploitation, pillaging, and ultimately war to ensure their supremacy in these markets.

Unlike in Asia, where kings and generals cared little about trade, in Europe the military and the powerful rallied to the mercantile cause very early on, until they were replaced by the merchants themselves. But before that, the lords and kings of the late Middle Ages facilitated the financing of discoveries, as the Spanish Catholic kings did with Christopher Columbus. The discoveries led to colonies, which generated profits, which in turn strengthened relationships of trust, resulting in more credit. Between conquest and “reconquest,” the only difference was the geographical location. And the Spanish mercenaries persecuting the “infidels” in the Americas, a dynamic typical of Catholic Spain during the “reconquest,” excited by riches and under pressure from their sponsors and creditors⁵, quickly conquered the Americas. The plundering of gold and silver injected more currency into international trade in Europe, with repercussions as far away as Asia. From that precise moment in history, the financial dynamics of mercantile entrepreneurs continued to develop in Europe. Of course, the American continent was the first to suffer, with genocide unprecedented in human history until that fateful day in October 1492. The initial goal was to use the natives as slaves (soulless humans) to extract the riches from the subsoil (gold and silver) at no cost, and then, with cotton, sugar, and tobacco plantations, to sell these products throughout Europe. In the process, new habits and a dependence on the latter two food products were created. A century after the landing, the population of the Americas had declined by 90%. The natives, almost exterminated, were then replaced by Africans. Thus, between the 16th and 19th centuries, under the subsequent pressure of English and North American capitalism, Africa was stripped of ten million inhabitants sold as slaves. And all this was financed through the market, by virtue of the law of supply and demand.

This is how slave trading companies sold shares on the stock exchanges of Amsterdam, London, and Paris until the end of the 19th century. It was an investment with an extremely profitable return of 6% per year.

These companies sometimes operated internationally without state intervention. It should be remembered that Holland (the United Provinces), without being a fully constituted state (a windswept marshland), managed to free itself from Spanish invaders in 1568, in just 80 years. It went on to become the financial Mecca of the continent’s merchants. Unlike the capricious and unserious absolutist and very Catholic kings of Spain, who were much richer and more powerful, the newly formed merchant companies won the trust of investors by developing sophisticated financial mechanisms and offering more guarantees for loans than private individuals. Through these companies, the United Provinces freed themselves from Spanish rule by hiring mercenaries and purchasing a powerful fleet. Thus, in 1602, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) single-handedly conquered Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago. It was not until 1800 that the Dutch state took control of the colony, which it held for a century and a half. It succeeded in creating a mercantile society that surpassed that of Florence and developed the most extensive trading society in the world. But these commercial successes were often supported by “extra-economic” means such as skirmishes and wars. However, despite these successes, it was not yet a capitalist market. It was not yet subject to the typically capitalist imperative of maximizing profits through the development of productive forces. The main concern of these merchants, despite their investment in agriculture and industry, was the circulation of products over long distances, from very diverse and scattered markets, and their storage, for which they also charged. These products included luxury goods, mainly intended for the elites, but also grain from the Baltic region for their cities, the most populous in Europe. They were not interested in production, nor did they think about reducing costs to increase their profits. Hence the crucial necessity and excessive obsession with dominating international trade, transport, and the exchange of goods from outside. They were hit hard by the crisis of the 17th century in Europe, which marked the beginning of their decline. But elsewhere in Europe, capitalism had already been born, making its way and waiting for its moment to take over, this time with a relentless logic and impetuosity never before seen in history.

D. The “natural laws” of capitalism

It was around this historical stage that differences emerged and controversies erupted, even among Marxists, which is why it is important to explore this issue in greater depth. Is it true, as many Marxists claim, and in a way Marx himself (the exoteric Marx), that the origin of capitalism coincides with the heyday of the market? In other words: is capitalism simply a market freed from all moral and structural constraints of a feudal nature? Or do we consider the capitalist market to be an anthropological break?

As is often the case, far from being innocent, these questions raise the crux of the debate and allow us to get a little closer to the complex reality.

If we consider the most common explanation, which sees the market as a direct legacy, a logical evolution of the economy inherited from the Middle Ages, this leads us to assume that capitalism naturally emanates from customs and practices almost as old as humanity itself.

Seen from this angle, capitalism would be akin to natural laws. In this case, we would distort its unique and exclusive characteristics, as well as the long and painful processes of its development, limiting our understanding of the past. Worse still, it would undermine our hopes for the future. For if capitalism were truly the natural outcome of historical evolution, it would be difficult to imagine getting rid of it or imagining other social and political structures.

While the question of the origin of capitalism may seem superfluous, it challenges, with more insight than it appears, a belief that is so deeply rooted in our culture and yet so dangerous: the belief in a “free market,” its advances for humanity, and its idyllic connections to democracy and even “sustainable development.”

E. Europe, the cradle of capitalism

There is still one question that continues to trouble many thinkers today, and to which most of them have been unable to provide a coherent answer.

Why did capitalism emerge in Europe when we know that in the 18th century (more specifically in 1775), Asia was still the driving force of the global economy, accounting for 80% of world trade?⁶

Despite this, were Asian trading societies capitalist societies? Were we already seeing a capitalist market with the most developed European market societies, such as those in Florence or the United Provinces? If so, the capitalist market as a well-defined social structure would lose its specific character entirely. And we could also consider the upheaval experienced during the transition from pre-capitalist societies to purely capitalist societies almost as necessary collateral damage, a lesser evil in order to achieve the fullness of a market economy, as would later be the case with the transition to industrialization. This view of transition as a natural process emphasizes the quantitative, arguing that with increasingly diversified and sophisticated commercial practices, in an increasingly urban environment and with increased division of labor thanks to technology, the market would have developed excessively. Then, upon reaching a sufficient critical mass, the famous “primitive accumulation” or “precondition,” investment would have been facilitated and trade would have flourished in a healthy commercial society. This version would not have been rejected by Adam Smith, the great theorist of liberalism… As a proponent of this evolution, he justified it theoretically, along with other theorists of capitalism, by arguing that it was a logic inherent in the nature of human beings throughout history and since the dawn of time, as rational individuals always inclined to maximize their profits whenever the opportunity arises.

Without substantiating Smith’s assumptions, the vast majority of Marxist critical thinking still bases its argument on this notion of the “commercialization model” of economic development, which spread naturally in quantitative terms. However, this argument lacks convincing historical, geographical, and anthropological foundations, because if this were the case, the breakdown of feudalism would have led to identical phenomena throughout Europe. While it is true that at the end of the 16th century this decomposition gave way directly to capitalism in England, more specifically in its countryside, it should be noted that this was a unique and specific case. Things happened differently in France, for example, where the collapse of feudalism gave way to bourgeois absolutism and a bourgeois market that was certainly more developed, but not under the yoke of the forces of a self-regulating market system.

However, by emphasizing the quantitative rather than the qualitative aspect of the transition from the post-feudal bourgeois market to the capitalist market, the radical and structural historical change is minimized. Another significant fact contributing to this confusion is the indiscriminate and interchangeable use of the terms bourgeois and capitalist. This form of assimilation suggests that in the Middle Ages, the bourgeois, inhabitants of towns and cities, were in fact capitalists or on the verge of becoming so.

While important historians such as Max Weber and Fernand Braudel often remain trapped in this logic, despite notable differences, the only one to break away was the historian and anthropologist Karl Polanyi. He categorically rejected all economistic theories positing the economy as the foundation of societies. For him, primitive societies did not have an autonomous economy separate from other activities. This dimension was incorporated and integrated into other social activities of a cultural, religious, family, community, and political nature, with a background of obligations, reciprocity, and redistribution, without being driven solely by profit or material gain. It was more a question of prestige and demonstrating group solidarity. Then, with the emergence of markets in the pre-capitalist world, these societies would have remained fundamentally on the margins, with the essential being based on self-sufficiency⁷. Although he was not the only one at the time to highlight these anthropological characteristics, Polanyi’s thesis stands out in that it establishes a clear break between market societies and non-trading societies, even if they have markets. For him, the establishment of a self-regulating market system was so disruptive, not only in terms of social relations but also for the human psyche, that without self-defense mechanisms and state intervention, society would have disintegrated. However, Polanyi’s analysis of the origins of capitalism runs out of steam as soon as it joins the currents of commercialization, arguing that the rise of markets and technological progress led to modern industrial capitalism by transforming man and nature into commodities, and that even if this capitalism reached its peak in England, it was part of a process that encompassed the whole of Europe.

F. Lords and farmers set capitalism in motion

First there was agrarian capitalism, which, according to Marx himself, originated not so much in Europe as exclusively in the English countryside, under very specific circumstances. He refers to “so-called” primitive accumulation, which is mentioned by classical economists and suggests that the simple accumulation of material goods, whether through plunder, imperialism, or even the exploitation of labor, could not have given rise to capitalism on its own without other factors coming into play. And although the accumulation of goods is a necessary condition for the start of capitalism, it is not a sufficient or decisive factor. What transformed wealth into capital was the change in social property relations, which involved the setting in motion of the mechanisms characteristic of capitalism, i.e., the imperatives of competition, maximum profit optimization, the obligation to reinvest surpluses, and the systematic and inexorable need to improve labor productivity and increase the productive forces.

In line with Marx, the Marxist historian Brenner, quoted in “The Origin of Capitalism”⁸, a work that largely inspired this investigation, is the one who brings us closest to the history of the development of this original structure of capitalism. Within the pre-capitalist European economy, only one country deviated from the rules observed by the others: England. This was the case from the end of the 16th century onwards. This country differed greatly from the others in several respects. First, although all the states in Europe were monarchies, and some perhaps more powerful than others, such as France and Spain, none of them achieved the unification and centralism of the English state. To such an extent that all traces of the “fragmented sovereignty” inherited from the feudal system had virtually disappeared from the country, as had the autonomous seigneurial powers, municipal bodies, and other corporate entities that still existed in the rest of Europe. The aristocracy played a leading role in this centralization, and while the ruling classes lost their autonomous “extra-economic” powers, in return the state protected them by ensuring order and endorsing private property. It also granted them greater control over land, and so for a long time, more than in any other country, the lords owned large tracts of land. Thus, what they lost in terms of “extra-economic” powers to extract surpluses, they regained by obtaining more powers of a purely economic nature. These rich, highly productive lands were not cultivated directly by peasants, but managed by tenant farmers through leases. On the other hand, since the English lords could no longer enrich themselves through direct coercive powers over their tenant farmers, they demanded that they achieve higher yields than their competitors. This is why the lords constantly pressured farmers to reduce costs by increasing labor productivity.⁹

In addition, these farmers were subject to market forces that forced them to lower their selling prices. Not only were these prices dictated by market competition, but customary leases were also gradually subjected to the market, obeying the fluctuating law of supply and demand after having been fixed. Thus, the lord leased his land to the highest bidder, creating fierce rivalry among tenant farmers for land. In this ruthless environment, the most productive farmers became wealthy and the others were ruined, forced to abandon their land to the winners who accumulated it. The losers thus swelled the ranks of the landless peasants, whose growing numbers drove down the price of wage labor and, consequently, production costs. Thus was born the famous triad: “landowner, capitalist farmer/farmer, and wage laborer/agricultural worker.”

In addition to a profound change in mentality, everything contributed to a necessary increase in the productivity of basic necessities and the development of economic autonomy. It was not the “opportunities” offered by the market that encouraged accumulation among small producers, but rather the ruthless reality of the “imperatives” of the market that was imposed on them. At that precise moment, in that particular place and under specific circumstances, the lords and farmers had unwittingly set capitalism in motion, even before Locke came along to legitimize it. But that was not enough, and market forces were also supported by direct coercive forces, both to abolish the rights of peasants and to drive out the most recalcitrant. This was the central element of “primitive accumulation.”¹⁰

G. The strengthening of patriarchy

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, struggles and disputes over communal and customary rights were incessant. For agrarian capitalism, the considerable increase in productivity “for the good of all” was a sufficient argument for abolishing all other traditional rights of the peasantry.

This injustice was not only legal, with the approval of “enclosures” by Parliament. These fences imposed to expropriate peasants from common lands were dictated by a deliberate desire to destroy the human communities of peasants who lived in the woods or on land bordering large estates, since they did not fit into the capitalist logic and hindered its expansion by their mere presence. As a result, entire villages were burned down. Women, who were the pillars of these peasant communities, were the first to be punished and, under the pretext of witchcraft, 100,000 were murdered and many more tortured¹¹. This brutal and bloody upheaval, often forgotten by male intellectuals, was far from foreign to the advent of capitalism; rather, it was an integral part of it, because it obeyed its imperative of rationalization dictated by market forces.

The witch hunt had a dual purpose with regard to women: to put an end to their predominant activities within peasant communities, but also to abolish a sexuality based on pleasure, which was very common in the Middle Ages but incompatible with the creation of the working class. The aim was therefore to replace it with a sexuality focused on the reproduction of an abundant labor force. This would be the duty of women, removed from the land, plants, animals, communal land, and relationships with other women that arose from daily life. The second purpose was therefore to assist in work, i.e., the creation of virile, hard-working, submissive¹³, and efficient (high-yielding) boys, the very embodiment of work. Gender polarization was thus established in a clearly marked and hierarchical manner, with heterosexuality as the social norm. In this sense, it is a hierarchical personification: the creation of work, and therefore of the male, takes precedence over everything else. The advent of capitalism therefore brought with it a new twist and a rationalization of patriarchy, which had traditionally been supported, justified, and encouraged by religion.

H. Capital and the State

In England, little by little, many producers and lords became increasingly dependent on the market, solely in order to preserve the conditions that guaranteed their “social reproduction.” But the more farmers employed wage laborers, the greater and more oppressive the pressure to increase labor productivity became. As a result, agriculture achieved very high productivity, with the consequences we know today.

The country had impressive river and road networks converging on its main city, which was constantly expanding. Growing from 60,000 inhabitants in 1530 to 570,000 in 1700, London became the largest city in Europe. Its inhabitants, mostly expropriated peasants, not only constituted a large reserve of wage labor and were exploited in the first factories, but also represented a huge internal market, unprecedented in history. This was the real foundation of English industrial capitalism.

Not only was the capital growing, but the English state was becoming more unified and centralized, and the various markets were merging into a single national market. The city would then become the largest transit point for English agricultural products, among others, mainly intended for domestic consumption. Thus, the expansion of London fostered the emergence of English capitalism by developing an increasingly unified and integrated competitive market, stimulating agricultural productivity through the need to feed this urban population expropriated from the countryside and reduced to buying basic foodstuffs to survive. In addition to this growing basic consumption, other essential goods such as everyday items, etc., were added.

For the first time in history, a mass market was born, with low prices and based on consumer poverty, in the same way that the luxury goods market had enriched those who had acquired them to sell to the privileged classes.

The paradox lies in the market’s feedback loop, in the sense that it was “the first economic system in history in which market restrictions had the effect of compulsively increasing the forces of production rather than curbing or hindering them.”¹⁵

The lack of consumer resources forced producers to produce at low cost in order to compensate for the lack of income by increasing production. This further increased competitive pressure, which in turn led to the need to invest in production techniques to increase labor productivity.

Thus was born a structure unique and without precedent in history, that of a society with an economy increasingly detached from other sectors of life and in which producers and exploiters had an urgent and systematic need to develop the productive forces, maximize their profits, and compete with each other, as they were entirely dependent on the market in various forms. This was the birth of the famous “self-regulating” market.

I. The domestication of the proletariat: “Coming soon”

1 See the website: www.palim.psao.fr

2 Similarly, Mr. Bookchin establishes a clear distinction in Marx between his “masterful thinking” and his “retrograde thinking.” “A Society to Be Remade,” p. 34, p. 44, p. 88, p. 107, p. 111, p. 116, and pp. 121-128. Ed. A.C.T.R. See the new version published by Ecosociété (Montreal).

3 See the works of Polanyi, Mauss, Clastres, and Graeber.

4 Bookchin may have initially overestimated pre-literate societies, but in “A Society to Be Remade,” Ed. Ecosociété, his hypothesis on the relationship between climate change, agriculture, and the transition to societies with power hierarchies remains entirely valid.

5 Graeber David, “5000 Years of Debt,” Ed. Les liens qui libèrent

6 Yuval Hoah Harari: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Albin Michel, September 2015

7“When the market became dominant, that is, in medieval times, it was carefully regulated by medieval guilds and Christian precepts that prohibited interest and excessive profits.” M. Bookchin, “Une société à refaire,” p. 84. Work cited.

8Ellen Meiksins Wood: “The Origin of Capitalism.” An in-depth study Lux-Humanités 2009

9 Back then, in the 17th century, the word “improver” referred to someone who improved the land, made it more productive, whether through physical or mechanical effort using modern machines, but also by installing fences, searching for abandoned land, and supplanting customs and traditions. By extension, during the golden age of agrarian capitalism, the word “improvement,” which originally meant “to make better,” took on a more explicit meaning, the one we give it today, which means “to make a monetary profit.” This is yet another illustration of the relationship between profit and productivity in agrarian capitalism. Summary of Meikins Wood’s book, pp. 168-169

10“Primitive accumulation was an immense accumulation of labor power; ‘dead labor’ in the form of stolen goods and ‘living labor’ in the form of human beings subjected to exploitation, accumulation on a scale unprecedented in history.” Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici, Ed. Senonevero, Marseille, 2004. Personal translation/Our translation in brackets ^{[ ]}. F. M R. Page 121.

11 “At the same time that the enclosures expropriated the peasantry of their common lands, the witch hunts expropriated women of their bodies, thus ‘liberating’ them from any obstacle preventing them from functioning as machines for producing labor.” Federici (2004). “Capitalism was built on brutal and bloody misogyny.” John Holloway, “Crack Capitalism,” p. 202, French version (Libertalia).

12“The witch hunt (…) was the first step in a long march towards ‘clean sex in clean sheets’ and the transformation of female sexual activity into work in the service of men and for the purpose of procreation.” Federici (idem)

13“As Amparo Moreno says, every time we give birth, we affirm the life that should not be, we block the erotic-vital capacity of the newborn and then continue to educate it according to the established order.” Quoted by Casilda Rodrigañez in “Childbirth, a question of power,” Ekintza Zuzena no. 29. Echoing another article in no. 29: “It is a question of transforming the real mother into a patriarchal mother who ignores the desires of her children, who is insensitive to their suffering and capable of repressing them. This is the principle of authority in our lives.” The uprooting of community societies and the conditions of precariousness and overcrowding in England at the time were entirely conducive to this kind of patriarchal motherhood.

14“Man and woman (and of course homosexual and heterosexual) are identifications, aspects of the society of identification. They are part of the mutilation implied by the formation of the worker, the one who performs abstract labor. This is a classification that we must fight against. Work is an abstraction, a separation from the world of doing and from vital activity. This fragmentation of our vital activity is a fragmentation of our lives in all respects.“ John Holloway. Work already mentioned.

15”The Origin of Capitalism,” p. 222

Translated by TerKo using a free tool.

The next article in the series: Capitalism on a forced march