The Pristine Culture of Capitalism: A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States (Verso World History Series)

A historical essay on old regimes and modern states In this lively and wide-ranging book, Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that what is supposed to have epitomized bourgeois modernity, especially the emergence of a "modern" state and political culture in Continental Europe, signaled the persistence of pre-capitalist social property relations. Conversely, the absence of a "modern" state and political discourse in England testified to the presence of a well-developed capitalism. The fundamental flaws in the British economy are not just the symptoms of arrested development but the contradictions of the capitalist system itself. Britain today, Wood maintains, is the most thoroughly capitalist culture in Europe. From the Trade Paperback edition. Capitalism was born in England, yet the dominant Western conceptions of modernity have come from elsewhere, notably from France, the historical model of "bourgeois" society. In this lively and wide-ranging book, Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that what is supposed to have epitomized bourgeois modernity, especially the emergence of a "modern" state and political culture in Continental Europe, signalled the persistence of precapitalist social property relations. Conversely, the absence of a "modern" state and political discourse in England testified to the presence of a well-developed capitalism. The fundamental flaws in the British economy are not just the symptoms of arrested development but the contradictions of the capitalist system itself. Britain today, Wood maintains, is the most thoroughly capitalist culture in Europe. Weaving together economic and political history with the history of ideas, Wood ranges across a broad spectrum of current debates, from the "Nairn �Anderson theses" to the contribution of J.C.D. Clark and Alan Macfarlane, and over a wide variety of topics: the development of British capitalism and French absolutism; the state, the nation and their symbolic representations; revolution and tradition; the cultural patterns of English speech, urbanism, ruralism and the landscape garden; ideas of sovereignty, democracy, property and progress. This book will be as interesting and provocative to observers of contemporary capitalism as to historians of early modern Europe or Western political thought.-- Provided by Publisher La burguesía es también y sobre todo la hegemonía de su relato histórico. Según términos bien conocidos, se asegura que derrotó al absolutismo y trajo las libertades económicas y políticas que acabarían en las democracias actuales. La reconocida historiadora marxista Ellen Meiksins Wood vuelve a los orígenes históricos del primer capitalismo, esto es, a la Inglaterra en tránsito de la Edad Media a la llamada Modernidad para revisar este «paradigma burgués». Su objetivo son también las diversas corrientes historiográficas que, al calor de la crisis de los años setenta en Gran Bretaña, buscaban explicaciones a su aparente declive económico. La razón se debatía en torno a la «prístina / originaria cultura del capitalismo» inglesa y la pervivencia de instituciones (monarquía, religión, aristocratismo) demasiado caducas como para servir a un nuevo proyecto de modernización. En este análisis histórico, comparativo, agudo y erudito, Wood pretende revisar la relación entre democracia y capitalismo, tan ambigua que para la autora presenta incompatibilidades estructurales. En su estudio, el único fundamento radical del capitalismo es el paso de formas de propiedad y renta políticamente constituidas (propias del feudalismo y también del absolutismo) a un régimen de propiedad y medios de extorsión fundamentalmente económicos. Su conclusión es radical: el único medio para la emancipación no reside en la confianza en el «progreso» asociado al empuje capitalista sino en la lucha política y social. Guglielmo Carchedi. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 307-319) And Index.