> I saw that. You lost me early on with "…
>
> > the factor of primary importance was the mode of labor control:
> > directly by lords in England, and indirectly by state in continental
> Europe"
>
[WS:] According to Brenner, English lords in medieval times had greater power over peasantry than Continental lords. In England they had the power to decide the type and volume of labor and goods peasants had to contribute to the them (surplus extraction) without the recourse to the crown (i,e, royal courts). In the Continent, the lords did not have that power, mainly due to the fact that peasants for the most part owned their land instead of being tenants on lord's land, and the terms of economic exchange between lords and peasants were settled in royal courts. Brenner argues that direct control of surplus extraction in England was conducive for the development of market relations, because it allowed lords to extract more if the peasants produced more. This set the pattern of economic relations for centuries to come - in England it was direct dealing between lords and owners and peasants/workers with minimal involvement in the state, in the Continent the relationship between lords/owners and peasants/workers were mediated by state authorities.
I take that argument a bit further and suggest that state mediation was in general more advantageous for peasants/workers because the state was not a mere tool of the lords/owners, but had interests of its own, and sometimes it acted against the interests of the lords/owners, which in turn improved the position of peasants/workers. For example, the crown's or state efforts to centralize its power often resulted in a suppression of nobility who were a major obstacle to such centralization (e.g. in Sweden). In Germany, otoh, labor unrest was an obstacle to Bismarck's unification efforts, so he decided to "buy social peace" by offering a social welfare program. The capitalists were if course opposed to it, but since this program undermined the appeal of more radical labor demands, they grudgingly went along.
There are two arguments here: One is what is known in institutional economics as the "path dependency" - or a claim that certain institutional arrangements at key turning points set certain paths of developments that are followed for many years. In this case, different relationships between feudal lords and peasantry in the 11th and 12th century Europe set different "paths" of development in which crown/state played different roles in mediating economic relations.
The second argument is that the path in which the state plays a more active role in mediating economic relations is, ceteris paribus, more advantageous for the working class, because it tends to reign-in the power of the business class and opens the possibility of government siding with labor against business owners. In a laissez faire or "liberal" model in which the government economic role is more constrained, the business class is more likely to outmaneuver the labor due to its superior organization, and government's ability to countervail that is limited.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."