Reading guide for The Origin of Capitalism. A Longer View. Meiksins Wood.
Chapter 5: “The Agrarian Origin of Capitalism”
Explain the process of appropriation of the surplus by exploiters, according to Marx. (95)
Explain the French structure of exploitation: absolutism. (96)
Why, in the capitalist model, we cannot speak of “direct coercion”? (96)
Define capitalism in this context. (97)
Explain the capitalist logic of imperatives. (97)
Why is the capitalist system in permanent expansion? (97)
Enumerate and explain the main characteristics of England (the “European exception): -State; Infrastructure and communications; London at the center of the national market. (98-99)
Explain the relation between landlords and tenants. Why did it give origin to what the author calls “competitive production”? (100)
Explain the difference between market rent and customary rent. (101)
What was the situation in France in regards to property rights? (102)
Explain the relationship between a highly productive agriculture and the large wage-labour force in England. (103)
Explain the concepts of improvement and improver in the English agrarian context. (106)
Why did the traditional concepts of land property start being debated at the time?
Explain the notion of enclosure in the context of the 17th century in England. (108-9)
Explain John Locke’s opinion about unoccupied land (in the context of the theorization of capitalist property). (110).
Why does the author say that Locke justifies colonial expropriation? (112)
Why does the author say that, according to Locke, the master appropriates the labour of his servant?
Why are the employers of labour called producers, if, in fact, the producers are the workers? (112-3)
Why does the author say that Locke gives us a theory of property based on capitalist principles?
Connect Locke’s ideas with the notion of private property. (115)
Why does Locke, according to the author, justify slavery? (115)
What is the bourgeois revolution? (118)
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