¹ It is worth noting that many of Marx's most important economic history insights are to be found in his theoretical writings, The Grundrisse, The German Ideology, Capital, Vols. I–III, Contributions to a Critique of Political Economy, and not in his socio-political pieces such as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon or Class War in France. This is not surprising. Marx's theoretical constructs are historically specific; feudalism and capitalism are not describable by the same laws of motion. At the same time, historical development can be treated analytically. For Marx and Marxists, history and theory are inseparable. See Anderson, P., Considerations on Western Marxism (London, 1976), pp. 109–12Google Scholar for a discussion of theory and history from a Marxist perspective.

² Rowthom, Bob, “Neo-Classicism, Neo-Ricardianism, and Marxism,” New Left Review, 86 (1974)Google Scholar calls these appropriation of nature and appropriation of the product. Marx observed that “All production is appropriation of nature on the part of an individual within and through a specific form of society.” Marx, K., Grundrisse (New York, 1973), p. 87Google Scholar. It is the specific set of productive forces and social relations that transforms the process from an abstraction to a concrete historical reality.

³ As Vilar indicates, the domain of the Marxist historian is change itself but not willy-nilly fluctuations caused by random shocks; it is systematic movement caused by class conflict; Vilar, P., “Marxist History, a History in the Making: Towards a Dialogue with Althusser,” New Left Review, 80 (1973), 84Google Scholar. As will be shown below, such a view of historical change holds only at a high level of abstraction. Most Marxist historians do not attempt to reduce historical development to the conflict between one class that owns the means of production and another that does the work. See Anderson, P., Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974)Google Scholar, Hill, C., The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714 (London, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Hilton, R., Bond Men Made Free (London, 1973)Google Scholar, among others, to gain some notion of how Marxist historians relate class conflicts to historical change.

⁴ Marx, , Capital, I (New York, 1947)Google Scholar, Afterword to 2nd German ed. As an example, the English Peasant Revolt of 1381 is much more comprehensible if viewed in terms of the relationship of lords and peasants—the growing intransigence of the lords, the peasants creaction, the development of class consciousness among rich and poor peasants—in a specific historical setting than it is if seen as the response of peasants to an increase in the poll tax. See Hilton, Bond Men, and idem, “Peasant Movements Before 1381,” EcHR, 2nd ser., 2 (1949), rpt. in Carus-Wilson, E. M., ed., Essays in Economic History, II (London, 1962)Google Scholar. The Marxist analysis of French peasant revolts in the seventeenth century by Porchnev, B. (Porshnev), Les Soulèvements populaires en France de 1623 a 1648 (Paris, 1963)Google Scholar, while interesting, tends to oversimplify the nature of class relationships.

⁵ See Vilar, “Marxist History”; Anderson, , Lineages and Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Althusser, L. and Balibar, E., Reading Capital (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Marx, of course, and many others for similar arguments and applications of these arguments.

⁶ See Heer, J., “The ‘Feudal’ Economy and Capitalism,” JEEH, 3 (1974)Google Scholar for a veritable compendium of the grosser misconceptions about Marxist analyses.

⁷ Marx, Grundrisse, p. 81. White, L. Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar comes much closer than most Marxists to being a technological determinist.

⁸ See Heers, “The ‘Feudal’ Economy.”

⁹ Letwin (“The Contradictions of Serfdom,” Times Literary Supplement, 25 March 1977) dismisses Marxist economic history as pure ideology. His arguments are not compelling. He seems to feel that the Marxist “model” of distribution under feudalism is inadequate but this in no way makes it any more ideological than the contention, to which he subscribes, that factors were paid the value of their marginal products. (Letwin indicates that a Cobb-Douglas production function is a useful analytical device to discuss distribution in medieval Europe. See TLS, p. 373). He also objects to the notion of transitions, although Marxist attempts to analyze historical evolution are no more ideological than Letwin's implicit contention that economic trends in all societies throughout history can be explained in terms of a single set of behavioral propositions.

¹⁰ See Anderson, Considerations, pp. 113–16, for a discussion of some problems in Marx's analyses.

¹¹ Deutscher, I., The Prophet Armed (Oxford, 1970), p. 154Google Scholar.

¹² Tawney, R. H., Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London, 1964)Google Scholar, Intro, to the 1937 ed. Tawney refers to capitalism but his argument is equally applicable to feudalism.

¹³ See Anderson, Passages; Hilton, , A Medieval Society: The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1966)Google Scholar, and others for judicious but effective use of the concept feudalism.

¹⁴ Hilton, , The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages. (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Hilton, “Peasant Movements,” p. 74; Hilton, , The Decline of Serfdom (London, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Anderson, Passages; Hilton, Decline of Serfdom; Kula, W., An Economic Theory of the Feudal System (London, 1976)Google Scholar. This differs from capitalism, in which the surplus is extracted through the purchase and sale of labor power and other commodities. Such a process was impossible in the feudal period; labor was not yet a commodity nor were there effective markets in land and labor. See Hilton, , The Economic Development of Some Leicestershire Estates in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1947)Google Scholar, for evidence on lack of land and labor markets in medieval England.

¹⁷ Anderson, Passages, and also Intro, to Lineages.

¹⁸ Anderson, Passages; Hilton, “Peasant Movements,” and A Medieval Society; Kosminsky, E. A., Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; White, Medieval Technology; Duby, G., Rural Economy and Country Life in The Medieval West (Columbia, S.C., 1968)Google Scholar; Hilton, The English Peasantry.

¹⁹ Kosminsky, , “Services and Money Rents in the Thirteenth Century,” EcHR, 5 (1935)Google Scholar; Hilton, “Peasant Movements,” and elsewhere in his writings. Lenin, , The Development of Capitalism in Russia (2nd ed., rev.; Moscow, 1969)Google Scholar, develops this analysis for Russia.

²⁰ As opposed to peasant villages which were relatively insular communities with limited exchange and a few part-time artisans. Hilton, The English Peasantry, also A Medieval Society; Brenner, R., “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe,” Past and Present, 70 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Anderson, Passages; Merrington, J., “Town and Country in the Transition to Capitalism,” New Left Review, 93 (1975)Google Scholar, rpt. in Hilton, R., ed., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Hibbert, A. B., “The Origins of the Medieval Town Patriciate,” Past and Present, 3 (1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Non-Marxists, such as Lopez, R., The Commercial Revolution of The Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971)Google Scholar and Duby, Rural Economy, stress the revival of commerce.

²² Anderson, Passages; Kula, An Economic Theory; Merrington, “Town and Country”; and Hibbert, “Medieval Town Patriciate,” all bring out the role played by the lesser nobility in urban affairs, especially as merchants.

²³ Hilton, Bond Men; Merrington, “Town and Country”; Anderson, Passages.

²⁴ Anderson, Passages, emphasizes this. See also, Hilton, Bond Men and Dobb, M., Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London, 1967)Google Scholar. Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” denies the importance of towns in the peasants' struggles. (See below, p. 38).

²⁵ Anderson, Passages.

²⁶ Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” associates this type of income maximization policy with serf-worked estates. Battle Abbey, which had to rely more on non-serf labor, was more progressive. This may have, in fact, been the case although there is no economic reason why it should have been.

²⁷ See Hilton, Bond Men, for the best documentation in English of rural conflicts in the fourteenth century, especially in England. Anderson contends that the crisis was not the result of greater surplus extraction by lords, an interpretation put forward initially by Dobb, Studies, and Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England. He points out that expansion in previous centuries had been hasty and ecologically unsound; yields on the new lands were thus low. In such a situation a given population could become excessive with the slightest misfortune. This kind of ecological imperative, however, is not convincing. It presumes that had clearances been done less hastily there would have been no crisis. A more plausible argument is that the land brought into cultivation last was the least productive whatever the techniques used. For output per capita to grow in this context, new techniques of production had to be introduced which would have required the feudal nobility to spend the surplus not on warfare and conspicuous consumption but on estate improvements. But for such a change in expenditure patterns to occur, social relations of production had to alter.

²⁸ The Black Death was a land of diabolical bonus that abetted the crisis.

²⁹ This focus on lord-peasant conflicts is common to all Marxist analyses of the decline of serfdom. See Dobb, Studies; Anderson, Passages; Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure”; Hilton, Introduction to Hilton, ed., Transition. For Eastern Europe, where the situation was different, see Malowist, M., “Problems of Growth of the National Economy of Central-Eastern Europe in the Late Middle Ages,” JEEH, 3 (1974)Google Scholar; and Kula, An Economic Theory.

³⁰ Anderson, Passages, p. 202, contends that legislation introduced during this period, the Statute of Labourers in England, the Ordonnances in France, and so on, contained the most explicit programs of exploitation in the history of the class struggle in Europe.

³¹ What might be called the first crisis of Western feudalism was not resolved in exactly the same way in every country. It is impossible in this kind of survey to explore these differences. See Anderson, Passages; Bloch, M., French Rural History (Berkeley, 1966)Google Scholar; Vilar, P., “Le Temps du Quichotte,” Europe, 34 (1956)Google Scholar, among many others for details. The constraints of the topic limit consideration to works of Marxist scholars. It goes without saying that anyone interested in European developments during this period cannot restrict investigation to works by Marxists.

³² This explanation does not indicate why the feudal reaction in the East succeeded; it simply provides an account of why it occurred. See Malowist, “Problems of Growth” and also “The Problem of the Inequality of Economic Development in Europe in the Later Middle Ages,” EcHR, 2ndser., 19 (1966)Google Scholar. Hobsbawm, E. J., “The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” Past and Present, 5 and 6 (1954)Google Scholar, rpt. in Aston, T., ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (London, 1965)Google Scholar, makes a similar argument. There is some question about timing which, however, does not affect the essential features of the story. From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, serfdom was less common in the East than in the West. At some point during the fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries, lords began to impose upon the relatively free peasantry servile conditions.

³³ Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure”; Anderson, Passages.

³⁴ Malowist, “The Problem of Inequality,” also makes this point.

³⁵ Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” pp. 57–58.

³⁶ Anderson, Passages.

³⁷ See Hilton, Bond Men, on the experience of St. Albans and Bury St. Edmunds, and Anderson, Passages, on Paris.

³⁸ Hilton, Bond Men.

³⁹ Malowist, “The Problem of Inequality.” He points out that towns in Bohemia after the Hussite revolt were exceptional.

⁴⁰ Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” p. 55.

⁴¹ Malowist, “The Problem of Inequality,” and “Problems of Growth,” and Hobsbawm, “The Crisis,” show how trade between the two areas influenced economic development. The argument presented in this section needs to be tested. One possible approach is to do a comparative study of towns in Europe to find out first if more manufacturing-oriented urban areas gave more support to peasants, and second, if urban areas in the West were actually more centers of production than in the East.

⁴² As Merrington points out, there is a tendency in this approach to see history as no more than the evolution of efficient markets. Merrington, “Town and Country,” p. 74.

⁴³ This is not only because of its historical importance. It is presumed that an understanding of the earlier transition will provide insights into current trends, in advanced capitalist countries as well as in less-developed areas.

⁴⁴ Hilton in “Capitalism—What's in a Name?” (Past and Present, 1 [1952]; rpt. in Hilton, ed., Transition) gives a rough sketch of the transition, discusses the nature of capitalist production, and lays out an agenda for research. The paper is a masterpiece of synthesis and many of the research topics he indicates still remain.

⁴⁵ There is no possible way to review or even list all the Marxist materials old and recent. On the role of the state in capitalist societies, Engels, , Anti-Duhring (New York, 1972)Google Scholar, contains the orthodox Marx-Engels position. For an extension and adaptation of this, see Lenin, , “The State and Revolution,” in Tucker, R., ed., The Lenin Anthology (New York, 1975)Google Scholar. Economic analyses have been presented by Baran, P. and Sweezy, P., Monopoly Capital (New York, 1966)Google Scholar and O'Connor, J., The Fiscal Crisis of the State (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more political and sociological emphases, see Poulantzas, N., Political Power and Social Classes (London, 1974)Google Scholar and Miliband, R., The State in an Advanced Capitalist Society (London, 1969)Google Scholar, who, it should be noted, disagree about the role of the state. See Poulantzas, N., “The Capitalist State: A Reply to Miliband and Laclau,” New Left Review, 95 (1976)Google Scholar, for the latest entry in the debate and for references to previous statements.

⁴⁶ Dobb, Studies, p. 42.

⁴⁷ P. Sweezy, “A Critique,” in Hilton, ed., Transition.

⁴⁸ On the current state of opinion, see Hilton, Intro, to Hilton, ed., Transition. Most of the articles in the collection, including the ones added since the original debate in the early 1950s, are worth reading.

⁴⁹ Baran and Sweezy in Monopoly Capital present an analysis of capitalism that in many respects parallels Sweezy's interpretation of feudalism. That is, they contend that advanced capitalist economies are inherently stable; the source of revolution is not from internal conflicts but from the periphery. In both analyses, the authors focus on the process of circulation, not on the way in which surplus value is created and appropriated.

⁵⁰ Discussion of absolutism in this section is based largely on the analysis of Anderson, Lineages. The book is a brilliant piece of Marxist history that hardly receives adequate treatment in this paper. Readers are urged to work through this book.

⁵¹ Dobb, Studies, pp. 125–26; H. Takahashi, “A Contribution to the Discussion,” in Hilton, ed., Transition; Hilton, “Capitalism.” This pushes the discussion towards the rising-declining gentry and the causes of the English Civil War. These issues are touched on below.

⁵² Dobb, Studies; Takahashi, “A Contribution.”

⁵³ Sweezy, “A Critique,” contends that Marx had in mind not rising from the ranks, but, whatever the origin, the producer set up as a full-blown capitalist. In fact, Marx was contrasting merchants who were well adapted to the feudal mode with those newcomers who were excluded from all the benefits dispensed by the ancien régime. They therefore were revolutionaries in the sense that they had to overthrow the old order to prosper. They revolutionized not only social relations of production but the entire social and political system.

⁵⁴ See Anderson, Lineages, for the whole story.

⁵⁵ On the role of mercenary armies, see the excellent piece by Kiernan, V.G., “Foreign Mercenaries and Absolute Monarchy,” Vast and Present, 11 (1957)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ This is part of Brenner's argument in “Agrarian Class Structure.”

⁵⁷ This was the struggle Trevor-Roper had in mind when he argued that the seventeenth-century crisis was caused by the state's enormous appetite for funds and society's growing reluctance to satisfy it; see Trevor-Roper, H. R., “The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” Past and Present, 16 (1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; rpt. in Aston, ed., The Crisis. Most critics contend that Trevor-Roper undervalued the importance of military expenditures and overestimated the consequence of court extravagances. See Elliott, J.H., “Trevor-Roper's ‘General Crisis’ Symposium,” Past and Present, 18 (1960)Google Scholar, rpt. in Aston, ed., Crisis; and Mousnier, R., “Trevor- Roper's ‘General Crisis’ Symposium,” Past and Present, 18 (1960)Google Scholar, rpt. ibid. Everyone agrees that problems of finance existed.

⁵⁸ Hobsbawm, “Crisis,” pt. 1.

⁵⁹ Ibid. Hobsbawm does not pay adequate attention to these changes. See Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” and Cohen, J. and Weitzman, M., “A Marxian Model of Enclosure,” Journal of Development Economics, 1 (1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The latter show that enclosure alone raised economic efficiency in agriculture and led to an expulsion of workers from the agrarian sector.

⁶⁰ Hobsbawm uses the term concentration to describe phenomena that are for the most part unrelated. Concentration of land-holdings has nothing to do with the growth of towns at the expense of the countryside. In addition, concentration in its various guises does not necessarily lead to the kind of results he seems to think it does. More concentrated holdings of land, especially in the period before modern farm machinery, did not guarantee that productivity would rise—witness the experience of Eastern Europe. Furthermore, it is not at all obvious that the break up of monopoly control over trade resulted in an increase in concentration, nor that the expansion of putting-out activities when it occurred represented greater concentration than did royal manufactories. Finally, did the crisis lead to concentration or was it the tendency towards “concentration,” more consolidated land-holdings, more putting-out, more aggressive policies of foreign trade and colonial expansion, that gave rise to the crisis?

⁶¹ This seems to be the message of Anderson in Lineages. He treats the countries of Europe in detail and describes the nature of absolutism in each. He pinpoints the similarities and differences of the various crises that were so widespread in seventeenth-century Europe.

⁶² Trevor-Roper, “The General Crisis.”

⁶³ Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” explicitly, and Hobsbawm, “Crisis,” pt. 1, by inference contend that capitalist development presupposed a transformation of the agrarian sector which heavy government expenditures, by draining the surplus away from agriculture, would slow rather than speed up. This may be true but it seems that gains could be made through enclosure, consolidation, and careful management, which did not require extraordinary expenditures. See Cohen and Weitzman, “A Marxian Model,” and Stone, L., The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 294–323Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Stone, L., The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529–1642 (London, 1972)Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Richard Johnston, a colleague, noted that no social psychologist would expect actions and preferences to have a one-to-one correspondence in all cases.

⁶⁶ Hill, Compare C., “The English Revolution,” in Hill, C., ed., The English Revolution, 1640 (London, 1940)Google Scholar and Puritanism and Revolution (London, 1958), pp. 153–98, with his later works, such as The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714 (London, 1961) and Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford, 1965). In 1946, Dobb argued that, “… the division of the country between the parries of the King and the parliament followed closely along economic and social lines” (Studies, p. 170). One suspects that Dobb's analysis would have evolved as did Hill's if he had pursued historical research.

⁶⁷ Hill, Century, p. 15, and Puritanism, pp. 3–31.

⁶⁸ Trevor-Roper's interpretation of the origins of the Civil War as presented in EcHR supplement on the decline of the gentry (“The Gentry, 1540–1640,” EcHR, Supplement 1 [London, 1953]) is more narrowly economic than any put forward by Hill, and certainly less sensitive to the true nature of religious convictions. As Hill observes, “To Trevor-Roper the spiritual wrestlings of a Milton, a Vane, a Roger Williams are nothing but epiphenomena of economic decline” (Hill, Puritanism, p. 12).

⁶⁹ See Hill, Century; Stone, Causes; Anderson, Lineages; Trevor-Roper, “Crisis,” among others.

⁷⁰ Brenner, , “The Civil War Politics of London's Merchant Community,” Past and Present, 58 (1973), 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷¹ Hill, Century, p. 63; Stone, Causes, p. 39.

⁷² Brenner, “Civil War Politics.”

⁷³ Ibid.

⁷⁴ See Cohen and Weitzman, “A Marxian Model.”

⁷⁵ Hill, Century.

⁷⁶ See Hill, , Continuity and Change in Seventeenth Century England (London, 1974), pp. 81–102Google Scholar, for a restatement of Tawney's analysis of religious conviction and capitalistic attitudes.

⁷⁷ Hill, , “Puritanism, Capitalism, and the Scientific Revolution,” Past and Present, 29 (1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Hill observes, even in Protestant countries such as England the logic of Protestantism, the dissidence of dissent, was an ever present threat to established authority.

⁷⁸ See Habbakuk, H.J., “English Landownership, 1680–1740,” EcHR, 10 (1940)Google Scholar, and Chambers, J.D., Nottinghamshire in the Eighteenth Century (2nd ed.; London, 1966)Google Scholar. Neither author is a Marxist but their analyses are quite compatible with those of Marxists. Chambers in this work provides a portrait of rural changes that ranks among the best available. This work receives almost no attention while Chambers', article, “Enclosure and the Labour Supply in the Industrial Revolution,” EcHR, 2nd ser., 5 (1953)Google Scholar, which in many respects is untenable, gets all the notice. See Cohen and Weitzman, “A Marxian Model”; Lazonick, W., “Karl Marx and Enclosures in England,” Review of Radical Political Economy, 6 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Saville, J., “Primitive Accumulation and Early Industrialization in Britain,” Socialist Register (1969)Google Scholar, for critiques of Chambers.

⁷⁹ Hill, Century, p. 175.

⁸⁰ Kerridge, E., The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967)Google Scholar, contends that the revolution in agriculture was a sixteenth-century phenomenon. This is probably an exaggeration although important changes in agriculture did take place before 1600. There is no question of the rapid transformation after 1660. See among others, Jones, E.L., ed., Agriculture and Economic Growth in England, 1650–1815 (London, 1967)Google Scholar, Intro.; Chambers, Nottinghamshire; Habbakuk, “English Landownership.”

⁸¹ See Habbakuk, “English Landownership”; also Mingay, G.E., Enclosure and the Disappearance of the Small Farmer in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1968)Google Scholar.

⁸² Hobsbawm, “Crisis,” implies this; Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” states it explicitly. Most Marxist analyses, that of Marx included, emphasize the importance of changes in agriculture. See Marx, Capital, Vol. I, pt. VIII; Dobb, Studies, chap. 6; Saville, “Primitive Accumulation”; Lazonick, “Karl Marx”; Cohen and Weitzman, “A Marxian Model.”

⁸³ Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure.” There may be a problem with this argument. Aside from the period between 1650 and 1714, France may have done as well as England. See the recent article by Roehl, R., “French Industrialization: A Reconsideration,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which in spite of its peculiar framework is a provocative piece.

⁸⁴ Cohen and Weitzman, “A Marxian Model,” and Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure.” Chambers, “Enclosure,” does not explain why population grows. It just does and it is this expansion that provides the wage labor force for industry and agriculture.

⁸⁵ Habbakuk, , “English Population in the Eighteenth Century,” EcHR, 2nd ser., 6 (1953)Google Scholar, and “The Economic History of Modern Britain,” this Journal, 18 (1958)Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Anderson, Passages, contends that social relations must alter before new techniques can be introduced once a mode of production has pushed to the limits of expansion within the old framework. It should be noted that this discussion does not provide a theory of technological change. See below for Marxist contributions on technological change.

⁸⁷ Jones, ed., Agriculture, Intro., makes this kind of technological argument. Saville, “Primitive Accumulation,” calls Jones' discussion technical history, not economic history.

⁸⁸ See Minchinton, W., ed., The Growth of English Overseas Trade (London, 1969)Google Scholar, Intro., and the articles by Ralph Davis in the collection. Grassby, R., “The Personal Wealth of the Business Community in Seventeenth Century England,” EcHR, 2nd ser., 23 (1970)Google Scholar, is only partly successful in his attempt to estimate the wealth in the business community. This is an important subject that deserves more work. It would be useful in particular to know how the mercantile wealth which was accumulated in liquid form was used.

⁸⁹ The slave trade was a bonus. It offered an outlet for manufactured goods, it provided a colonial work force, and it made many Englishmen very rich.

⁹⁰ Hill, Century, p. 213.

⁹¹ Minchinton, ed., Growth of English Overseas Trade, Intro., suggests some areas to investigate, but the actual work is yet to be done.

⁹² Dobb, Studies, chap. 7, brings this out. Braverman, H., Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York, 1974)Google Scholar, is concerned exclusively with this process. Braverman's book is a masterpiece of economic analysis.

⁹³ Dobb, Studies; Braverman, Labor; Pollard, S., The Genesis of Modern Management (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Unwin, G., Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights (Manchester, 1924)Google Scholar; Marglin, S., “What Do Bosses Do?” Review of Radical Political Economy, 6 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁴ Marglin contends that putting-out also allowed the merchant to interpose himself between the market and the producer, thus guaranteeing himself a piece of the action (“What Do Bosses Do?”). This argument runs the risk of divorcing the putting-out system from its historical setting. Putters-out had skills, access to capital, and knowledge of markets which it would be a mistake to overlook. See Dobb, Studies; also Dobb, “Reply I,” and Takahashi, “A Contribution,” in Hilton, ed., Transition. Unwin, G., Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford, 1904)Google Scholar, provides one of the best descriptions of the origins of putting-out.

⁹⁵ Braverman, Labor; Pollard, Genesis; Marx, Capital, I; Dobb, Studies. Marglin, “What Do Bosses Do?” argues that factory production, at least initially, may not have increased economic efficiency as most economic historians believe. In factories, workers were compelled to labor more hours per day at speeds set not by themselves but by bosses. Thus, factory output may have been greater per worker but the workers were working more. Marglin dismisses the freedom of choice argument—workers chose factory labor, therefore, they were better off—with evidence that suggests that many early factory workers were there not out of choice but through compulsion.

⁹⁶ Taylor, A. J., ed., The Standard of Living in Britain in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1975)Google Scholar, Intro. See also, Inglis, B., “The Poor Who Were with Us,” Encounter, 37 (1971)Google Scholar. Engels, F., The Condition of the English Working Class in 1844 (Oxford, 1958)Google Scholar, still remains an important source of information on the working class during the period. The edition referred to above of Engels' classic was translated by W. O. Henderson and W. H. Chaloner who, in their introduction, attempted to discredit the work. Inglis and Hobsbawm have since discredited the introduction of Henderson and Chaloner. Taylor has brought together many of the most interesting articles in the debate and has provided a good bibliography.

⁹⁷ Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963)Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Hobsbawm, “The Standard of Living Debate,” in Taylor, ed., The Standard of Living, p. 187.

⁹⁹ Thompson, The Making, esp. pt. III.

¹⁰⁰ See ibid., Intro., for an eloquent statement of his intentions and why.

¹⁰¹ Brenner's attempt in “Agrarian Class Structure” to show how class consciousness was shaped among Eastern and Western peasants is a step in the right direction. Braverman, Labor, explores the impact of technological change and scientific management on the nature of work and work conditions. His findings have implications for class consciousness. Dobb, Studies, chap. 7, analyzes the relationship between social relations and class consciousness. A new journal, History Workshop, promises to deliver more studies of this sort. Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, attempts to analyze the development of working class consciousness in three provincial towns in England in the nineteenth century. The book does not receive in this essay the attention it deserves. The book as well as the review by Stedman-Jones, G., “Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution,” New Left Review, 90 (1975)Google Scholar, are well worth reading.

¹⁰² Thompson, The Making, p. 212.

¹⁰³ Thompson, , “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, 38 (1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Braverman, Labor; Marx, Capital, I, chap. 15.

¹⁰⁵ Thompson, “Time,” gives a graphic account of how the workers' concept of time changed and the efforts involved in changing it.

¹⁰⁶ Pollard, , “Factory Discipline in the Industrial Revolution,” EcHR, 2nd ser., 16 (1963)Google Scholar; Thompson, “Time”; Hobsbawm, , “Custom, Wages, and Work-Load in Nineteenth Century Industry,” in Briggs, A. and Saville, J., eds., Essays in Labour History (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Reid, D. A., “The Decline of Saint Monday, 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ Usher, A. P., An Introduction to the Industrial History of England (New York, 1920), p. 350Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ See Unwin, Samuel Oldknow, for a detailed description of the division of labor associated with certain putting-out operations.

¹⁰⁹ Rosenberg, N., “Marx as a Student of Technology,” Monthly Review, 38 (1976)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Marx, Capital, I, chap. 15.

¹¹¹ Neoclassical economics caught up with notions of homogeneous, malleable capital is incapable of dealing with such notions. Rosenberg, , Perspectives on Technology (Cambridge, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, presents some interesting critiques of neoclassical theories of technological change. J. Robinson, “The Organic Composition of Capital” (MS.) makes a similar point to the one developed in the text. Dobb, Studies, pp. 280–90 misses this point. He contends that improvements must come in the sectors that produce the means of subsistence if capital accumulation is not to lead to a decline in the rate of profit.