Capitalism: The Story behind the Word

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Subsequently, the book navigates the course of capitalism’s evolution during the early nineteenth century. This transformation by continental thinkers developed capitalism from an idea mostly involving international economics based on war and debt into a national one. In the years leading up to the Revolution of 1848, Alphonse de Lamartine and Louis Blanc clarified the debate over capitalism by revealing that there were really two problems, which required two solutions: “the problem of … the ownership of capital” and “the problem of the division of labour and markets” (73). However, while Levy’s definition is explicitly in conversation with longstanding debates about the nature of capital and owes its fundamental insights to two of the greatest economists of the first half of the twentieth century, I would like to argue that it is still most influenced by—or minimally that it is most similar to—late twentieth century intellectual currents.

DSJ: In what way did Marx contribute to the transformation of Smith’s “commercial society” into “capitalism”? Why did he err in conflating capitalism with the division of labor? I should take responsibility for any confusions about Levy’s argument here: your two objections may be my fault rather than his. In other words, Sonenscher’s book seeks to understand how the idea known as ‘capitalism’, traditionally used to denote the concentration of capital – not only money, but also land, machinery, factories, and other forms of property – in private hands, came to consume the idea of a ‘commercial society’. In fact, it was commercial society (a concept largely drawn from Adam Smith) which historically denoted a society based upon a division of labour into specialised fields and competition in an economy based on a more or less free market in labour and goods, encapsulating much of what we now call capitalism. That both should fall under the latter label is a relatively late product of the 19 th century.Capitalismis a word used variously to describe an economic and social system, a modern form of political power, a dynamic mode of production, a stage in a world-historical process running from feudalism to communism, a western object of ideological allegiance, a durable form of inequality or, more simply, a thing. Like many other words that end in “-ism” (think, for example, of liberalism, atheism, nationalism, feminism or environmentalism), capitalism is the name given to a number of originally separate subjects and problems that, because of the ending in “-ism”, came to be grouped together as a single noun. In this purely etymological sense, capitalism began as a kind of shorthand for a ramifying array of moral, political, social or economic problems that, at the outset, were once quite discrete. Surprisingly, the problems in question were considerably less familiar and more varied than those usually associated with most current versions of the concept of capitalism. Modern conceptions of capitalism standardly refer to subjects like states and markets, empires and slavery, power and patriarchy, prices and profits, money and exchange, value and surplus-value, property and commodities, machinery and industry, religion and ethics, custom and law, entrepreneurs and firms, and, probably, a great deal more. But this, Sonenscher contends, would not be a much more equal world, because the hierarchies generated by the division of labour would remain and inequalities of skill, talent, or industry could even widen as those unable to give found themselves marginalised by a community founded on labour. For Marx, Sonenscher argues, this was not much of a concern but it left unanswered the question of how we might get on transforming the more deeply rooted problems associated with a commercial society. PDF / EPUB File Name: Capitalism_The_Story_behind_the_Word_-_Michael_Sonenscher.pdf, Capitalism_The_Story_behind_the_Word_-_Michael_Sonenscher.epub Thanks for your very interesting post. Let’s assume that you’re right about the influences on historians of capitalism, especially if “poststructuralism” remains, as you write, a conveniently “nebulous term.” There may be something fascinating about this:

The meaning of a text is constantly subject to the whims of the future, but when that so-called future is itself ‘present’ (if we try and circumscribe the future by reference to a specific date or event) its meaning is equally not realised, but subject to yet another future that can also never be present. The key to a text is never even present to the author themselves, for the written always defers its meaning. For Sonenscher, it is this attempt which has defined much of politics in the ‘modern’ world. As he has shown over the course of his career, the most significant transformation of the 18 th century was not the political crisis of the French Revolution, but the emergence of commercial society, both giving rise to the ‘Freedom of the Moderns’ and ruling out any possibility of returning to the civic equality characteristic of the ‘Freedom of the Ancients’. The task of modern politics, therefore, is not merely to reform, justify, or abolish the present structure of capital ownership, but the far more serious project of thinking about how we might live with the division of labour and if any alternatives to it are possible. It is possible that I am forcing a connection to poststructuralism here, but I don’t think so. Levy’s refusal of the materialist capital concept is also a refusal of what Derrida called a “metaphysics of presence” in which presence is philosophically privileged over non-presence. To quote the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy again: “Western philosophy has consistently privileged that which is, or that which appears, and has forgotten to pay any attention to the condition for that appearance. In other words, presence itself is privileged, rather than that which allows presence to be possible at all.” This seems to me to be very close to the way Levy articulates his reasons for abandoning the materialist capital concept: physically embodied factors of production are privileged over the monetary and financial operations which make their construction, maintenance, etc. possible, but there is no logically consistent reason why that should be. The distinction between the “real” economy and mere financial activity is a hollow or illusory one.MS: The difference follows from my working definition of “capitalism.” It is important, to begin with, to see that we are talking about concepts as much as about historical arrangements and historical realities. The fundamental historical difference between capitalism and the division of labor was that “capitalism” referred initially to war finance and public debt, while the “division of labor” referred initially to technical and occupational specialization on the one side and markets and prices on the other. The concept of capitalism, in short, did not initially have anything to do with the concept of the division of labor. They both, however, had and still have a lot to do with capital. Capital can be no more than a simple monetary or financial resource, but it can also be a productive asset, an intellectual property, a creative resource, a material good, a cultural endowment, or a competitive advantage. Capital can be a form of property or part of a system. Capital can be owned, but it is not clear whether the division of labor can be owned, because it is not clear whether it is possible to own a price or a market. Prices and markets can all, of course, be managed, controlled, neutralized, or circumvented. The division of labor means “working to live,” because it means that human lives have become irrevocably interdependent. Capital means “living to work,” if that is what takes your fancy. Most of us have to work to live and, for better or worse, also have to live with the consequences.

Lamartine and Lafargue’s warning went unheeded. By the time that Marx wrote his magnum opus Capital, capitalism and the division of labour had already come to be jumbled up together. Today one would be hard-pressed to find commercial society disaggregated from one another outside academic discussion. ‘Capitalism’ (alongside newer concepts like ‘Late Capitalism’ and ‘Neoliberalism’) now routinely takes the blame for many problems which have little to do with inequality of capital ownership. Though these problems, including alienation, hierarchy, unchosen dependence, social atomisation, and even the necessary ardour of work, are all too real, none of them would necessarily be resolved by a redistribution of property. Sonenscher astutely calls our attention to the original meaning of capitaliste and its implications." ---Martyn Ross, Applied Political TheoryInstead in his famous manifesto Marx, like Stein, suggested that a national system of public credit administered through a socialised banking system could gradually abolish the capitalist system by enabling workers or the state to socialise or nationalise production, whilst reducing the inequalities resulting from the division of labour – particularly those between town and country. Public credit and the fiscal state would enable capital to be turned against what Marx knew as capitalism, allowing the benefits of commercial society to be preserved whilst rectifying its worst features. In other words, Marx argued, the problem with the division of labour was that unlike capitalism it could not be jettisoned without also jettisoning modernity as such: this is also the central insight of Sonenscher’s book. Capitalism” was first coined in France in the early nineteenth century. It began as a fusion of two distinct sets of ideas. The first involved thinking about public debt and war finance. The second involved thinking about the division of labour. Sonenscher shows that thinking about the first has changed radically over time. Funding welfare has been added to funding warfare, bringing many new questions in its wake. Thinking about the second set of ideas has offered far less room for manoeuvre. The division of labour is still the division of labour and the debates and discussions that it once generated have now been largely forgotten. By exploring what lay behind the earlier distinction before it collapsed and was eroded by the passage of time, Sonenscher shows why the present range of received ideas limits our political options and the types of reform we might wish for.