State Power and Modes of Production: Implications of the Japanese Transition To Capitalism

Trimberger, Ellen Kay

doi:10.1177/089692057700700209

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The former is compatible with a limited confrontation and the latter with a total war. Trimberger (1972Trimberger ( , 1977Trimberger ( , 1978 conceptualized the concept of 'elite revolutions' with regard to Meiji Restoration ( 1868) in Japan and the Ataturk Revolution (1919-23) in Turkey. These two revolutions, which marked the overthrow of a traditional regime in violent civil war, abolished the economic and social base of the old order, and created a modern nation-state committed to rapid industrialization, were unusual in two respects: (1) the revolutionary leaders were themselves members of the ruling stratum, holding high status and office in the old regime; and…”

Section: Political Coase Theorem and Elite Revolutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Economy of Revolution and Institutional Change: the Elite and Mass Revolutions

Vahabi¹,

Batifoulier²,

Silva³

2021

Revue d'Économie Politique

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In this paper, we question a very deep-rooted bias in the economic literature with regard to conflict and revolution. Conflict in general and revolution in particular are not necessarily 'dark side of self-interest' or bad things. They may be sources of political and economic efficiency depending on their incidence on institutional change. Revolution escapes from Hirschman's dichotomous corrective mechanisms of 'voice' versus 'exit'. We consider revolution as scream exiting from existing rules and voicing new rules. Our theoretical framework suggests that revolutions are a source of institutional innovation characterized by a process of deinstitutionalization and re-institutionalization. The Veblenian 'selective adaptation' on the basis of differentiation, inheritance and selection through a survival struggle provides an endogenous explanation of its different stages. We explore the impact of revolutions on institutional change by focusing on two major types of revolutions, namely the elite revolution and the mass revolution. The former is led by a fraction of the old elite group, while the latter is driven by social groups and classes that were previously non-dominant. The 1688 British Glorious Revolution and the 1789 French Revolution are emblematic figures of these two types of revolutions. The great demarcation between property and sovereignty was accomplished by both revolutions traversing through different patterns of institutional innovation. Our references to the British revolution are exclusively limited to old and new institutionalist authors to show the consistency between their theoretical framework and conflict as a means of bargaining. By contrast, our analysis of French revolution tries to test the consistency of our theoretical framework in light of empirical evidence.

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Section: Political Coase Theorem and Elite Revolutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Economy of Revolution and Institutional Change: the Elite and Mass Revolutions

Vahabi¹,

Batifoulier²,

Silva³

2021

Revue d'Économie Politique

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“…Did Tokugawa-era Japan achieve a transition to capitalism or not? The most common response, which follows the consensus of postwar Japanese historiography, is to insist it did not and to explain away developments that are acknowledged as genuine sprouts of capitalist development (Anderson 1974;Furushima 1963;Moore 1966;Norman [1940Norman [ ] 1975Takahashi [1953Takahashi [ ] 2001Trimberger 1977). By this view, commercial activity was diverted into a symbiotic relationship with the feudal order, and thus the potentially disruptive force of commercial wealth was suppressed (Moore 1966).…”

Section: The Puzzle Of Early Modern Japanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical Sociology’s Puzzle of the Missing Transitions

Cohen

2015

Am Sociol Rev

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Prominent accounts of the transition to capitalism have a far too limited understanding of pre-capitalist agrarian economies’ potential for dynamism. Recent research shows that conditions earlier accounts identify as triggers for a transition to capitalism could be present without a transition occurring. I expand on implications of these cases of “missing transitions” for theorizing the dynamics of pre-capitalist agrarian economies. I present a theoretical framework that shows how phenomena previously associated with the transition to capitalism—such as flexible property rights in land and labor, extensive markets, and accumulation of industrial and mercantile wealth—emerged in pre-capitalist societies without leading to capitalist development. I illustrate the analytic upshot of this framework by considering the case study of Japan in the Tokugawa era (1603 to 1868). For historical sociologists, early modern Japan has long been seen as an anomalous case, puzzlingly mixing developments thought to represent early signs of capitalism with evidence of the durable survival of the feudal social order. In light of a more accurate account of the forces for and limits of dynamism in pre-capitalist agrarian economies, Tokugawa-era Japan is no longer a puzzling anomaly.

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“…Tokugawa rule never developed into the 'redeployed and recharged apparatus of feudal domination' of the absolutist state characterized by the 'displacement of politicolegal coercion upwards towards a centralized, militarized summit' (Brenner, 1982: 81;Anderson, 1974b: 18, 19). Rather, the Tokugawa system is best understood as constituting a distinct 'tributary mode of production' (Trimberger, 1977), combining certain characteristics attributed to both feudalism and the absolutist state, but not reducible to either. The Tokugawas ruled through 'an economical system of indirect control through the daimyō' (Fulcher, 1988: 231).…”

Section: Japanese Development In the Longue Duréementioning

confidence: 99%

The uneven and combined development of the Meiji Restoration: A passive revolutionary road to capitalist modernity

Allinson

Anievas

2010

Capital & Class

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In this article, we examine the utility of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution and its relation to Leon Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development in analysing the transformational effects of world economy and international relations on ‘late-developing’ societies’ transition to capitalism. Although Gramsci never explicitly linked passive revolution to uneven and combined development, we argue that Trotsky’s theory helps make explicit assumptions present in the Prison Notebooks, but never fully thematised. In turn, we demonstrate that incorporating passive revolution into Trotsky’s theory further illuminates the ontology of class agencies that is often lacking in structuralist approaches to bourgeois revolutions. In illustrating these arguments, we examine the case of Japan’s modern state-formation process, demonstrating how the Meiji Restoration of 1868 can be conceptualised as a passive revolution emerging within the context of the uneven and combined process of social development activated and generalised through the rise of the capitalist world economy.

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State Power and Modes of Production: Implications of the Japanese Transition To Capitalism

Cited by 11 publications

References 2 publications

The Political Economy of Revolution and Institutional Change: the Elite and Mass Revolutions

The Political Economy of Revolution and Institutional Change: the Elite and Mass Revolutions

Historical Sociology’s Puzzle of the Missing Transitions

The uneven and combined development of the Meiji Restoration: A passive revolutionary road to capitalist modernity

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