The Idea of Capitalism before the Industrial Revolution. By Richard Grassby. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Pp. ix, 87. $50.00, cloth; $14.95, paper

Charles P. Hanson

The Journal of Economic History, 2001, vol. 61, issue 1, 255-256

Abstract: Richard Grassby, an economic historian of Early Modern England now at the Institute for Advanced Studies, has written a sly, slender contribution to the Rowman & Littlefield “Critical Issues in History” series. An extended essay on the question of what capitalism is, it begins by examining the attempts of Marx, Weber, Sombart, and Schumpeter, among others, to locate the essence of capitalism in this or that particular feature of economic, social, or political life. Grassby's method is to select a theory and then debunk it by producing a piece of evidence for which it cannot account. Hence, for example, comparison of “traditional marxist teaching” to the basic facts, as he sees them, of agrarian capitalism in Early Modern England (p. 26). Where a Marxist theorist would assert that a change in the mode of production transformed the rural economy, a dogged empiricist like Grassby finds that the motors of change were “in fact” demographic pressure and “the market with some government support.” To the extent that he allows himself a general theory, it is a non-linear, cyclical one reminiscent of the Enlightenment thinkers: equilibrium and disequilibrium, freedom and regulation, activity and decay all wrestle one another in eternal combat, and there is no final victory to be had (pp. 30, 45).

Date: 2001
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