Beyond market dependence: The origins of capitalism in Catalonia

Abstract

Buried in the footnotes of his famous 1976 essay, Robert Brenner left the remark that Catalonia had experienced an agrarian transition to capitalism in parallel to England. This important claim has been completely forgotten by his followers of the political Marxist tradition, who since then have developed his views on the origins of capitalism. Building on the specialist literature, this article revisits the question of the Catalan transition through the prism of political Marxism and teases out its implications. In particular, it argues that the Catalan case illustrates the centrality of agency and subjectivity in the process of capitalist change. Contrary to Brenner's claim, this paper will argue that pre‐capitalist social property relations persisted in agriculture throughout the period of transition. Instead, the region's capitalist breakthrough was prompted by sociocultural struggles in its 18th‐century proto‐industry.

The transition debate in Brazilian history: The bourgeois paradigm and its critique

“…This reopens the question of how to understand the rise and global expansion of capitalism. The PM tradition has emphasised the variety of particular conditions of transition to capitalism, and how they impact on each trajectory of development (Carlson, 2018; Comninel, 1987, 2000; Moreno Zacarés, 2018; Post, 2011a; Post & Lafrance, 2018b). However, in doing so, the tradition has effectively discarded the use of ‘bourgeois revolutions’ as an umbrella term for transitions into capitalism.…”

“…It is necessary to return to the theoretical discussion of what is meant by ‘transition to capitalism’, in order to uphold both the analytical value and historical specificity of ‘capitalism’. While Gorender is right to point out that Brazilian capitalism only comes into being with an industrial bourgeoisie and an urban proletariat , an engagement with the transition debate in its current form requires rethinking what such a transition entails in Brazil's (post)colonial context, which leads back to the Brenner–Wood debate on market dependence and market imperatives (Brenner, 2001; Moreno Zacarés, 2018; Wood, 2002b; Zmolek, 2018).…”

“…On the other hand, Carlson's reaffirmation of an agrarian transition in Brazil can be critiqued for assuming that these independent farmers represent the qualitative shift implied with the ‘transition to capitalism’. Drawing on the similar critique posed to Brenner (2001) by Wood (2002b) and Moreno Zacarés (2018) about the (failed) transitions in the Netherlands and in Catalonia (respectively), Carlson's argument does not specify ‘the point at which (…) a loss of non‐market access to the means of subsistence becomes decisive in establishing market‐dependence’ (Wood, 2002b, p. 54). In other words, by following Wood's notion of market dependence as the crucial turning point in the rise of capitalism, it follows that these independent farmers cannot be held as a capitalist class.…”

“…In order to overcome such problems, the paper advances (in the fifth and last section) a narrative of Brazilian transition that overcomes the limits of the bourgeois paradigm. This is done both through a theoretical reassessment of the qualitative change implied by a ‘capitalist transition’ and the meaning of ‘market dependence’ within Political Marxism (Brenner, 2001; Carlson, 2018; Moreno Zacarés, 2018; Wood, 2002b; Zmolek, 2018), and through an empirical study of Brazilian historiography that traces the early days of such form of market dependence within Brazilian social property relations (which leads to a debate with the existing PM argument for the Brazilian transition, presented by Carlson), and how the rise to prominence of such market‐dependent elites within the Brazilian society takes place not through the actions of a revolutionary bourgeoisie but through context‐specific intraelite disputes in the 1920s, which are reflected in the geopolitical disputes between the declining British empire and the rise of US and German industrial and financial capital (Bethell, 2008; Cervo & Bueno, 2008; Dean, 1986, 2006; Doratioto & Vidigal, 2015; Fausto, 1986, 2006b; Gorender, 1978, 1998; Mazzeo, 2015; Saes, 1990; Singer, 2006).…”

Tenencia, transmisión y formas de explotación de la tierra en un entorno protoindustrial. La comarca de Alcoi (ss. XVI-XVIII)

“…El reciente análisis de Julie Marfany sobre Igualada, partiendo de la revisión de los esquemas de Brenner (Brenner, 1988a(Brenner, , 1988bMarfany, 2012) 2 y de los propuestos por las teorías sobre la protoindustrialización 3 , ha demostrado que el contexto agrario en el que se puede 2. Una discusión reciente acerca de la aportación de Marfany y las sugerencias de Brenner sobre el caso catalán en Moreno (2018).…”