Q.

Outline the key stages (in terms of issues) in the Transition Debate till
the present date (2004).

Ans. The issue of the transition in history from feudalism to capitalism

has been one of controversy and debate, with regard to its
understanding and interpretation. The debate can roughly be seen as
having passed through three stages. The first great debate was between
Maurice Dobb (Studies in the Development of Capitalism, 1946) and Paul
Sweezy. This expanded into a major debate among a wide range of
historians, which came to be known as the “transition debate”. The
second phase of this debate began with Robert Brenner's article
'Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial
Europe' in Past And Present (1976). In this phase, although the core
issues remained the same, but the earlier theories were critiqued and
expanded. Recently, the third phase can be said to have begun, where
new alternatives are provided to understand the transition, and the
“eurocentric” approach of the entire debate is challenged.

Henri Pirenne’s famous ‘Pirenne Thesis’ provides a background to

this debate. He says that flourishing trade across the Mediterranean
marked the pre-feudal, Roman period. However, the impact of Islam in
the 7th-8th centuries destroyed this, heralding the Middle Ages. A
growing “economy of exchange” was now replaced by a new “economy
of consumption” in Western Europe. This was the ‘feudal’ economy
where land was the sole source of wealth and the most important
institution was “the Great Estate”. It was a closed, self-sufficient
economy. Thus he explained the emergence of feudalism as arising out
of the disappearance of trade and towns. Although his writings are
important for studies of the medieval world, yet research has generally
refuted Pirenne.

Pirenne subsequently stated that if feudalism was essentially

created by the absence of trade, then automatically the emergence of
trade would kill feudalism. This revival of trade occurred around the 11 th
century during the Crusades, when the Europeans moved into the
Middle East to reclaim it; and with the beginning of active trade with
northern Europe. The maritime commerce soon penetrated inland, and
with the revival of markets, agriculture also underwent changes. In the
12th and 13th centuries, a growth of towns was witnessed, which forced
exchange and consequently, the opening up of the estate. The more
capitalism advanced, the more the feudal system decayed, finally
culminating in the Industrial Revolution. Such a theory implies that
feudalism is stagnant and can be uprooted only by an external change.

His thesis forms the part of a larger framework that has been
suggested to explain the origin of capitalism – the ‘commercialization
model’. This model presupposes the development of capitalism to be the
natural outcome of acts of exchange in which humans have been
engaging since the dawn of history, which required only the removal of
external obstacles that hindered its realization. It also suggests that
capitalism emerged with the growth of cities and the liberation of
merchants. It thus assumes the association of capitalism with cities and
presents the bourgeois, by definition a town-dweller, as agent of
progress. So capitalism, or “commercial society”, the highest stage of
progress, represents a maturation of age-old commercial practices
(together with technical advances) and their liberation from political
and cultural constraints. But it was only in the West that these
constraints were comprehensively removed. Capitalism was thus the
‘coming home’ of the Europeans, who were destined to carry out free
trade; it came naturally to them.

There have been various refinements of the basic

commercialization model by many, like Max Weber. Weber recognized
that a fully developed capitalism emerged only in very specific historical
conditions and not in others. But he still emphasized the uniqueness of
the West to explain the development of capitalism.

Such models fail to acknowledge that capitalism represents a

historical break or transformation of one kind or another. Some of its
proponents have suggested that it was a change to the ‘new rationality’
of capitalism. Yet if there is a major transformation in these historical
accounts, it is not in the nature of trade and market themselves but in
the forces and institutions that have impeded their natural evolution. If
anything, in these models, it is feudalism that represents the real
historic rupture. The commercialization model also made no
acknowledgement of imperatives specific to capitalism, such as the laws
of competition, profit maximization, and capital accumulation, and the
specific social property relations that determine them. There was, in
fact, no need in the commercialization model to explain the emergence
of capitalism at all as it assumed that man was naturally capitalistic. The
commercialization model has been criticized by many and in general, is
now out of favor. However, the model remains dominant, and according
to Wood, is not entirely absent from the demographic explanations, or
even from most Marxist accounts.

Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation, 1944) maintained that the

motive of individual profit associated with market exchange was never
the dominant principle of economic life till them modern age. He made a
distinction between societies with markets and a “market society.” In all
earlier societies, “economic” relations were “embedded” in non-
economic relationships, such as kinship or communal, and economic
activity had motives other than the purely “economic” motives of profit
and material gain, such as the achievement of status and prestige, or the
maintenance of communal solidarity. Only in modern “market society”
are human beings and nature treated as commodities. Thus, social
relations are embedded in the market economy. This argument in many
ways represents a dramatic departure from earlier accounts. But he
failed to explain the conditions in which market society emerged and
the historical process that brought it into being. Surprisingly, the book
had little effect on the dominant model, even though there now seems to
be a revival of interest in Polanyi.

Maurice Dobb provided the first Marxist study in the development

of capitalism. His work challenged the old commercialization model and
undermined its basic foundations, saying that trade and towns were not
antithetical to feudalism. He recognizes the importance of the growth of
the market and the changes that it brought about. The tendency to
commute labour-services for cash payment towards the end of the
Middle Ages obviously had this process and money-dealings as
necessary preconditions. He however questioned whether markets
could be the sole or even decisive factor to sufficiently explain the
decline of feudalism. In fact, he said that it seemed as if the “growth of
the money economy” led to an intensification of feudal relations. E.g.
Trade revived in led to the dissolution of feudalism in Western Europe,
while in Eastern Europe there was ‘second serfdom’. So if trade was
indeed the prime mover, why did it lead to different results in different
parts of Europe?
 Paul Sweezy based his work on Pirenne’s thesis but within a
Marxist framework. He said that feudalism was intrinsically tenacious,
self-perpetuating and resistant to change, and so the cause of change
had to come from outside the system. But he argues that while
expansion of trade was sufficient to dissolve feudalism and usher in a
transitional phase of “pre-capitalist commodity production” that was
unstable, but it did not lead to capitalism. There was a subsequent
distinct phase of the growth of capitalism in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The first phase, the ‘Dobb-Sweezy debate’, began with Sweezy’s

criticism of Dobb in the spring edition of Science and Society (1950).
Dobb derived his work mainly from the later works of Marx, while
Sweezy looked at the earlier works. A contrast of the main points made
by both Dobb and Sweezy would be relevant to understand the debate.
The first point of difference was their respective definitions of
feudalism. Dobb looked at feudalism as social/property relations of
production between the feudal landed aristocracy and the peasant-serf;
in effect, serfdom. However, Sweezy regarded this definition as defective.
Some serfdom can exist even in systems that are not feudal. Instead he
looked at feudalism as a system of production for use. According to him,
this was a more crucial feature, as feudalism had none of the pressures
that exist under capitalism (system of production for exchange) for
continual improvement of the methods of production.

The central yet controversial question however, was to identify

what the “prime mover” in the transition from feudalism to capitalism
was. While Dobb had said that the primary cause was a crisis in social
relations of feudalism as a result of inevitable class struggles, Sweezy
located a factor external to these relations, i.e., in the expansion of trade.

Dobb explained the problem of transition in terms of an analysis of

internal dynamics and nature of feudalism as a Mode of Production, thus
shifting the focus from exchange relations to social relations. Feudalism
was an inefficient system and this was combined with the growing
needs of the ruling ‘parasitic’ class, due to increasing size, extravagance
and war. It led to growing tensions and increased pressure on the serfs
till it became unbearable, resulting in mass desertions of peasants to the
cities and towns. This not only liberated them but also aided the
improvement of the conditions of the serfs who remained behind. Thus
the main cause of the decline of feudalism was over-exploitation of the
labour force. This internal crisis led to different reactions within Europe
due to different political and social factors - the strength of peasant
rebellion; the political and military power of the local lords; and the
extent to which royal power exerted its influence.

Sweezy, on the other hand, attributed the decline to what he called

“contagious commerce”, which transformed the closed feudal economy.
Thus, the prime mover was identified as trade. According to him, the
factors suggested by Dobb that led to the growing demands of the ruling
class take place outside the system of feudalism. He regards the growing
needs for revenue of the ruling class as a consequence of the expansion
of luxury trade in the 11th century. Moreover, he highlights the important
role of towns in aiding this decline, pointing out that serfs would not
flee, no matter how harsh the conditions, if they had nowhere to go.
Thus, towns were seen as powerful ‘urban magnets’, offering liberty and
employment, which attracted the fleeing serfs. Sweezy also explains
‘second serfdom’ by its geography – since Eastern Europe was on the
periphery of the exchange economy the producer did not have any
alternative but to remain on the soil, as he had nowhere to go. So he
remained at the mercy of the landlord, who intensified the old and
resorted to new forms of exploitation because of greed for gains of
trade. He however recognizes Dobb’s work as an important contribution
and says that it could be “rescued” if it could be shown that the rise of
towns was a process internal to feudalism.

In his reply, Dobb challenged the notion of the feudal economy as

static, stagnant and incapable of movement from within. Further, he
clarifies that holding just one cause, whether external or internal, as the
prime mover would be an oversimplification of the issue. The causes of
change must be seen in interaction with each other. However, he still
gives primary importance to internal contradictions. At the same time,
he does not rule out the impact of any other factor. In fact he says that
trade exercised its influence to the extent that it accentuated the
internal conflicts within the old mode (feudalism).

The third point of difference is with regard to the rise of capitalism.

Dobb attributed this to the countryside, due to the ‘liberation’ of petty
commodity production and ‘primitive or original accumulation’ in
agriculture. Slowly, due to growing tensions, the smaller plots of the
lords’ estate tried to break away. Earlier the serf spent greater energy on
the demesne than on his own plot of land and consequently his own
land suffered. Now, with decreasing control, he could devote more time
to his own plot, and with the surplus thus generated, go to the market.
With this access to the market, the peasants became potential
competitors. Competition leads to accumulation and dispersion. As a
result some benefited, while others were dispossessed of their land.
Differentiation set in and the process of monopolization started. This is
primitive or original accumulation. The dispossessed people now
entered the new system as wage earners as their bargaining power is
low, since they had no property or capital. This method was called ‘petty
production’. Thus, social relations of property changed.

Sweezy however, says that the generalization of commodity

production could not account for the rise of capitalism. He points to the
failure of advanced commercial centres like Italy and Flanders in
transition to capitalism. No fundamental change is required for
production. According to him, the first capitalist manufacturers were
actually large-scale merchant enterprises. The merchants carried out
trade and accumulated wealth, so that they could begin full-fledged
production. Thus he identifies merchants as carriers of trade that
dissolved feudalism and created capitalism. The capitalist enterprises
were therefore, necessarily urban. The capitalist economy develops
outside agriculture, in the towns, but slowly incorporates and
commercializes agriculture.

Both the arguments of Dobb and Sweezy are centered on a passage

from Marx (Capital, III), where Marx speaks of two roads to capitalism.
The first is the “really revolutionary way”, when the producer himself
becomes a merchant and capitalist. The second is when the merchant
takes direct control of production. Dobb takes the first to show the
change in the character of the producer, the industrial capitalist rising
from among the petty producers, implying that they would freely choose
the capitalist road when they were released from feudal impediments.
But Sweezy feels that it would certainly have taken more than the mere
removal of these impediments to account for the transformation of
these farmers to capitalists. He takes it to mean that the producer
initially ‘starts out’ as a merchant, not directly becomes one.

In the second way, Marx says that when the primary producer was
freeing himself of feudal control, a merchant/trader appeared. He saw
the petty mode as the right space for production. He would make raw
materials available to them, or ‘put-out’ work to the petty-mode. He
would then take the goods produced by them and sell them in the
market. Thus, the merchant interposes himself between the producer
and the market, forming a link between the rural and the urban areas.
This merchant was different from a capitalist as the merchant’s profit
was determined by the extent of ‘alienation’ and the difference between
his cost price and selling price; while the capitalist’s profit depended on
reducing the cost of production itself. The capitalist and the merchants
also have different interests. The merchant is non-revolutionary and
wanted to keep the petty mode ignorant and subservient; in fact he was
a barrier to the dissolution of feudalism, which could only occur when
the peasant would be free. This view conforms more to Dobb’s theory.
Sweezy, on the other hand, says that only the merchant had the
resources to take up capitalism.

The last point of distinction between Dobb and Sweezy is their

understanding of the transitional period between the feudal and
capitalist stages. Dobb says that feudalism entered into a crisis in the
14th century and calls this period as still feudal, though in transition.
Sweezy however, says that the transition period was neither entirely
feudal nor capitalist, but one of simple commodity production, which
should be seen as a distinct period in itself.

In the light of later research, there is little support for Sweezy’s

theory. Brenner in fact accuses him of being “neo-Smithian”. But he
makes a very important point - he clearly points out that dissolution of
feudalism was not sufficient for the rise of capitalism. But Dobb
essentially sees the decline of feudalism and rise of capitalism as more
or less the same, implying a certain similarity with the
commercialization model. He also sees the as a matter of ‘liberating’
capitalism by removing the obstacles to the realization of market
opportunities, the only difference being that the centre of focus is the
countryside and not the town. Thus, some of the basic assumptions of
the commercialization model remain unchallenged, and some issues
raised by Sweezy unresolved. The debate also does not explain how and
in what circumstances producers became subject to market imperatives.
As E.M. Wood points out, there is a qualitative and not simply
quantitative difference between petty commodity production and
capitalism - a difference, which this debate failed to bring out.

Others scholars, mainly Marxist, entered this debate from 1953-55.

One such important contribution came from Rodney Hilton, who agreed
with Dobb. He makes a fundamental distinction between feudal rent and
capitalist rent. The former was based on fixed traditional relations,
while the latter was based on market compulsions. Hilton also defines
the term ‘tenure’ (“to hold”). It has been seen as an arrangement
between the lord and the serf, who holds land as a tenant in lieu of
certain obligations. But he says that in practical terms, the land holds
the peasant as much as the peasant holds the land, and the lord controls
his mobility. Further, Hilton highlighted the significance of money rent in
the period of transition, arguing that the appearance of money may have
helped increase feudal exploitation. The character of feudal relations did
not necessarily change; the lord still appropriated rent, only the form of
exaction changed. He pointed out that labour was specific to the early
feudalism phase only. Later on, as feudalism matured and there was
increasing stability in economy and society, the primary method of
exaction became money, because exaction became more complex and
comprehensive, helping in the fuller realization of services. Jurisdiction
was an important element in exaction. It determined the key obligations
at various levels of the feudal structure.

Other prominent scholars include A.B. Hibbert, who wrote ‘The

Origin of the Medieval Town Patriciate’ in Past and Present (1953); and
F.Y. Polyansky (Voproy Istorii). Both see towns as elements in the
historical development of the feudal socio-economic order. Hibbert
proposed that commerce was a natural product of feudal society.
Polyansky attempts to place trade and commerce as integral to
feudalism, saying that they were the result of the expansion of feudal
agriculture. New technologies introduced in agriculture in the 8 th-11th
centuries increased the total production of agriculture. With a greater
feudal surplus, there was greater trading activity. He said that the
creation of towns constituted one form of the political and economic
expansion of the feudal regime.

Kohachiro Takahashi wrote in Science and Society (1953). His view

is important because he brought insights from different parts of the
world to this debate, through his studies in Japanese history and
feudalism. He said that in considering various modes of production, the
basic thing to take into account should be the existence-form of labour
power, which he believes is the decisive factor. The question of
transition therefore is not about changes in economic and social
conditions, but change in the existence- form of labour power. He looked
at what Sweezy had called the ‘first capitalist manufacturers’, in the
context of Dobb’s explanation of original accumulation, and said that
they were merely ‘nodes of the putting out type’ (depot). This was from
where the trader gave raw material to the petty mode and later brought
the finished products to sell. These were not however, factories, but
distribution or collecting centers, with the actual production taking
place in the petty mode. He also referred to Marx’s two ways to
capitalism, but said that it implied an opposition between them.
According to him, the first was seen in Western Europe, where feudal
property was reorganized; while the second was seen in Prussia and
Japan, where feudal property was consolidated. Thus, capitalism was
imposed on the latter from above; it did not develop on its own.

Procacci feels that while Dobb and other writers of his school are
convincing in their refutation of Pirenne’s thesis, they are less
convincing in their historical reconstruction of the internal dialectic of
feudalism, for they often seem defensive and critical.

Christopher Hill also intervened in the debate on Dobb’s behalf and

made an important clarification about the nature of the period of
transition. He said that until the features of feudalism had fully
disappeared, one cannot speak of the passage of feudalism – it was a
resilient mode. So this was a period of the decline of feudalism with the
simultaneous development of capitalism. However, at one point, the
former must give way to the latter. He identified this point or stage in
the process, when feudalism disappears, as the English Revolution.
However, Sweezy said that this was an unstable period, when many
social groups shared power.
 In the 1950s, another dimension was added to this debate. At this
time, the Annales school of thought existed, which wrote on ‘total
history’, i.e., looked at factors other than political or economic that
influenced history over a long period. An important sub-group was the
Demographic school, which suggested that demographic change also
affected the transition, and that the laws of demand and supply
determined the shift to capitalism. M.M. Postan and Emmannel Le Roy
Ladurie saw autonomous cycles of demographic expansion and decline
in Europe, connected to economic development. In the 11 th-13th century,
there was a growth in population. There was added pressure on the
land, leading to a scarcity and rising prices. Thus, the position of the lord
vis-aà -vis the peasantry improved due to the presence of excess labour. In
the 14th-early 15th century there was a decline, which led to declining
productivity, famine and plague. There was a reversal in the land-man
ratio and peasants were able to get concessions. Again in the late 15 th-
16th century, there was growth while the 17th-18th century saw a decline.
Ecology played an important role to correct and maintain the
demographic balance. According to Brenner, this theory can be critiqued
as demography cannot be the only determinant for patterns of income
distribution and serfdom; the qualitative character of landlord-peasant
class relations was also important. Also, the nature of the market and its
laws is also never really questioned by them. Thus, this model is also
inadequate.

The second phase saw theories that were not significantly different
in terms of issues but reiterated the earlier theories, only taking them
further. Writers like Fernand Braudel and I.Wallerstein are closer to the
commercialization model. Braudel did not directly intervene in the
debate but wrote an influential work on capitalism. He works on the
assumption that capitalism was essentially long distance trade and
production for it. This led to certain of its distinct characteristics –
globalization, intensive use of money, the emergence of new business
methods (cheques, loans, insurance etc.) and organization
(partnerships, joint-stock companies etc.). Due to these, capitalism,
which existed earlier in spirit, flowered in the Italian economy in the
late medieval period. He placed capitalism in a global context.
 I.Wallerstein introduced the ‘World System Model’. The 14th century
was a period of feudal crisis, with an essentially backward economy.
There was a crisis of agrarian productivity, as after a point agriculture
could not expand. Thus, it was forced to adapt and transform itself to
commercial agriculture, which gave rise to a profit-based economy. This
he placed in the context of an international division of labor that
determined relationships between different regions. He divided the
economy into 4 parts: Core, semi-periphery, periphery and external. The
core area was Western Europe, where a bourgeoisie type of economy
emerged. The periphery, Eastern Europe and Latin America, was the
colony of the core, which lacked a strong central government, exported
raw materials to the core, and relied on coercive labour practice.
Between the two extremes lie the semi-peripheries. These areas
represented either core regions in decline or peripheries attempting to
improve their relative position. They often also served as buffers
between the core and the peripheries. The core exploited the semi-
peripheries but, as in the case of the American empires of Spain and
Portugal, often they were exploiters of peripheries themselves. The
external included areas that maintained their own economic systems
and, for the most part, managed to remain outside the modern world
economy, e.g. Russia. However his thesis assumes that the description of
the system is enough to account for its origin. There is no explanation of
how and why the transformation occurred when and where it did.
Moreover, he does not account for the rise of strong governments in
places like Russia, which were in the periphery. But he importantly drew
attention to the international context of capitalism.

Perry Anderson also makes an important contribution by

attempting to synthesize non-Marxist themes such as demography with
the conventional Marxist emphasis on social relations. He, like Sweezy,
stressed the importance of towns and international trade. But these are
to be seen as an interaction between classical slave based and feudal
social relations, not external to the system of feudalism. According to
him, the appearance of money rent given by the tenant to the lord
caused a fundamental change in feudalism. Moreover, the bourgeoisie
existed within feudalism but their interests were different and so a
conflict arose. The feudal lords then tried to concentrate their formal
coercive powers in a new kind of centralized monarchy. As a result there
was a displacement of coercion upwards towards a centralized,
militarized ‘Absolutist State’. This marked a critical step towards to rise
of capitalism. There are however some empirical problems with this
proposition. Clear exceptions are the cases of England and France. While
English capitalism did not witness a preceding phase of absolutism,
French absolutism did not lead to capitalism in any definitive sense.
Fundamentally, again we see that he fails to break out of the basic
assumption of the Commercialization model that the rise of capitalism
involved a removal of barriers.

Robert Brenner carries forward Dobb’s argument with some

significant changes, initiating the “Brenner Debate”. He discussed the
role of the class struggle internal to feudalism and regarded it to be the
cause rather than the consequence of the course of historical
development. He began with a Marxist critique of the conservative
theories concerning the origins of capitalism in Europe (the rest of the
world ignored), particularly the demographic and the trade models.
They failed, because their conclusions were not borne out by a
comparative perspective of Eastern and Western Europe in the period of
transition. This had been pointed out even by Dobb, but only with
regard to the trade model. . Brenner asserts that trade during the Middle
Ages was a very marginal activity but this has now been proved wrong.

Brenner emphasized the inability of the demographic model to

account for the very different, even opposite, effects produced by the
same factors in different countries. These divergent effects, of
apparently similar causes, for him were enough to prove that
demography, like trade, could not be the dominant factor for change.
Brenner agrees that feudalism was prone to the demographic-
production disproportion cycles, but said that this was not a natural,
automatic phenomenon. E.g. famines were not a natural mechanism to
correct an increasing population, because their effects were man-made.
They had disastrous consequences due to the lack of surplus. Thus, he
held the primary reason to be the crisis built into the varying
configurations of feudal relations of production, but in the context of
other factors like demography and trade, which he did not ignore. Like
Sweezy, Brenner also believed that a transition theory could not be seen
in terms of two antagonistic models of production – feudalism and
capitalism, and he took into account the tenacity of feudalism, and
“internal logic and solidity” of pre-capitalist economies. But unlike
Sweezy, he looked for a dynamic internal impetus to the dissolution of
feudalism, while not presupposing an existing capitalist logic.

Brenner said that the feudal social property system established

certain limits on the development of production, which led to economic
stagnation and involution. Neither the landlord nor the serf were in the
position to or had the desire to improve production. The landlord had
could increase his income by exploiting the serf. So to innovate would be
too much trouble and investment. For the peasant, whatever surplus he
produced was appropriated, so he had no incentive to produce more.
This basic relationship ensured a crisis of subsistence, accumulation and
productivity in feudal agriculture, and was intensified by an increase in
population. So, it was a system of inefficient production. Following
Marxist thought, he said that feudalism was based essentially on
political power, and it would collapse only when this power was
challenged. This was the idea of the ‘class struggle’. It depended on the
balance of forces between the contending classes.

Dobb had placed the crisis in the 14 th century and had laid out 3
factors, mentioned earlier, to explain the difference between Western
and Eastern Europe. But Brenner says there was no one moment when
the class struggle turned against the landlord. He speaks of a long
process of struggle in Western Europe, a “protracted, piecemeal village
by village struggle”, whereby they accumulated resources for resistance.
In Eastern Europe however, the peasantry could not do so. There were
three basic reasons for this. Firstly, West Europe had been the core area
of the European civilizations from the earliest times, whereas Eastern
Europe had formed the margins. Secondly Western Europe was more
densely populated than Eastern Europe. Also, Western Europe had seen
more continuous settlement and cultivation, whereas in Eastern Europe
the pattern was more erratic. As a result, in Western Europe, there was a
greater struggle for land and more people had to make do with limited
resources. From this arose the necessity for communal cooperation. The
notion of ‘commons’ (forests, pastures, wells etc.) was important. Thus,
peasant societies had historically developed communal agriculture and
cohered far greatly than peasants in Eastern Europe. Peasant solidarity
was manifested in the peasants’ organization at the village level. This
helped them accumulate a large number of rights from the feudal
aristocracy and resist the suppression by landlords. By the 15th-16th
centuries, these accumulated rights began to amount to substantial
freedom. In Eastern Europe, such a structure is found only in West
Germany. The rest of Eastern Europe was easily suppressed as they had
fewer rights, and therefore, after the crisis, they entered a period of
second serfdom. Thus, Western Europe succeeded because it had
greater communal resources for resistance.

However, we see that by the 16th century, all of Western Europe saw
the weakening of feudalism, but only in England did capitalism appear
as early as in the 18th century. In France, absolutism emerged, which was
not, as for Anderson, a transitional phase towards capitalism. Dobb’s
explanation for this was the primitive or original accumulation.
However, this was incomplete. Brenner says that this was because of a
difference in the way in which the state intervened in the class struggle
in different countries. Thus, the nature of state intervention determined
the difference in the pattern of economic development. He compared
England on one hand, and France and Western Germany on the other, to
explain this.

In France, at this time, the state had emerged as a competitor to the

feudal aristocracy. The state helped to consolidate the property of the
smaller peasants (petty mode) by fixing the rent in law. But eventually
the state and the aristocracy were on the same side; this was just a
technical aberration. The logic was that the greater the power of the
landlord, the greater was the decentralization and so the king had lesser
power. Thus, increase in the king’s power required a reduction in the
power of the landlords and so the king secured peasant property,
creating his own resource base. France, thus, became a land of small
property. Brenner estimated that by 1700, 45-50% of the land in France
was in the peasant sector. But Dobb had said that unless the petty mode
freed themselves from the control of the lords, capitalist relations could
not emerge. Thus, state intervention in France in the 14th-15th centuries
made the change to capitalism more difficult.

In contrast, in England, the state intervened in support of the feudal

aristocracy and helped in the dispossession of small peasants and
appropriation of their lands by raising the rent (entry-fine) arbitrarily.
Every time the peasant’s successors had to take over the land, an entry
fine had to be paid to the feudal lord to recognize their legitimate claim
over the land. If a person could not pay the fine, then he was evicted
from his land. If there were any disputes, the state normally intervened
in favour of the landlords. Hence, here the peasant was “doubly-freed” –
of feudal control (through the petty mode) and also from the land itself.
Large-scale eviction led to large landed estates of the lords. These were
the clear beginnings of capitalism, with increasing dispossession and
monopolization of property by the landlords.

Brenner says that this was so because England was on the margins
of the feudal polity, while France was in the core area. Also, France was
less well defined geographically, while England was already
geographically integrated. Thus, decentralization was not so sharp in
England. In fact, centralization was being achieved in England with the
cooperation of the aristocracy rather than by going against them, since
there was a greater commonality of interest between the king and the
landlord. But in France any increase in the power of the king demanded
a decrease in the power of the aristocracy. As a result, by 1700, while
close to 70-75% of the arable agrarian land in England was
consolidated; in France, this ratio was 50%. In France, land was held due
to traditional obligations; in England more land was in the leasehold
sector by the highest bidder.

Brenner also pointed out that merely large-scale landholding does

not mean that there is capitalist development. New kind of property
relations is the basic condition for the rise of capitalism. This emerged
due to a process of dispossession and accumulation in England, by
which property was getting consolidated in a few hands, as opposed to
many hands in France, based on the dispossession of the majority. The
landlord could now lease land to the capitalist tenant, who would
employ wage labour for capitalist production. Earlier, law or tradition
fixed this rent, but now it was responsive to market conditions. The
capitalist tenant held land only on a rent-paying basis, as long as he
could get a profit. It could even be said that a market existed in leases, as
there was competition for land. Thus, it was compulsion, or need that
forced them to produce for the market, not opportunity. Both the
landlord and the tenant came to depend on increased productivity for
success in the market in the interest of profits and rent respectively. This
new symbiotic relationship became the basis for capitalism. As a result,
production now improved enormously and as larger tracts of land were
being cultivated, economies of scale could operate. This made possible a
sustained fall in the prices of grains. Therefore, it was now possible for
wages to be lowered, because the price of livelihood had reduced and
minimum wages were paid, only for bare subsistence. So the total
amount of wages paid to the labour reduced, which in turn led to a
decline in the total cost of production. Also, with the fall in grain prices,
the expenditure on non-food products increases. Since less is spent on
food, more money can be spent on other items like clothes, luxuries etc.
Together, with the low cost of production, this increased expenditure
constitutes effective demand, leading to an expansion in the home
market. With the rise in demand, increasing number of people had to
cater to it and more people moved to the cities. Between 1400-1700,
close to 40% of the population in English agriculture had moved to the
towns. Also, the increase in production makes it possible for sustain a
larger non-food producing population, unlike in the subsistence
economy, where each produced just enough for oneself. This led to the
growth of the industrial and service sectors as, with production of
surplus, more people could move away from agrarian work to other
sectors like service and manufacturing etc.

Thus, Brenner also dealt with the issue about Marx’ “really
revolutionary way” to capitalism. He said that the capitalist tenant in
England was not just a petty producer who had grown into a capitalist
because he had grown to some appropriate level of prosperity. But it
was his specific relations to his means of self-reproduction, i.e., in the
way in which he had access to the land, from the start subjected him to
market imperatives. This lends support to Sweezy’s contention that the
transition was fuelled not by the power of the landlords to over-exploit,
but their weakness in their ability to squeeze the peasants. In contrast
to Dobb's focus on small producers rising to become capitalists, Brenner
focus was upon the aristocrats transforming themselves from feudal
lords to capitalist landowners.

Brenner says that the feudal mode of production is prone to

recurring crises due to its relations of production. Production had
increased earlier as well, but it had always run into barriers. But with
the emergence of new social relations of production, the ability of
English agriculture increased, these crises come to an end, and England
became the first European country to break out to self-sustaining
growth and development, and capitalism. Interestingly, the origins of
capitalism lay in the agrarian sector, and not in the urban trade sphere.
He points out that capitalization of English agriculture took place before
capitalization of the English economy.

Brenner has made an invaluable contribution to the transition

debate. He emphasizes the specificity of the historical process that
brought capitalism into being, and how it came about. But there have
also been various criticisms. There is a general criticism of the very idea
that English agrarian relations were distinctive enough to call them
agrarian capitalism in the 17th and 18th centuries, specifically in its drive
to improve productivity. Another objection is that since capitalism is
defined by exploitation of wage labour, it is not a decisive argument
against the concept of agrarian capitalism that England was not a
predominantly wage-earning society, and wage labourers were still very
much in a minority. Other processes like differentiation are also
important.

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie attacked Brenner for mixing up

economic and political factors by talking about surplus-extracting and
ruling classes as if they were one and the same. M.M. Postan critiques
Brenner by saying that just because a factor does not achieve same
result in different situations and regions we cannot discount its role. So
demographic changes can be a cause of long-term economic
development, as each region has a set of conditions peculiar to itself.
Also, he says that the term ‘Malthusian’ is an incorrect description for
his writings, because while Malthus argued that demography was the
sole determinant, the demographic-model supporters only attempt to
show the relationship between demographic ‘fluctuations’ and
economic changes. Also, Malthus showed the relationship between
population and economy in the exclusive sense. This is a limited view, at
variance with Postan’s theory. He says that the demographic model
brings in a wider set of references – family, size, structure, customs, role
of war, law, etc., in opposition to Marxist theories that remain limited to
concern about property relations. He goes on to suggest that a corrected
and supplemented Ricardian theory provides a better matrix than
Malthusianism for the demographic theories.
 Guy Bois said that Brenner was “privileging” political against
economic factors in explaining the transition from feudalism to
capitalism. He says that the state cannot be seen as a primary
determinant. Their particular action of intervention could not result in a
fundamental difference between England and France. Instead, he says
that this difference lay in total structure of feudal experience. France had
had a more acute and sharper version of feudalism than England's
marginal experience. Therefore when the feudalism crisis occurred,
England had not matured fully enough and so feudalism could decline.
Therefore, further development of feudalism in France would explain
the greater resilience of the older order better.

Brenner replies by saying that he did not attempt to “minimize the

role of population”, nor of trade. His explicit point of departure was
precisely the two-phase grand agrarian cycles of non-development,
bound up with demographic change. He also says that it is impossible to
grasp the evolution of the feudal economy as a whole simply by means
of the so-called “economic” formula proposed by Bois. Thus, inability to
come satisfactorily to terms with the “fusion” between the “political”
and the “economic”, that profoundly marked the feudal-productive
system, is the central weakness of the approaches of both Bois and the
demographic interpreters.

Patricia Croot and David Parker say that Brenner underestimates

the decisive role played by small capitalist farmers in England. They also
criticize his explanations for the contrasting development in England
and France. The property arrangements in France could be temporary
arrangements. As population increased, these divided further into sub-
holdings. So peasants did not get enough income and, in addition, were
burdened with a heavy king’s tax and the feudal rent. Thus, he
overestimates the security of small peasant holdings in France.
According to them, the real difference was only in terms of time period
stipulated for taxation. Brenner said that it was delayed in France. Croot
calls for the study of what happened afterwards, as a generation later,
similar conditions to those in England developed. Brenner is also
attacked concentrating just on large landlord estates. This produces a
circumscribed view of the real developments - he passes over the
contribution of the English peasant and exaggerates the independence
of the French peasantry. However, Brenner’s argument does not account
for the growth of capitalism through the rise of certain groups, but by
particular system of class relations.

Heide Wunder said the thesis was ‘anglo-centric’, focusing mainly

on England. He said that the contributions of continental historians
should also be considered. He also questioned the divergent evolution of
peasant class organization in East and West Elbian Germany. Brenner
said that the West had more communal resources of struggle while the
East did not. But Wunder said that the notion of different ‘communal
experiences’ of the West and East Elbian peasant communities was an
error. So an important empirical basis to Dobb’s thesis questioned.

Thus, while certain important aspects of Brenner’s thesis have been

questioned, his theory has not been destabilized in any real sense.
Brenner thesis still stands, and though it may be improved by some of
the criticisms, it is yet to be fundamentally challenged.

In the third phase, since 1985, the issues and structures that
concerned the first two phases of the debate have been displaced by
other concerns. It does not follow the framework of the earlier phases of
the debate but fundamentally questions their basis. This writing
acquired urgency in post-Soviet period because Marxist theory was said
to have had no rationale. But this is unjustified, as a theory made on the
basis of empirical evidence cannot be rejected just because of one event.

E.M. Wood (The Origin of Capitalism, 1988) begins by saying that it

was capitalism that was in crisis at end of 20 th century. Its structure is
such that it induces crisis from time to time because on one hand, it
causes greater and greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands, and
on other hand it provides greater efficiency, i.e., the ability to produce
more. Moreover, capitalism in world has existed for just for one and a
half or two centuries. So Wood asks what evidence there is to show that
capitalism is the great external system and that man was supposed to
capitalist all along. Capitalism is not a natural tendency towards
freedom but specific social relations that emerged in England in the 17 th
century on the basis of the denial of right to property of the majority. It
is still new and young, and so there is no guarantee that it is the system
to be, that will go on forever. One may solve the crisis problem by use of
state economic policies, state intervention and control, but then it would
not be pure capitalism any more. She also expands the Dobb–Brenner
theory in today’s perspective.

The third phase has also seen a spurt in “anti-eurocentric” writings.

They posit a new kind of understanding of Transition Debate. In the
broadest sense, Wood has defined Eurocentrism as the implicit view
that societies and cultures of European origin constitute the "natural"
norm for assessing what goes on in the rest of the world. It was believed
that there is Europe is essentially superior, which helped it move to
capitalism. But the new theories say that there is nothing unique about
Europe and nothing naturally European about capitalism. Edward Said
(Orientalism, 1978) argues that the West produced this kind of a
knowledge system to help western legitimization and colonization.
Other important works are - Eric Wolf (Europe and the People Without
History, 1982); Janet Abu–Laghod (Before European Hegemony, 1989);
Amir Samir (Eurocentrism, 1989) etc.

E.A. Wrigley (Change, Chance and Continuity: The Character of the

Industrial Revolution in England, 1988) argued that no amount of
advance of capitalist type could lead to change to the new type of
economy, they could increase production to a certain limit. But it was
not enough to propel Europe out of medieval cycles of crisis. The labour
used was exhaustible and subject to the law of Diminishing Returns.
These he called ‘Organic Economies’, which used organic sources of
energy like humans, cattle, coal etc. A change of property relations just
converted it to an ‘Advanced Organic Economy’. But fundamentally the
economy was still the same. The significant change came only with
change in the sources of energy used, when it changed to ‘Mineral-based
Energy Sources’. This caused change from pre-capitalist to capitalist
economy, because in the short term, energy supply seemed virtually
endless. This increased production as it allowed an increased use of
machines. He also suggests this breakthrough happened by chance,
because England happened to have coal in abundance. It was not
peculiar to the European structure or European capitalist relations.

Kenneth Pomeranz (The Great Divergence: Europe, China and the

Making of the Modern World Economy, 2000) points out that the idea
that Europe and the rest of the world are separate worlds; and that
Europe developed, became superior, globalized the rest of the world and
then dominated it; is faulty. He says that before the beginning of
capitalism, the world was not divided into two disconnected parts. A
global economy already existed and economic differences between the
advanced regions were unimportant till the 18th century. In fact, eastern
regions, like parts of China, Japan and India, may have been more
advanced than Europe. Thus, between 1100-1800, the most advanced
regions of world were not concentrated in Europe.

However, in the 18th century, Europe began to move ahead.

According to Pomeranz, only one problem holding back the economies
of Europe and others – land constraint. This was a clear barrier to
advance because with simultaneous increase in population, it created
the need for an increase in resources. Population outstripped
production capacity, which led to a crisis. By chance, Europe discovered
America and used its land and great resources. Also, the Europeans
brought with them diseases, which led to a demographic collapse in the
New World between 1500 and 1700. So Europeans imported slaves
from Africa. A colonial structure was worked out to use the primary
resources, labour and raw material. This assured economic growth of
core regions in Europe. So it abolished land constraint and allowed
development of England. Other countries did not share this.

John Hobson (The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, 2004) said

that the view that the ‘pristine’ West has alone pioneered the creation of
the modern world is false. He says that the East and West have been
interlinked through globalization ever since 500 B.C. More importantly,
he traces an eastern origin to everything that is uniquely European, like
the compass, trade routes, printing etc. He says that the East enabled the
rise of the West through two main processes. In first phase, the
development of the Western, from 500-1800 A.D., depended on
dissemination of Eastern Advances and assimilation by the West. This
was thus a period ‘Oriental Globalization’, when the world economy
dominated by East. In the second phase, from 1800 onwards,
colonialism began. This allowed the West to appropriate all the
economic resources of the East, which enabled the rise of the West.
David Landes has argued that there is a good reason for eurocentrism,
because it is the West and not the East that triumphed. Hobson agrees
but concludes by saying that although the Europeans played an active
role in developing their own fate, yet the contribution of the East cannot
be undermined. At the same time, he cautions against “Occidentalism”, in
which the East is privileged and the West is denigrated. Moreover, Wood
points out that this is an ineffective challenge to the earlier models, and
does not help to explain the transition.

Thus we see that the transition debate is a complex of extremely

varied discussions and themes. It is not a mere empirical registration,
but attempts to provide a reconstruction in the light of a new historical
outlook. It reflects a set of orientations for historical research into the
solutions into particular problems. These debates also provide a
framework within which to interpret the English Revolution. And
although so far we have no acceptable coherent structure to explain the
transition, yet the debate is dynamic - new developments have emerged
recently and may develop further over time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Leo Huberman – Man’s Worldly Goods (The Story of the Wealth of

Nations)
2. Maurice Dobb – Studies in the Development of Capitalism
3. Alfred F. Havighurst (ed.) – The Pirenne Thesis: Analysis, Criticism,
and Revision
4. Rodney Hilton (ed.) – The Transition form Feudalism to Capitalism
5. T.H. Aston and C.H.E. Philpin (ed.) - The Brenner Debate
a. Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-
Industrial Europe – Robert Brenner
b. The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism – Robert Brenner
c. Population and Class Relations in Feudal Society – M.M. Postan
and John Hatcher
d. Agrarian Class Structure and the Development of Capitalism:
France and England Compared – Patricia Croot and David
Parker
e. Peasant Organization and Class Conflict in Eastern and Western
Germany – Heide Wunder
6. E.M. Wood – The Origin of Capitalism
7. M.M. Postan – Medieval Economy and Society
8. John M. Hobson – The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization
9. Kenneth Pomeranz - The Great Divergence: Europe, China and the
Making of the Modern World Economy
10. INTERNET - ARTICLES
a. Modern History Sourcebook: Summary of Wallerstein on World
System Theory
[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/wallerstein.html]
b. Transitional Ideological Modes: Feudalism, Capitalism,
Socialism – Andre Gunder Frank
[http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/feudalism.html]
c. Eurocentric Anti-Eurocentrism - Ellen Meiksins Wood
[http://solidarity.igc.org/atc/92Wood.html]
d. Capitalism and the Modern World-System: Rethinking the Non-
Debates of the 1970s - Giovanni Arrighi
[http://fbc.binghamton.edu/gaasa96.htm]
e. Robert Brenner in the Tunnel of time - J.M. Blaut, University of
Illinois at Chicago
[http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/Blaut/brenner.htm
]
11. Class Notes