Can anyone recommend a good history of Capitalism?

[Dhalgren]

I have a professor friend who now wants to "do a study" of the growth and development of capitalism. He has asked me to recommend a history book to start with. He wants to "read Marx", but he feels that his grounding in economics (and real capitalism) is too flimsy. He had never heard of Ricardo and thought that Adam Smith somehow "refuted" Marx. I set him straight and that's when he said he wanted to know more. I mean, he IS an academic, but he may still have a chance, right?

Anyway, thanks in advance. Oh, and if this post should be in some other forum, someone can move it if they want...

[brother cakes]

It's comprehensive and eminently readable.

[truth2power]

http://www.amazon.com/Relentless-Rev...3050875&sr=1-1

I borrowed this from the public library this past summer. Didn't get to finish it...sometimes I get too busy and have to return the books.

As far as I read, it was interesting. Look at the reviews on Amazon and see what you think.

[blindpig]

[div class="excerpt"]
Arguing that capitalism is a cultural—rather than purely economic—phenomenon, Appleby (Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination) traces its trajectory through European, American, and Asian successes and setbacks, its unhappy experiments in colonization, the world wars, and into contemporary India and China. She narrates the rise of capitalism as a process of accretion, starting with Dutch agricultural innovations that were adopted and improved upon by the British. This set England on the path to controlling famine and, ultimately, freed capital and labor for trade. Appleby turns Marxism on its head as she proposes that the new social relations introduced in England as a result of converting common land into freeholds were the consequence, not the cause, of the transformation in English farming. If this sounds like breathless global time travel, it is still a laudable effort at demonstrating that there was nothing inevitable about the rise of capitalism. Both scholarly and accessible, this book unpacks a complex web of seemingly unrelated events; its dazzling achievements are tarnished only by multiple misnomers: there is no city called Calico in India (there's a Calicut) and no language called Hindu (it's Hindi). (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. [/quote]

just sayin'

[Dhalgren]

I am hoping for a more Marxist oriented history, but there may not be any. i will look at your recs and see what comes along.

Thanks, again...

[TBF]

http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/h...capitalism.php

I haven't read it, but the bio of the author sounds good -

About the Author
MICHEL BEAUD is the retired professor of economics at University of Paris VIII at Vincennes. He is author of several books, including Socialism Tested by History and The Mirage of Growth: The Political Economy of the Left.

[anaxarchos]

Marxist and "arguably our greatest living historian — not only Britain's, but the world's."

The first three books are a trilogy:

1. The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848

2. The Age of Capital: 1848-1875

3. The Age of Empire: 1875-1914

4. The Age of Extremes: the short twentieth century, 1914-1991

5. Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3bFSckDUU5.../eric%2Bh..jpg

[Kid of the Black Hole]

But I was going to say something different.

If he wants to "do a study" he should do a study.

Regarding Hobsbawm, well..sometimes I intentionally put the blinders on because I feel like there are valid topics fully worth addressing that I don't want to talk about (for instance, Art. I don't get Art. I get what hes saying about the avant garde but..I still don't get art).

Anyway, there is something to just falling into pure economism (a la Bukharin say) as you were already hinting at. Most of the story really can be found in bar charts and statistical data and understanding economic relationships in the world on the macro level.

Start with the hows and whys of the Dutch Republic and go from there, its not the most tangled of skeins in truth and as far as I'm aware, Marxist scholarship doesn't hold any special province on the subject anyway beyond Marx and his analysis of capitalism itself.

Shifting gears slightly, for the most part the guys who do this type of work now tend to mystify the subject too much by over-expounding and/or borrowing key concepts from Marx without using the entire arsenal Marx has bequeathed to them (I'm thinking of Anwar Shaikh or Patrick Bond or David Harvey or someone like that).

The guy I like alot (maybe the most) is Michael Roberts because he keeps Marx front and center, and he resists the urge to overreach and talk about "transformation in the means of production" or something.

If your friend the prof wants to get serious, he should read Marx (+Engels obv and Lenin as a supplement). Otherwise he can go edify himself to his heart's content.

(I work overtime on holidays to earn my Mr Nice Guy moniker ;))

[Dhalgren]

This guy that says he wants to know more, has tried to dismiss Marx on a couple of occasions and when i called him on it, he had to admit that he didn't know what he was talking about. Now he wants to get smart. Well, I am kinda giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I am keeping my eye on him. So many histories overtly or subliminally try to undermine Marx and Marxist scholarship. I don't want to have to refute the "experts" who think value is determined by how consumer "feel" about a certain product (or some such shit). This professor is on the borderline of being worth the effort and if he starts getting too "Mises-ly" ( :) ) I will drop him like so many unwanted pounds. I wanted to try and get him some grounding in the subject without having to fight the Civil War all over (the Reds did the job fine the first time).

Anyway, I thank everyone for the input!

[anaxarchos]

Sure, philistines can talk shit and add a little psycho history but, the story tends to tell itself... and in a way that is "marxist" if the tale of the masses is told. The rest is in the cracks, even if told from the standpoint of art or whatever. ("Why did Goya paint portraits and why did he make them ugly and why did people line up to commission him, anyways?")

On the other hand, what can be done with history is obvious in The Peasant Wars and Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany.

[Dhalgren]

by a guy named Seeley. It is a fairly good, straightforward survey of Greek history from around 700 to 200 BC. But the thing that just jumped off the page at me was the oft repeated insistence that class conflict and the conscious struggle that entails were not significant issues in ancient Greek history! He did not give any examples of historians making the claim, he just insisted on it as though his reader needed to have that put out of the way early and often. He was grinding that ax, so it must have needed sharpening; but he struck me as protesting too much - as many seem prone to do...

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Smash the State! or Tear it down! those, along with The 18th Brumaire, are what he was talking about. So good.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

read a pretty interesting take on him and how he stood at a cross section of society that was opposed to both the Tyrant and the people in search of their Redeemer. Hence a philosophy of change or at least constant alteration emerges.

Maybe a bit too extrapolated but makes sense to me anyway.

[BitterLittleFlower]

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_ima...scode-goya.jpg

http://eeweems.com/goya/_imagery/caprichos_55_350.jpg

http://www.shafe.co.uk/crystal/image...d_May_1808.jpg

Louder than words?

[Comrade]

Here is a link to Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/IMP16.html

[Kid of the Black Hole]

..

PS obligatory welcome to PI (as you can perhaps tell I am not normally on Welcome Wagon detail)

[Comrade]

I think I remember first hearing about this forum many years ago, I just never registered and forgot about it until tonight.

[Dhalgren]

http://www.progressiveindependent.co...mesg_id=101027


This is the first long thread of at least four that was a line-by-line reading of Capital. It was one of the most edifying experiences I have had - online or elsewhere. I go back to them time and again to re-read the clarifications and elaborations.

Welcome to the board - and I bookmarked your blog.

[PinkoCommie]

John A. Hobson (1858*-1940), an English economist, wrote one the most famous critiques of the economic bases of imperialism in 1902.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1902hobson.html

Kid mentioned at some point in the past when I posted on this piece that Lenin had said it influence his work in the tract you linked above.

Welcome to the inaptly named PI.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Lenin works his way through all of that in the text though, so its not really a subtle or mysterious connection.