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Robert Brenner Dobb On The Transition From Feudalism To Capitalism
Robert Brenner Dobb On The Transition From Feudalism To Capitalism
Robert Brenner*
After some three decades Maurice Dobb's Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946)
continues to be a starting point for discussion of European economic development. It
does so because it remains a powerful statement of the proposition that the problem of
economic development must be approached historically, that any theory of economic
development must be constructed in historically specific terms. Dobb thus follows Marx
in rejecting any attempt to grasp economic transformations in terms of what might be
called transhistorical economic laws based for example on the postulates of orthodox
economic theory. It is the burden of his position that economic development, the growth
of labour productivity and of per capita output, must be comprehended in terms of the
limits and possibilities opened up by historically developed systems of social-productive
relations specific to a given epoch, that the key therefore to the rise of new patterns of
economic evolution is to be found in the emergence of new social relations of production.
The Marxist idea of the mode of production thus provides the point of departure for
Dobb's analysis. It is perhaps his central contribution that through developing the mode
of production conception in relation to the long-term trends of the European feudal
economy, he is able to begin to lay bare its inherent developmental tendencies or 'laws
of motion'. Dobb argues that the formative impact of feudal surplus extraction relations
characterised by extra-economic compulsion by feudal lords, in relationship to the
potentialities and limits of its peasant forces of production, determined a distinctive
pattern of economic evolution. In this way, he provides a basis in both method and
historical analysis for surpassing the unilineal view of development, hitherto widespread
among Marxists, in which the transition to capitalism is conceived as the gestation of an
embryonic self-developing mode of production, alongside and external to a feudal
agricultural mode—an approach characteristically bound up with techno-functionalist
premises. In this classic conception, a trading bourgeoisie develops within the interstices
of an essentially immobile feudal agrarian society on the foundations of technically
dynamic productive forces. The needs of new, self-propelling productive forces impel
the construction of new, more suitable (capitalist) class relations, and bring about the
destruction of outmoded (feudal) ones. In contrast, Dobb is able in the first place to
provide a powerful critique of the notion that economic development took place through
the progressive and dissolving effects of trade and merchant capital upon feudal social-
productive relations, originating from outside it, by showing the way in which class
relations themselves structured a distinctively feudal and non-capitalist development of
f At certain points Dobb does not seem to want to admit this. He comments that 'the century of scarce
labour and of dear labour' after 1350 witnessed 'attempts to reimpose the old obligations' (i.e. labour
services), whereai there began 'a renewed tendency to commutation in the middle of the 15th century,
when the gaps in the population had been sufficientlyfilledfor some fall in wages'—as if the social relations
between lord and peasant remained essentially unaltered through this period (and beyond), and only the
form of paymentj had changed (money vs. labour). The implication is that serfdom—in its essential content
if not in form—continued into the early modern period. Thus Dobb quotes Lipson approvingly to the effect
that 'Personal serfdom survived the decay of economic serfdom' (Dobb, 1946, pp. 57, 65).
130 R. Brenner
development took place. The manner and degree in which urban social productive
relations were, in fact, antagonistic to the maintenance of feudal relations in the
countryside is what needs to be analysed.
In this regard, it is naturally quite significant that feudal industrial production grew
up in an urban setting and did not take place via serf labour (if industry had developed
on the basis of manorial serfs, or town artisanal slaves, its implications for the develop-
ment of the feudal order would certainly have been quite different). Because urban pro-
duction was organised largely on the basis of artisanal production and property (free
producers with the means of production, but without direct access to the means of sub-
sistence), the towns have been presumed to be, almost by definition, subversive of
feudalism: on the one hand, by providing a haven for runaway peasants, thus under-
mining serfdom indirectly; on the other hand, by nourishing social classes which would
necessarily in the course of their development range themselves against the domination
of the feudal classes. Yet neither of these destructive mechanisms can be assumed, for
their operation was actually dependent upon the existence of very specific patterns of
urban social-productive development.
In the first place, a large number of medieval towns were originally established and
controlled by the nobility to meet their needs. On this basis, they can hardly be assumed
to have offered the peasants their freedom (see, e.g. Duby, 1974, Hibbert, 1953; Hilton,
1966, pp. 188ff.; Jones, 1966, pp. 402-407). It is true that in many cases the towns
did win corporate status or de facto independence, often after struggles against the
nobility. Even so, to the extent that urban production was dominated by the direct
artisan producers, the real economic opportunities (and therefore the real openings to
the peasant) would have tended to be correspondingly limited, especially as an effect of
guild restrictions on entry into industrial pursuits. Then again, where urban social
development, especially urban social conflict, issued in the predominance of the merchant
patriciates and their rule over production, the towns did tend to welcome rural migrants
as a source of cheap labour for putting out, or even for urban manufactories. A pattern of
urban corrosion of rural feudal controls does, indeed, appear to have obtained in the
hinterlands of the great medieval manufacturing centres of Flanders and Italy. These
urban conglomerations were able to capture and concentrate the demand for manu-
factures of vast areas of feudal Europe, and thus to offer massive productive opportunities
for rural migrants. Yet, even on the basis of these important cases, it is not clear that it
can be concluded that the development of medieval cities was able to determine the
supercession of feudal class structure, in this way making possible further agricultural
and thereby urban development. Thus, even in Flanders and Italy, it does not seem as
if the rural areas which witnessed the decline of feudal restrictions under the force of the
magnet of urban growth were large enough to make possible an economic break-
through. They could not adequately supply the urban areas with which they were
associated. As a result, the Flemish and Italian towns appear to have had to continue
to depend on agricultural imports from relatively distant regions which were still feudal.
In sum, since urban industrial centres do not appear to have been able to sufficiently
corrode the feudal class structure of agriculture through their attractive force on the
peasant populations, their growth appears to have remained, in the last analysis, subject
to its limitations (see, e.g. Jones, 1966; Nicholas, 1971; Nicholas, 1976).
On the other hand, as Dobb points out, the urban merchants who might have bene-
fitted indirectly from the weakening of feudal controls were unlikely to directly oppose
the feudal order: indeed, the feudal aristocracy constituted their major clientele.
Transition from feudalism to capitalism 131
Following Marx's analysis (Marx, 1894, pp. 329-331), Dobb shows that the surplus
accruing to the merchants from trade under feudalism arose from the disparity in the
relative use values of given products in different areas, which made it possible for
merchants to profit by taking advantage of the resulting differences in relative prices.
This potential for profit-making was inherently unstable, since there was a tendency for
other traders to enter the field to take advantage of the price disparity and eventually
to abolish it. In response, the merchants would move to protect their trading profits by
trying to control the trade by extra-economic means. This inevitably meant turning to
the support of politically powerful elements for grants of monopoly—which required
forging an alliance with the feudal ruling class and its state. Merchant profits, in the long
run, tended to become politically based. Thus, far from subverting the feudal order, the
merchants very often became its bulwark (Dobb, 1946, pp. 87-90). Indeed, it is difficult
to find urban patriciates who directly confronted the feudal class structure, let alone
allied with rebelling peasants, especially in the later medieval period of feudal crisis.
In contrast, the urban artisanate appears to have been led to oppose the feudal regime,
for precisely the reasons the merchants supported it. They opposed the merchant-noble
alliance in order to break the merchant patriciates' political control over the towns,
which was generally accompanied by merchant monopolies of trade and limitation on
the direct producers' organised power in the guilds. On the other hand, the artisans'
concern to control the labour supply could lead them away from directly supporting
peasant demands for freedom, since peasant freedom would have meant peasant entry
into the urban labour force. Thus, an artisan-peasant alliance against the feudal order
cannot be assumed to have prevailed, despite their common interest in opposing the
dominant classes. Indeed, there is some reason to suspect that the really significant
examples of artisan-peasant alliance occurred only after the fall of serfdom (see Brenner,
1976): especially in those places where the aristocracy had reconstructed its power
(against a stubbornly entrenched peasantry) on the basis of the absolutist state. The
classic case is, of course, the French Revolution. To be sure, the dissolving effect of the
towns remains an open question (cf. Anderson, 1974A; Merrington, 1975). Nevertheless,
whatever the extent of the artisan-peasant alliance, or of the urban opportunities for
peasant flight, their significance is to be found, as Dobb made clear, in their impact upon
the fundamental class conflicts in the countryside, which determined the divergent
outcomes of late medieval seigneurial reaction.
work is presented perhaps even more sharply and succinctly than in Studies. Thus:
The basic social relation [of feudalism] rested on die extraction of the surplus product of [die]
petty mode ofproduction by die feudal ruling class—an exploitation relationship diat was buttressed
by various meuiods of 'extra-economic compulsion' . . . It follows immediately from uiis diat die
basic conflict must have been between die direct producers and dieir feudal overlords who made
exactions . . . by dint of feudal right and feudal power. This conflict, when it broke into open
antagonism expressed itself in peasant revolt. . . This was die crucial class struggle under feudalism,
and not any direct clash of urban bourgeois elements (traders) widi feudal lords . . . it is upon
this revolt among the petty producers diat we must fix our attention in seeking to explain die dissolution
and decline of feudal exploitation (p. 285).
Now, Dobb initially defined feudalism as 'virtually identical with what we generally
mean by serfdom: an obligation laid on the producers by force . . . to fulfill certain
economic demands of an overlord' (Dobb, 1946, p. 35). In this respect feudalism was
dead by the 15th century, as peasant resistance and flight, especially in the wake of the
later medieval population decline, had brought about the general collapse of the lords'
rights to tallage the peasantry at will, to extract labour services, and to control peasant
mobility, marriage, and land transfers (cf. Hilton, 1969). To clarify his conception of
bourgeois development external to and against feudalism, Dobb is thus required to
explain in what sense England was still feudal in the period leading up to 1640—in what
way there was maintained a ruling class which based itself on surplus extraction by
extra-economic compulsion from a class of petty producers.f
This problem may be insurmountable, at least from Dobb's perspective, when it is
further understood that beginning from the period of later medieval feudal crisis, from
the 15th century onward, England experienced continuous, if slow, development of
capitalist social-productive relations in the countryside under the aegis of the greater landed
classes.X Thus, in England, the landlords were unable to respond to feudal crisis by
f Dobb's interpretation appears to be strongly ambivalent, if not self-contradictory, as other writers have
remarked (see Sweezy, pp. 46—52; Takahashi, 1952, pp. 83—86). Dobb says at one point that'the disinte-
gration of the feudal mode of production had already reached an advanced stage before the capitalist
mode of production had developed, and this disintegration did not proceed in any close association with
the growth of the new mode of production' (Dobb, 1946, p. 20). Such a statement at least raises questions
as to the sort of social order and state which were overturned in the bourgeois revolution. Dobb, further-
more, offers in various places a great deal of discussion of the specific complex processes of social and
economic development in a capitalist direction which took place in early modern England, and which
made themselves felt in particular through all layers of rural society. Nevertheless, he does not, in my view,
integrate his highly nuanced analyses of these processes with his general view of the bourgeois revolution
against feudalism in 1640 (in my opinion, because they do not easily mesh). In any case, Dobb's bourgeois
revolution thesis is presented rather schematically, so that certain class-economic developments which he
contends prepared the way for political conflict are not always easy to grasp, and indeed, on occasion,
seem to be dealt with by Dobb in different (and more convincing) ways elsewhere in the book in a different
context (see, e.g., 'the really revolutionary way' to capitalist development).
£ Dobb's arguments that basically feudal relationships were maintained on the land through most of the
early modern period are not strong (Dobb, 1946, pp. 20-21, 65-66). Contra Dobb, there is, in fact, little
evidence of the maintenance of villeinage in the period (Hilton, 1969, pp. 55—57). Furthermore, the con-
tinuing formal existence of copyhold tenure is not, as Dobb appears to think, a sign of the maintenance of
feudal relationships between lord and peasant in this period; for by this time the social and economic
content of copyhold had evolved fundamentally. Copyholders were either essentially freeholders or in
effect holders of terminable economic leases (Tawney, 1912, esp. pp. 309-310; Kerridge, 1969, pp. 37-40).
Similarly, the restrictions in law on labour mobility which originated in feudal times and continued in
force into the early modern period cannot be taken as proof of the continuity of feudal relationships, as
Dobb asserts. As Dobb himself points out in a different context, these laws merely reflected a desire to
ensure a labour supply and to keep down wages on the part of rural employer! who were by this time for
the most part capitalists (Dobb, 1946, pp. 231-234). These legal restrictions were maintained even into the
18th century. In Tawney's famous words, quoted by Dobb, in the 16th century, 'Villeinage ceases, the
Poor Law begins'.
Transition from feudalism to capitalism 133
re-installing serfdom, as did the aristocrats of East Elbian Europe. Nor was there a
development such as took place in France, where feudalism could perhaps be said to
have continued in an altered form through the early modern period (Anderson, 1974B).
There, not onlyfreedom,but to a significant degree landed property, had been conquered
by the peasantry at various points during the medieval period. Nevertheless, against
these peasant gains, the French aristocracy, coming out of feudal crisis, was able to make
use of a rebuilt system of surplus extraction based on extra-economic compulsion,
especially through the construction of the absolutist state. Through the absolutist state
the peasants' surplus was directly and forcefully extracted, especially by taxation,
largely for the benefit of the aristocracy. In contrast to both the French and Eastern
European aristocracies, however, the lords in England responded to the peasants'
successes of the late medieval period by shortcircuiting the peasants' drive for full landed
property, by consolidating and extending their own control over the land, providing the
conditions for the introduction of agricultural capitalism on their estates (Tawney,
1912).
The lords' initial response to population collapse was an attempt to increase arbitrary
exactions and to control the peasants. But this was unsuccessful, and, with the collapse
of serfdom, the English lords had little choice but to enter into new forms of relationship
with their tenants characterised by contract. Indeed, the peasants' success in freeing
themselves from landlord controls had allowed them to take advantage of the very high
ratio between land and labour from the later 14th century to establish low rents; and
they even began to claim that their rents (dues) were permanently fixed. Had they been
able to win this demand the ensuing inflation might have made them essentially owners
of the land (as it did in much of France). However, the landlords not only retained their
property, but moved to increase it: in the long run, they maintained hold of their
already substantial demesnes; they took over lands left empty in the late medieval
population decline; they eliminated customary tenants who had not established heritable
rights to land; they got rid of small, inefficient leaseholders. These steps were necessary
to make sure they could adjust rents in accord with market demand (Hilton, 1969).
At first, with the rise in the price of labour which followed the failure to impose
controls on labour mobility in response to population decline, the lords' best option
appears to have been to convert to labour-saving sheep farming. Thus, perhaps the first
major step toward capitalist social productive relations took place in the 15th century,
through the enclosure of the demesnes and vacant peasant plots, for the purposes of
turning from arable to pasture production—a process which often took place through
the leasing of the land to a large commercial tenant, usually recruited from the ranks of
the upper peasantry. With the growth of population from the late 15th century, as well
as the continuing development of textile production for both the foreign and home
markets, the growing demand for food and declining wage costs determined a reverse
tendency back to arable production. Arable production could not, however, develop
through the old feudal social-productive relations—the lords could not reinserf the
peasants—but through the gradual construction of large farms on the basis of bringing
in large commercial tenants. This process did not take place smoothly or directly, for
the peasants would not easily relinquish their lands. Indeed, peasant revolt assumed
serious proportions in the first half of the 16th century. Still, it did not succeed in stem-
ming the tide. By 1640, the English landlords as a whole, led by the aristocracy, presided
over and benefitted from the three-tiered system of social relations which has been
classically identified with capitalist agriculture (see Stone, 1965, for aristocratic success
134 R. Brenner
with rationalisation and improvement). The system of landlord and capitalist tenant
helped make possible economies of scale by the use of new techniques requiring capital
investment and co-operation on the basis of wage labour. Indeed, it seems clear now that
the processes associated with the 'agricultural revolution' were under way from the later
16th century. In this context, the contradiction between landed aristocracy and capitalist
development is by no means necessary (for the foregoing, see Brenner, 1976, and the
sources cited there).
Now, Dobb's view that English landlords, as well as their merchant allies, tended to
block the development of capitalism, led him to posit the 'birth of a capitalist class from
the ranks of production itself as indispensable to economic advance in the early modern
period. Thus, developing a suggestion of Marx, he argues for the predominance in early
modern England of 'the really revolutionary way' to capitalist development, in which
the decisive steps toward capitalist social-productive relations are taken by artisan and
farmer petty owners, who hire wage labour and bring in new techniques, thus them-
selves becoming capitalists (rather than by merchants and landlords entering production
and transforming it in a capitalist direction). It was thus, for Dobb, the artisans and
yeomen now-become-capitalists who made the bourgeois revolution against landlords
and merchants who stood against development! (Dobb, 1946, pp. 123ff).
Now it is unquestionably true that large yeoman farmers, emerging from the ranks of
medieval freeholders and successful customary tenants, led the way in the development
of capitalism in early modern England, cultivating on a large scale, with improved
techniques, on the basis of wage labour. In part, they did so by taking over on lease the
large consolidated farms which had been built up by the landlords. In part, they did so
by building up their own farms through purchase (or lease) from their neighbours. It
also seems undeniable that some artisan small masters were ultimately among the leaders
in the development of capitalist industry, transforming the methods of production and
hiring workers at a wage. Yet the question is: what significance should these processes
be given in relationship to the transition to capitalism and bourgeois revolution?
Underlying Dobb's analysis at this point, there appears to be the assumption that
peasant production, once freed from the controls of serfdom, will evolve more or less
automatically in the direction of capitalism. Under the impact of the market, larger
petty producers will accumulate surpluses; their size will give them technical advantages
over smaller plots; they will ultimately out-compete the smaller units on the market.
The outcome is a bit-by-bit takeover by the larger producers from the smaller ones, the
elevation of the larger producers into the ranks of rural capitalists and the depression
of the smaller ones into the ranks of the wage labourers. In short, the rise and adoption
of new technologies appears to determine the transformation of the class structure from
petty production to capitalism in the countryside, as a result of the economies of scale
enjoyed by the larger producers (as well, of course, as the economic advantages built
into their superior financial positions) (Dobb, 1946, p. 125). Nevertheless, to assume
such a progression is to beg the central question. For it is to assume that there already
exist social-productive relations in which the petty producers are deprived of the means
of subsistence, so that they must sell on the market and thus productively compete in
order to survive. It is only with the establishment of such an economic system that it is
t Sec Dobb's thesis that 'the kind of transition to which Marx was referring["the really revolutionary
way" from petty production to capitalism] was already in process in England in the second half of the
sixteenth century; and . . . by the accession of Charles I certain significant changes in the mode of pro-
duction had already taken place: a circumstance peculiarly relevant to political events in seventeenth
century England, which bear all the marks of the classic bourgeois revolution' (Dobb, 1946, p. 123).
Transition from feudalism to capitalism 135
reasonable to expect that, with the development of exchange, the producers will push
to cheapen their products, that they will accumulate on the basis of wage labour and
investment in improved techniques, and that the classical process of social differentiation
will therefore ensue. It is precisely the emergence of such a system which therefore needs
to be explained.
Thus, in the first place, to the extent that there exist peasant producers who are also
petty owners producing their own subsistence on their own property, there is no neces-
sary or direct tendency to accumulation and differentiation (such as exists under
capitalism). Petty peasant producers, even relatively large ones, can and did orient their
production simply to the maintenance of their productive units (see Marx, 1867,
pp. 766-770; Marx, 1894, pp. 804-807; Chayanov, 1966). They might produce and
market a surplus, but they could still orient these processes to subsistence and to greater
consumption, in other words to simple reproduction rather than any drive toward en-
larged reproduction. Secondly, the society of peasant proprietor subsistence producers,
where it actually exists, can provide a formidable barrier to those peasants who do wish
to accumulate property and means of production. If they maintain enough land and
resources, the mass of peasants cannot easily be forced to sell out. Indeed, they may
accept a serious depression in the level of their subsistence in order to retain their holdings.
At the same time, community controls over production may render accumulation of
property past a certain point economically useless, because it cannot provide the basis
for technical changes, due to the community's insistence on traditional techniques bound
up with the village-wide subsistence economy (Bloch, 1931).
In fact, in France, through much of the later medieval and early modern period, the
countryside was largely dominated by peasants who were effective owners. This owner-
ship had been secured by peasant resistance at various points in the medieval period,
sometimes quite early on (see, e.g. Fossier, 1968; Fourquin, 1964). Much of this peasantry
was able to hold onto the land throughout the entire epoch, even in the face of a rapidly
growing market. They were undoubtedly more successful in doing so during the 15th
century than later on, despite the significant development of trade at this time. This was
because the thinning out of population following the demographic collapse of the 14th
century had left them with relatively large plots, and thus with much more secure sub-
sistence bases. On the other hand, even where they eventually did lose their land to rural
accumulators in the early modern period, the main underlying mechanisms do not
appear to have been directly economic—i.e. market competition by economically
superior producers—but 'extra-economic': population growth leading to subdivision
which pushed their plots below the size necessary to produce subsistence; the weight of
taxation which made their plots inadequate for re-productionj (Jacquart, 1974; Saint
Jacob, 1961).
In contrast, it appears that in England peasant producers were less able to resist the
direct processes of rural accumulation through economic competition. This was because
they had been unable to establish their proprietorship over much of the land. As mere
tenants, the small peasant producers often did not have assured rights in their means of
subsistence; they were indeed subject to supercession by more efficient large producers,
f The tendency to sub-division of holdings among peasants had the effect in the long term of making
easier the undermining of peasant proprietorship, but this did not necessarily mean a direct transition to
typically capitalist production relations. Rather, rural accumulators were encouraged to forego improve-
ment and the reorganisation of the labour process, and to farm using the mass of cheap rural labour power
which arose from the remaining surrounding mini-holdings, whose possessors required wage work to make
ends meet (Jacquart, 1974; see also below, p. 138).
136 R. Brenner
their lands taken in by landlords who re-leased it to commercial tenants. Without
property in their means of subsistence the peasants did experience a significant tendency
to differentiation directly under the impact of the market. But what therefore must
be explained is precisely the processes which lay behind this original separation of the
peasantsfromthe means of their reproduction, which made them vulnerable to productive
competition; it cannot be assumed. This is the question of the 'so-called primitive
accumulation', and of the class conflicts which lay behind it.f
If the freeing of petty production from the fetters of serfdom cannot directly determine
a subsequent evolution to capitalism, it may also be doubted if the landlords and
merchants constituted as powerful a barrier to this transition as Dobb appears to argue.
Thus, while asserting the central economic role of the independent peasantry and
artisanate, Dobb seems to be contending that where landlords and merchants controlled
the conditions of production, they would try to 'deteriorate the condition of the direct
producers . . . and absorb their surplus labour on the basis of the old mode of production'
(Dobb, 1946, p. 123, quoting Marx), rather than transform the social and technical
character of production in a capitalist direction. The landlord would tend to try to
increase his income simply by squeezing his peasant tenants, taking advantage of their
demand for land to increase rents by directly depressing their level of subsistence, rather
than attempting to profit by facilitating their farming on a larger scale on an improved
basis (using wage labour). Correlatively, the merchant putter out would tend to attempt
to increase his profits by cutting payments to the direct producers, by increasing the
price of their raw materials supplies and cutting the payments to them for their products
(or, if he owned the means of production, their wage). In both instances, therefore, the
landlord and merchant would constitute mere parasites on petty production, squeezing
out its surplus. This would prevent the petty producers from developing production
and ultimately transforming themselves into capitalists. It was only where petty pro-
ducers had full access to the means of production and their surplus, where they were full
independent owner operators, that they could have the potential to bring in new tech-
niques, ultimately requiring co-operative production, and thus to become capitalist
employers of wage labour in the process of transforming the nature of production.
It is doubtful, however, if distinct paths of development (or non-development) can
in this way be so directly associated with these two distinct types of owners (owner-
operator yeomen and artisans versus landlords with tenants and merchants with domestic
producers). Rather, it seems that the economic evolution associated with both types was
determined by the broader socio-economic environment in which they were to be found,
bound up in turn with the overall structure of class relations. It needs to be remembered,
first of all, that by the 16th century the landlords had been largely deprived of those
extra-economic controls, characteristic of serfdom, which would naturally have led them
to squeeze their tenants on the basis of the old methods of production. On the other hand,
yeoman farmers who had access to a cheap labour force or were confronted with a heavy
demand for land (for example, from a mass of small peasants) might as readily choose to
increase their income through 'labour squeezing' techniques as would landlords; farming
t Dobb does not, of course, neglect the 'so-called primitive accumulation of capital', nor the role of the
landlords in this process, in creating the social conditions for economic development. He also provides an
extended discussion of the problem of the differentiation of the peasantry and the mechanisms whereby it
takes place (Dobb, 1946, pp. 124-126, and especially 225-226, 250-254). However, these analyses appear
largely in the context of an excellent account of the 'Growth of the proletariat' (ch. 6) and are not linked
back to the problem of transition, and of the bourgeois revolution (in ch. 4 on "The rise of industrial
capital').
Transition from feudalism to capitalism 137
on the basis of labour-intensive methods or renting out their land at high rates. Similarly,
master artisans with some accumulated capital would be perhaps as likely as merchants
to employ their funds to extend putting out operations rather than invest in advanced
means of production usingfixedcapital, if payments to labour were low—and especially
if they could enmesh the direct producers in positions of debt/dependence so as to be
able to assume monopoly positions toward them (vis-d-vis raw material supplies and
product marketing).| In either case, it is not easy to see why the response of the yeoman
or artisan would differ substantially from that of the landlord or merchant. What would
appear to be determinant for all of them would be the broader economic conditions in
which they were operating. All might equally choose labour squeezing methods so long
as, and to the extent that, these were more profitable than introducing improvements.
Thus, as Dobb himself points out, all through the early modern period, ready access
to cheap labour throughout the countryside encouraged industrial entrepreneurs of all
types to stick to labour squeezing methods—domestic putting out in industry. The
transition to the factory system and the introduction of radical new techniques had to
await the industrial revolution of the 18th century. Large numbers of rural producers of
various types wished to take up industrial work as a by-employment, especially in the
off-season, particularly to ensure their subsistence and their ability to hold onto their
plots (Thirsk, 1961; Mendels, 1972). Since these producers had secured at least part of
their subsistence through agriculture, they did not have to receive their full subsistence
from their industrial work. Consequently, they could and did sell their labour power
very cheaply, below its cost of reproduction. Naturally, organisers of production would
try to take advantage of this source of labour power so long as this was possible (Dobb,
1946, pp. 230-231). It was only when the costs involved in expanding rural putting out
began to rise—as a result of the geographic spread of the rural industry, because of the
loss of raw materials stolen by the domestic producers, and because of the difficulties in
disciplining the labour force—that putters-out began to turn to factory production.
This transition appears to have come about on a large scale only with the enormous
build-up of demand which emanated from the new world in the latter part of the 18th
century, and put intolerable pressures on the old domestic mode. It was of course
immensely speeded up by the rapid availability of new inventions which allowed for
dramatic cutting of costs (Landes, 1969, pp. 53-60).
Correlatively, there may have been some tendency to use rural wage pressures and
demand for land, during the early modern period, to profit via squeezing rather than
agricultural innovation—although we perhaps do not yet know enough about the
character of the rural labour force to fully evaluate this. Still, as noted, this tendency
was not necessarily less prevalent among accumulating owner-operator yeomen than
among the landlords. In any case, the advantages to be gained from improvement in
this period must have been quite large, substantially outweighing those to be gained
merely from squeezing. For a major theme of the recent economic historiography of the
period is the transformation of agricultural production which took place (see, e.g.
•f Dobb is certainly right to argue that those merchants who had established trading monopolies, especially
if guaranteed by the state, would tend to leave production as it was, since they could now assure themselves
of profits from the sphere of exchange alone. As Dobb emphasises, the great overseas merchants of the
chartered companies were quite conservative on both political and economic matters in this period: they
were not, it seems, innovators in production and tended to be royalists or neutrals in the revolution from
1640 (see Brenner, 1973). Still, as Dobb also points out, since most of the internal trade was controlled by
merchants who were not overseas traders and had no monopolies, these factors cannot be assumed to have
played the determining role in structuring the development of industry (Dobb, 1946, pp. 126-127 and ff.).
138 R. Brenner
Kerridge, 1967; Jones, 1967; Thirsk, 1967). Innovations were made on both farms
owned by yeomen and farms owned by landlords and cultivated by large tenants. The
relevant point of course, in the present context, is not only that tendencies toward
improvement seem to have operated on the farms of both yeoman farmers and landlords,
but that these were not by any means necessarily antagonistic classes. Yeoman farmers
often took over the landlords' large farms and entered into a co-operative relationship
that was advantageous to both parties, and which resulted in agricultural advance. Thus
the landlord could get a larger and more secure rent from a yeoman capitalist tenant
farming for the market on the basis of improved techniques than from small tenants who
were basically subsistence producers. On the other hand, the yeoman capitalist farmer
could not be induced to take over as a tenant unless he was guaranteed a good part of the
returns to any investment he would make; and during the early modern period new
forms of leasehold were developed to make sure of this. Indeed, it was so much to the
landlords' advantage to have capitalist farmers on their land that they often took over
some of the important capital improvements, such as enclosure or the construction of
buildings, in order to ensure the success of the farm and thus the rent (in this case, of
course, the landlord could add to his rent an additional return from this capital invest-
ment) (Kerridge, 1969, p. 46; Jones, 1965).
In sum, it is difficult to locate a predominant landed feudal class in England in 1640,
so that it is difficult to find at that point powerful class-structured constraints to capitalist
development in the English countryside. Indeed, what appears to have distinguished
the English economy from those on the continent in the early modern period is the
growing connection of all the powerful agrarian elements with capitalist development.
In England, as noted, the lords could not profit from re-enserfing the peasants, as was
done in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, neither English lords nor yeoman farmers
could look to the profitable adoption of the rent-squeezing methods that were generally
taken up by these groups in France in this period vis-i-vis their tenants and wage
labourers, apparently because they did not have access to the mass of semi-peasants/
semi-proletarians which populated the French countryside. In France, the relative
success of the peasantry in gaining hold of the land during the medieval period led to
the subdivisions of holding consequent upon demographic growth from the late 15th
century and pushed much of the rural population below subsistence during the early
modern period. In the face of the heavy demand for land and for work at a wage from
the sub-subsistence peasantry, French landowners and capitalist tenants naturally found
it profitable either to rent their lands at high rates or to hire cheap labour on the basis
of labour-intensive techniques (Brenner, 1976, pp. 74-75, n. I l l ; Dobb, 1946, pp.
239-240). In contrast, the English landlords and tenant farmers (as well as yeomen
owner-operators) were led to attempt to profit through improvement on the basis of
wage labour—and to a large degree they succeeded. The rise of improving English
farming on a capitalist basis tended to dissolve the ancient antagonism between industrial
and agricultural development which had been built into feudal-peasant class relations,
with its barriers to the growth of agricultural productivity. Indeed, it fuelled industrial
development through cheaper food and rising rural demand.
Capitalism in early modern England thus grew up, to a large degree, within a land-
lord structure—a structure which had been formed out of the fall of serfdom and the
gradual undermining of peasant possession of the land. It seems therefore neither
necessary nor correct to follow Dobb in viewing capitalism as growing up alongside,
external to, or in contradiction with a still feudal landed structure in pre-revolutionary
Transition from feudalism to capitalism 139
Englandf (sec, e.g. Dobb, 1946, pp. 20-21). For the same reason, more analysis is
required than Dobb supplies to explain in what sense the monarchical state remained
feudal. J For there is little in England of the massive state support—via church, court,
and army offices—of a crisis-ridden aristocracy such as developed in later medieval and
early modern France, nor of the emergence of a system of taxation of the peasantry to
finance the overarching absolutist apparatus. Indeed, it is in light of the widespread
connection with capitalism throughout all levels of the landlord class, made possible by
the shortcircuiting of peasant property, that we can perhaps begin to understand the
success of the English aristocracy in overcoming economic crisis in the early modern
period, and similarly the failure of the monarchy's absolutist offensive, bound up with its
inability to develop a sufficient financial base, especially on the land (taxing peasants).
Broad sections of the landlord class backed Parliament in both 1640 and 1642: the anti-
feudal tendencies of this class were perhaps not the least important factor in determining
the long-term success of revolution in 17th-century England, in the face of quite
opposite tendencies in much of the continent during the same period.
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