Introducing the Early

UNIT 2 TRANSITION FROM FEUDALISM Modern West

TO CAPITALISM – DEBATE 1
Structure
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 General Features of a Feudal and a Capitalist System
2.3 The Beginning of a Debate
2.4 Paul Sweezy’s Intervention
2.5 Takahashi and Rodney Hilton in Fray
2.6 Role of ‘Uneven Development’: E J Hobsbawm
2.7 Let Us Sum Up
2.8 Keywords
2.9 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

2.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit, you should be able to:
Understand the rise of the modern west in the context of the debate on
transition from feudalism to capitalism;
Analyze how different historians focused on contradictions between forces
of production and relations of production in feudalism to highlight the
emergence of capitalism;
Examine how historians later tried to bring in the role of trade and the rise of
towns to bring forward new factors which contributed to decline of feudalism;
Know how in the debate the role of class struggle and class conflict was
brought in to highlight how a dynamic process encompassing classes, modes
of production and trade and commerce played in the transition from feudalism
to capitalism; and
Discuss how a broader approach taking in to account capital accumulation
from colonies and their exploitation brought forward a picture of uneven
transition from feudalism to capitalism.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
Marx believed that history of human civilization passed through different modes
of production: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism and capitalism. He
thought that dissolution of obsolete capitalism will usher in communism. The
mode of production of a society is simply the way a society goes about producing
goods and services. Since no human society can produce things or necessities of
life without human labour power and other productive tools (raw-material,
machinery, land, plants and infrastructure etc.). These were the productive forces
of a society. But these productive forces are used and controlled in the context of

19
The Rise of the Modern West property and rules regarding how productive assets are to be used, there is also
need for social rules, laws, customs and power relations between individual and
at the broader level between group of people or classes. These were designated
as relation of production by Marx. As long as productive forces in a society are
attuned to or are in sync with the relation of production, the society moves
smoothly and economy grows but when there is tension (contradiction) between
them, society is ready for transition from one mode to another mode of production
through revolution. It is generally accepted that changes started to take place in
the Feudal mode or system of medieval Europe in 14th century which gradually
led to development of a capitalist economy. This period of transition is one of the
most controversial and scholars, historians have argued on the nature of this
process of transition depending on their perspective. This and next Unit will
narrate and explain views and arguments of scholarly community about this
significant change which sets in motion the process of the rise of modern capitalist
economy. It is, therefore, necessary to know some general features of a feudal
and a capitalist society before we go into the depth of arguments about transition
from feudalism to capitalism.

2.2 GENERAL FEATURES OF A FEUDAL AND A

CAPITALIST SYSTEM
The feudal system was primarily based on agrarian subsistence economy. The
manor or the large tract of land was the centre of the feudal system and the
manor was owned by the feudal lord. This land was allotted to the feudal lord by
the overlord or the king. The feudal lords, being the superior class, did not cultivate
lands themselves. The land was cultivated by serfs, who were tied to the landlords’
manor having limited control over their labour power and partial control over
small patch of land on which he and his family survived. The serf was the actual
tiller of the land who worked on the lord’s land (demesne) and also on the plot of
land allotted to him. The serfdom was based on use of extra-economic coercion
for controlling the labour and fate of serf-cultivators by feudal lords. The feudal
lords enjoyed legal and judicial power and privileges over serfs. The entire system
worked on mutual obligation. The king allotted land to the nobles and the nobles
were supposed to provide money and soldiers to the king. Similarly, the feudal
lords got the land grant and were supposed to provide protection and services to
the overlords. Serfs were expected to till the feudal lord’s land and his land (a
small patch of land from the lord for the subsistence of his family) and in return
the lord provided them protection. So in a feudal society, the king was at the top
and the serf was at the bottom of the feudal hierarchy. But apart from secular
lords, the clergy or the priestly class also owned large tracts of lands and acted
like feudal lords. The Catholic Church was the largest land lord of the medieval
Europe which was equally oppressive despite its claim to work for the salvation
of the people. In such society, access to social opportunities and status was
determined by the accident of birth. The ascribed role or status of individual was
assigned by virtue of factors outside his or her own control. This assigned role
was rationalized as divinely ordained and natural and was legally recognized
and approved by religious-normative order of the society. However, many towns
also coexisted with manors in medieval Europe representing non-agrarian segment
of the economy. These towns were involved in manufacturing activities. The
manufacturing in these centres was done by an association of artisans, craftsman
and professionals called guild. The guild was responsible for the production and
20
sale of commodities. The quantity and quality to be produced and the price was Transition from Feudalism to
Capitalism – Debate1
determined by the guild. The guild was also responsible for the socio-religious
aspects of its members, and their lives. The produce of the guild was sold to
manors and to long-distance markets.

In contrast to feudal system, capitalism is an open market-oriented economy

characterized by mass-scale commodity production and with high level of division
of labour and specialization and use of machinery. So the products are not for
subsistence use, rather they are meant to be sold in market to earn profits. There
is a separation of producer and consumers in time and space. The Products and
services are, therefore, exchanged through markets using money as a medium.
The means of production or productive assets are privately owned in this system
and the owners of these private assets buy labour power to use in their production
operations to produce for the market where they sell their products to earn profits
for themselves. Production for profit or accumulation is the sole implicit purpose
of all production under this system and it is characterized by individualism,
acquisitiveness, maximizing behaviour of most of the economic agents.
(maximizing of profits for the producers and maximizing of satisfaction for the
consumers). The individual’s professional or occupational role came to depend
on individual effort and ability at least formally and legally in the capitalist system,
thus, allowing for limited mobility.

2.3 THE BEGINNING OF THE DEBATE

Disagreements amongst historians can be more overtly ideological in character.
But more often it is on the basis of evidence and interpretation of facts. The
debate was initiated after the publication of Maurice Dobb’s Studies in the
Development of Capitalism, published immediately after the Second World War
and revised edition appearing in 1963. Dobb based his approach to the transition
from feudalism to capitalism on Marx’s notion of the mode of production. While
he recognized that one mode of production dominated a given epoch, he also
accepted that elements of other modes of production could coexist with the
dominant mode. According to him, in transition from feudal to the capitalist
mode, He laid emphasis on three key things – the crisis of feudalism in the
fourteenth century, the beginning of capitalism in the late sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Industrial
Revolution. The decline of feudalism and start of capitalism are separated by at
least two centuries. It was from the latter half of the sixteenth century and the
early seventeenth century that capital began to penetrate production to a
considerable degree. Dobb defines feudalism as a ‘system under which economic
status and authority were associated with land-tenure, and the direct producer
was under obligation based on law or customary right to devote a certain quota
of his labour or his produce to the benefits of his feudal superior’. Feudalism
here consisted of social relations between feudal lords and peasants. Feudal lords
ruled over peasants and their lands. The ‘serfs’ or kind of bonded cultivators
utilized their small lands with their labour work and were required to allocate a
part of their labour to the feudal lords.

He argued that the decline of feudalism was the result of inner contradiction
within the feudal mode of production. This explanation is generally described as
the ‘inner-contradiction model’.
21
The Rise of the Modern West He argued that trade and merchant capital did not directly change the feudal
economic system. The development of trade was closely related to the growth of
division of labour, and that division of labour depended on rise of productivity
of labour. According to him, capitalist development was brought about by the
emergence of an urban setting. In his view, ‘lord-peasant’ class relations and the
outcome of ‘lord-peasant class conflict’ was important to understand the growth
of towns in the feudal society that led to the rise of commercial-industrial capital.
During the period of the transition, development of towns in feudal societies
were due to increased demand for weapons and luxury products coming from
feudal class. This was also the reason for growth of trade. As a result of this,
there was rise of interest in exchanging peasant-produced food for luxury goods.
Dobb’s analysis on transition of feudalism to capitalism does at some point
contradict itself.

Modern discussions of feudalism have been plagued by long drawn-out

controversies over its conceptualization. These disputes have centred on whether
feudalism should be thought of in essentially political and legal or socio-economic
terms. Dobb laid emphasis on economic aspects. According to him, the feudal
mode is defined as the extra-economic extraction by overlords of rents or services
from a class of subsistence producers. The peasant producers largely control the
process of production but are not legally free. Feudalism and serfdom were
synonymous. The rise of the political and economic autonomy of the corporate
towns, followed immediately by the economic decline of the fourteenth century,
marked the crisis of the feudal mode. According to Dobb, towns had some part
in the decline of feudalism. The towns provided shelter to runaway serfs and
served as the oasis of freedom in late medieval peasant revolts. But the antagonism
and confrontation between peasants and landlords in the countryside was the
main arena of class-struggle.

At the end of the Middle Ages, serfdom had vanished while medieval forms of
government and the class power of landlords continued to exist. Though the
peasantry as a class had grown stronger, they remained subject to manorial
authority. The emerging class of hired labourers was subject to a good deal of
coercion. So the wage labour was still a supplement to a livelihoods based on
from subsistence farming. The merchant bourgeoisie became more powerful but
cooperated for the most part with the landlords. However, the urban craftspeople
and well-to-do and middle class peasants become independent of feudalism. They
were petty producers who were not yet capitalists, but certainly contained a
potential to become so. In Dobb’s conception, it was this petty mode of production
which predominated economically in the two hundred or so years between the
beginning of the feudal crisis and the advent of the capitalist mode in the mid-
sixteenth century.

Until Dobb it was generally assumed that the intensification of market exchange
and the growing role of money brought about the decline of feudalism. On the
contrary, Dobb demonstrated that money and exchange actually strengthened
serfdom and feudalism. The emergence of merchant capital was fully compatible
with feudalism. Rather it was the economic weakness of the feudal mode of
production, coupled with the growing need of the ruling class for revenue, which
was responsible for the system’s crisis. The lack of economic incentive to work
hard and the low level of technique placed a limit on peasant productivity. Feudal-
class demands on peasants increased inordinately due to the expansion of its
22
numbers and due to growth of landlords’ establishments and retinues. The burden Transition from Feudalism to
Capitalism – Debate1
on cultivators increased due to feudal landlords’ demand for more and more
luxury consumption and the exigencies of war and brigandage. The competition
between leading nobles increased spending on feasts, luxury commodities,
pageants and wars. All this increased economic pressure on producers. The result
was economic exhaustion, flight from the land and peasant rebellion.

Over-exploitation and stagnant productivity resulted in a decline in population

after 1300. Subsequent labour shortages, peasant resistance or threat of flight
led to widespread commutation of labour to money rent. The manorial system
was further weakened by the thinning of the ranks of the nobility through war,
the growing practice of leasing demesne, the emergence of a stratum of rich and
middling peasants differentiated from the mass of peasant poor, and the growing
use of wage labour. By the end of the fifteenth century, the economic basis of the
feudal system had disintegrated. The late medieval social differentiation of the
peasantry, a key theme of Dobb’s work, prepared the way for the later
dispossession of the mass of peasants. The emergence of this drifting population
heralded the coming of capitalism, setting the stage for the emergence of capitalist
wage labour. The role of the towns was above all to act as a magnet attracting the
serfs fleeing from countryside.

Dobb’s perception on the role of the towns was later strongly contested. Dobb’s
explanation that the collapse of feudalism was the result of its own internal
contradictions, stemming from the over-exploitation of the peasant producers
was more acceptable. In Dobb’s own words: “it was the inefficiency of Feudalism
as a system of production, coupled with the growing needs of the ruling class for
revenue, that was primarily responsible for its decline; since this need for
additional revenue prompted an increase in the pressure on the producer to a
point where this pressure became literally unendurable.” Dobb’s interpretation
of the decline of feudalism set off the celebrated transition debate.
Check Your Progress 1
1) Discuss Maurice Dobb’s views on the transition debate.
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2) Do you agree with Maurice Dobb that the collapse of feudalism was due to
its own internal contradictions?
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23
The Rise of the Modern West
2.4 PAUL SWEEZY’S INTERVENTION
Paul Sweezy, another celebrated Marxist economist and co-founder with Paul
Baran of the Monthly Review, was first to contest Dobb viewpoint. Sweezy
agreed with Dobb that serfdom was the dominant relation of production in Western
feudalism. But organized around the economically self-sufficient manor,
feudalism, according to him, was a mode of production for use, and as such
tended to stagnation. It needed an external force, the growth of trade and increase
in production for exchange, to undermine the system. He rejected Dobb’s view
of internal contradiction for the decline of feudalism. This, in his views, can only
be explained as arising from causes external to the system. Sweezy’s view of an
external prime mover was necessary to explain decline of a closed, self-sufficient
system producing only for use. He disagreed that the prime mover of change was
internal to the feudal system. Dobb for one rejected Sweezy’s view that feudalism
tended toward stagnation, and insisted that it had its own momentum based on
its internal – especially class – contradictions. Class conflict between peasants
and lords did not directly lead to capitalism. What it did was to lessen the
dependence of the petty mode of production upon feudal over-lordship, eventually
freeing the petty producer from feudal exploitation. Sweezy’s notion of trade-
driven external prime mover appear to be simple single cause explanation of
decline of a complex social system. Dobb’s view was more historically and
theoretically better informed and a more refined view of feudalism as an internally
dynamic system driven by economic growth and class conflict. While placing
greater emphasis on internal factors, Dobb also considered the growth of trade a
factor. Sweezy further criticized Dobb for not signalling the existence of a system
of pre-capitalist commodity production which was neither feudal nor capitalist
in the wake of feudalism’s demise.

2.5 KOHACHIRO TAKAHASHI AND RODNEY

HILTON IN FRAY
Marxist economic historian Kohachiro Takahashi insisted in the first place that
the debate be widened beyond the English case to include the experience of
feudalism in the Continental Europe. Takahashi rejected Sweezy’s conception
of feudalism as a self-sufficient, closed economic system which produced only
for use rather than exchange. Commodities were produced and circulated in
different modes of production including the feudal. It is important to know how
products were produced. As such Takahashi strongly supported Dobb’s view
that the decline of feudalism was due to internal factors like class struggle rather
than an external factor like trade. But according to Takahashi, Dobb’s definition
of feudalism was inadequate in that he immediately started from the abstractions
of feudal landed property and serfdom. But just as Marx began his analysis of
capital from the commodity, so likewise the analysis of feudalism had to begin
from the fundamental social units of Western feudalism: the virgate (cottage,
small plot, collective rights), the village community and the manor (seigneurie).
It was the manor which dominated the other two and became the basis for the
extraction of surplus from producers in the form of feudal rent and the mobilization
of labour.

Rodney Hilton also questioned Sweezy’s view and argued that long-distance
trade was not responsible for decline of feudalism. Sweezy’s view was based on
24
the so-called Pirenne thesis. Henri Pirenne was a famous Belgian historian of Transition from Feudalism to
Capitalism – Debate1
medieval period. He claimed that the economic decline of the West coincided
not with the fall of the Western Roman Empire but with the closure of the
Mediterranean as a result of the Muslim occupation of the Eastern Mediterranean
coast in the eighth century. Contrariwise the economic revival of Western Europe
began with the reopening of the Mediterranean during the crusades of the eleventh
century. Arguing against Pirenne, Hilton maintained that the decline of the Roman
Empire in the West was the result not of the disruption of trade but of internal
factors. The decline of production for trade and exchange in the Empire began as
a result of internal economic and demographic weakening as early as the third
century, hundreds of years before the collapse of Roman political authority. It
was not due to the Arab intrusion into the Mediterranean. Likewise internal factors
within Western Europe led to the recovery of production for distant markets
before the start of the crusades. If development of feudalism was due to internal
factors and mechanisms, its decline was also due to internal factors.

Hilton, like Dobb, supported the idea that decline of feudalism was a result of
internal class struggle. It was the main cause for decline of feudalism and this
was dependent on the growth of the forces of production. As its dynamic element,
class struggle between overlords and peasants led to the flourishing of the feudal
mode of production in one phase and then to its decline in another phase. The
nobility and princes also engaged in political competition with one another while
striving to maximize their rental income. The resultant quest for increased rent
at first stimulated technological innovation, the development of towns and
commerce, and increases in productivity, only later contributing to feudalism’s
decline. Hilton underscored the growth of the forces of production when feudalism
reached its highest point of development. The interaction of these factors,
including growing production for the market, led to increased social and class
differentiation among the peasants. The richer peasants were able to increase the
size of their land-holdings and employed more and more wage labour, which
was increasingly that of the completely landless rather than that of smallholders.
The prosperous peasants resented the demands of lords for more rent, and their
resentment was supported by small and poorer cultivators because demand for
more rent was also imposing a restriction on economic expansion and was equally
undermining the subsistence and livelihood of smaller peasants.

The struggle over rent intensified and reached a peak in the fourteenth century.
Income from rent declined and was only partly compensated for by increases in
state taxation, warfare and plunder, and commutation of rents into cash payments.
Feudal rent no longer remained an incentive to production, and landlords’
dependent on it for income ultimately had to look to the emerging power of the
state for continued existence. The number of tenants obliged to labour on their
lord’s demesne and the value of rent, now paid predominantly in cash, declined.
Overall the legal claims of the lords over the persons of their tenants weakened.
Money rent favoured the social stratification of the population of the manor into
rich and poor. The sale and purchase of land begun leading to creation of a land
market. The holdings of the rich peasants in the manor expanded at the expense
of the rest. More peasants were forced to resort to wage labour. Rich peasants
and lesser nobles were the most efficient producers in an increasingly market-
oriented economy, which began to take capitalist forms. With Hilton’s vivid
demonstration of the role of class struggle both in developing the forces of
production under feudalism and in its decline, this became, along with peasant
25
The Rise of the Modern West social differentiation, the fundamental pivot around which debate on the transition
would now revolve.

In Hilton’s views, the role of towns and trade, seen by others such as Sweezy as
a principal reason for decline of feudalism or as a prime mover, was itself the
outcome of class struggle. For Hilton argued that the commutation of rents into
cash payment furthered the development of merchant capital and the growth of
larger towns within the context of the feudal mode of production. Hilton’s view
of the towns as part of the feudal system rather than as an external catalyst to
capitalism was greatly influenced by an article by John Merrington which
appeared originally in New Left Review and was republished as the final
contribution to the debate over The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism,
edited by Hilton in 1976. Merrington argued that town-based commerce facilitated
the expansion of the feudal mode of production. The urban corporate form or the
guilds, although at times in opposition to local feudal landlords, actually
functioned as a ‘collective seigneur’ under feudalism, and strengthened its
economic foundation. Feudalism accorded an autonomous place to urban
production and exchange in its structure.

Merrington argued that towns and trade were natural, built-in components of
feudalism. They were not external capitalist forces working to undermine
functioning of feudalism. So, they did not play any significant role in the
emergence of capitalism. For merchant capital did not create surplus value, it
only redistributed it. While it played a key role in primitive accumulation of
capital, it could not be a source of a permanent self-reproducing accumulation.1
For that to occur the extension of the market in the territorial state and the
emergence of agrarian capitalism were necessary, and when they did emerge,
urban merchant capital was reduced to a declining sphere of operations.
Merrington’s arguments were a powerful reinforcement of the role of class struggle
and the internal logic of feudalism’s decline. He, however, overlooked three
aspects of their role in its decline. First, the towns served as a potential or actual
refuge for the subject rural population, as Dobb pointed out. Second, urban markets
strengthened social and political links between rural producers. Finally, as
Merrington himself noted, merchant capital played a role in primitive
accumulation which was a necessary if not sufficient condition for the
development of the capitalist mode of production. These aspects of the role of
towns and trade could not be so easily dismissed, and as we shall see below, later
accounts came to see class struggle and trade as joint factors in the rise of
capitalism.

2.6 ROLE OF “UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT”: E. J.

HOBSBAWM
As already discussed, Takahashi had pointed to the need to broaden the discussion
on feudalism to include Continental Europe and Japan. This was part of a general
trend in Marxism to extend the concept of feudalism in analyzing non-European
pre-capitalist societies, rather than employing the problematical and Eurocentric
concepts of communal and Asiatic modes of production. Feudalism, at least after
Hilton’s intervention, was seen as a progressive mode capable of evolving toward
capitalism, whereas the other two categories of communal ownership of property
and Asiatic mode of self-sufficient village economy discussed by Marx were
26 seen as stagnant, unchanging and hence not in conformity with Marxist method
of dialectical change in society. In a deceptively simple contribution, Eric Transition from Feudalism to
Capitalism – Debate1
Hobsbawm helped to free Marxist understandings from the problems associated
with notions of Asiatic and communal modes of production, and reconnected
them with ideas about uneven and combined development.

Hobsbawm unreservedly admitted that the forces making for economic

development in Europe were also present elsewhere in the world. Japanese
feudalism, in particular, resembled the European model of feudalism closely,
and it was conceivable that capitalism could have emerged there independently
of European influence. In his view, the intrusion of European imperialism ruptured
a genuinely internal process of development in non-European societies. Having
raised the possibility of non-European forms of capitalism, Hobsbawm
nonetheless insisted that the accomplishment of capitalism in Europe was unique
and very special. He argued that there is no getting round the fact that the transition
from feudalism is, on a world scale, a case of highly uneven development. We
should note that the notion of uneven development was not new and Marx
mentioned it in his work Grundrisse (1857-58), where unevenness represents
the condition for a transition from one declining mode of production to another
expanding and more progressive mode. Moreover, uneven development is a
fundamental feature of the capitalist form of development. With respect to uneven
development in Western Europe, according to Hobsbawm, the crisis of feudalism
involved the most advanced sectors of capitalist development within Western
Europe as well.

The remarkable thing about the 14th century crisis was, in his view, not only the
collapse of large-scale feudal demesne agriculture, but also demise of the Italian
and Flemish textile industries. England advanced industrially but the much greater
Italy and Flanders industries could not recover. Unevenness characterized not
only the crisis of feudalism but also the emergence of capitalism itself. Overall
European development from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries
was marked by repeated crises in which regression in one place allowed progress
elsewhere. West European advance came directly at the expense of Eastern Europe
and Asia, Africa and Latin America. The process of West European transition to
capitalist economy was accompanied by simultaneously turning other areas into
dependent economies and colonies. Seizing resources from advanced areas or
later on from colonized regions became an inherent feature of West European
capitalist development. In other words, the emergence of capitalism in Europe
has to be understood in terms of an ongoing world-wide process of appropriation
based on uneven development both within and outside Europe. Hobsbawm
concluded that ‘the net effect of European capitalism was to divide the world
ever more sharply into two sectors: the “developed” and the “under-developed”
countries, in other words the exploiting and the exploited.’ Hobsbawm’s
conception of the transition is one in which unevenness plays a vital part. Gain
in one place is invariably at the cost of other places, even those that were initially
more developed. Hobsbawm’s sense of the dialectical quality and the unevenness
of the process of transition was an impressive insight, representing a significant
contribution to the transition debate.

Hilton’s editing and republication of the 1950s transition debate (in 1976) was
the consequence of the revival of the dispute in the 1960s. The New Left Review,
started in 1960 as a bimonthly political academic journal, played an important
part. Brenner, Anderson and Wallerstein and other left-leaning historians published
27
The Rise of the Modern West their important contributions to the transition debate. Scholars such as Poston,
Ladurie, Abel and Verhust put forward the ‘demographic model theory’. This
theory was constructed in opposition to Marxist’s model, further enriching the
debate. We will continue to discuss all these ideas and contest of ideas in next
unit.
Check Your Progress 2
1) Outline the differences between Paul Sweezy and Rodney Hilton.
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2) What did Hobsbawm mean by uneven development? Explain.

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2.7 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we discussed the long and uneven process of transition from feudalism
to capitalism. The debate over question emerged among Marxist scholars with
the publication of Maurice Dobb’s Studies in the Development of Capitalism.
Given the long duration of transition, the uneven nature of social-economic change
and differences in the perspectives of scholars, a lively and historically enriching
debate has been discussed in this Unit. Some like Paul Sweezy arguing for an
external catalyst like long distance trade and market forces to explain the demise
of feudalism while others like Dobb and Rodney Hilton trying to relate the
transition to the endogenous factors like class struggle between feudal landlords
and peasant cultivators. There are variations in arguments regarding the nature
of class struggle and specific role of towns and trade and the process unevenness
was highlighted by scholars like Hobswam and Takahashi. The debate
demonstrates that as history is not something fixed and unchanging, so its
interpretations are also full of lively debates and discussions about the exact
nature and mechanisms of social change.

2.8 KEYWORDS
Mode of Production : A heuristic term used to capture the concepts of relations
of production and forces of production taken together as a whole to designate the
dominant production process of a social formation. For example, feudalism,
capitalism, socialism.
28
 Transition from Feudalism to
2.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Capitalism – Debate1

EXERCISES
Check Your Progress 1
1) See Section 2.3
2) See Section 2.3
Check Your Progress 2
1) See Section 2.5
2) See Section 2.6

2.10 SUGGESTED READINGS

Dobb, Maurice (1946/1963), Studies in the Development of Capitalism. New
York: International Publishers/London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Harman, Chris (1999, 2008) A People’s History of the World. London: Bookmarks,
Verso.

Hilton, Rodney Howard (ed.) (1976) The Transition from Feudalism to

Capitalism. London: New Left Books.

Holton, R. J. (1985) The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. New York:

St. Martin’s Press.

Sweezy, Paul M. et al. (1954) The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism: A

Symposium (articles by various writers from Science and Society). London: Fore.

Wood, Ellen Meiskins (1999) The Origin of Capitalism. New York: Monthly
Review Press.

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