JCWisc at aol.com wrote:
>
> I really want to get a copy of _The Pristine Culture of
> Capitalism: A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States_, which only
> seems available by special order. Reading _The Origin of Capitalism: A
> Longer View_ (the 2002 Verso edition), she keeps citing _The Pristine
> Culture_ in the endnotes. Any comments on _The Pristine Culture of
> Capitalism_ from those who have read it?
>
I read the book in January of 2001 and have not gotten back to it yet, so I can only give general impressions left from that reading. Moreover, I am undoubtedly 'prejudiced,' Ellen Wood being the contemporary author who has most influenced my own understanding of marxism. I think the book is an essential read. It contains powerful critiques of major versions of the (explicit or implicit) concept that capitalism has always been with us. Here is the beginning of Chapter 8, "No Great Transformation, Model II: England as Perennial Capitalism":
******** If Johathan Clark conceals the "modernity" of England under the trappings of aristocracy and monarchy, Alan MacFarlane gives us an England peculiarly modern time out of mind: individualistic, mobile, market-oriented, different from any traditional society in its landholding and kinship patterns, its attitude to property, its economic rationality. Like Clark, however, he is concerned to debunk all major theories of social transformation; and like Clark, too, he seems intent on demonstrating that England as it is represents the universe unfolding as it should.
MacFarlane's controversial book, _The Origins of English Individualism_, is as much a work of ideology as history. . . .in the wake of a collapsing communism, it has proved to be remarkably prophetic of the new triumphalism which proclaims the eternity of capitalism and indeed the end of history. If the book deserves detailed attention, it is less as history than as a manifestation of the Zeitgeist.
In MacFarlane's case even more than in Jonathan Clark's, it is transparent that the object of the exercise is not merely to debunk all theories of revolutionary change, and Marxism in particular, but to divest English history of any major crises and dislocations, social conflicts and struggles. The effect of rewriting English history in this way is to represent capitalism itself as a healthy, natural, organic product. The development of English capitalism has been a comfortable, benign and largely conflict-free elaboration of always present themes. Capitalism itself then is nothing more than a natural extension of an age-old individualism, probably deeply rooted in the ancient German forest -- not, admittedly, an inevitable development, since contingent events could have stood in its way, but always running smoothly with the grain.*************
Carrol