The preconditions for the transition from the feudal mode of production to the capitalist were created in the late Middle Ages, during the period of initial capital accumulation.
The term "capitalism" comes from the late Latin word for "head". The word itself appeared quite a long time ago, back in the XII-XIII centuries. to denote "values": stocks of goods, a mass of money that brings interest. The word "capitalist" appears later, by the middle of the seventeenth century. to denote the "owner of funds". Even later, the term "capitalism" appears. This concept has its own clear content. With regard to property, it means the domination of private property in the instruments and means of production, in land, in labor. In relation to personal freedom, capitalism knows no non-economic forms of dependence. Culturally and ideologically, capitalism is based on liberal secular values. It was the presence of these features that made capitalism different from traditional feudalism.
The Late Middle Ages were characterized by two stages in the development of capitalism: commercial capitalism and manufacturing capitalism. The main forms of organization of production were simple capitalist cooperation and complex capitalist cooperation (manufacture). Simple capitalist cooperation was a form of cooperation of homogeneous (identical) concrete labor. This form of cooperation appeared long ago, but only capitalist freedom - personal and material freedom - made this cooperation a ubiquitous phenomenon.
From the middle of the sixteenth century. manufacturing production is spreading. Manufacturing is a relatively large capitalist enterprise based on the division of wage labor and craft technology. Manufactories could not arise within the framework of the guild organization of production with their prohibitive charters regulating the production process. Therefore, the first manufactories appeared in the countryside on the basis of crafts. The manufacture came out of simple cooperation. Later, the forms of organization of production became more complicated. In the XVI-XVII centuries. there were not many manufactories yet. Existing in a feudal environment, manufactories were persecuted both by the guilds and by the state.
In parallel with the emergence of manufacturing, there was a process of capitalization of agricultural relations. Large owners began to lease land to peasants or wealthy townspeople. The original form of such lease was sharecropping (lease of land for temporary use). Sharecropper rent paid in the form of a certain share of the harvest. Sharecropping rent was of a semi-feudal nature. In England, sharecropping gave way to the capitalist form of business - farming. The farmer also rented land, but gave a fixed amount of money as payment for this. In the future, he could redeem the land and become its owner. This organization of work was not typical in medieval Europe. In France, not to mention Germany, Italy, Spain, the development of capitalism in agriculture was much slower.
In the countries of the irreversible development of capitalism, technical and economic progress changed the social and political appearance of states.
The traditional stratification of society was actively changing here. The third estate, the bourgeoisie, was strengthening its capabilities.
The term "bourgeoisie" comes from the French word "burg" - "city". Linguistically, the bourgeoisie is urban dwellers. However, it would be wrong to associate the emergence of the bourgeoisie only with the evolution of medieval townspeople. The bourgeoisie consisted of various strata: nobles, merchants, usurers, urban intelligentsia, wealthy peasants.
With the development of the bourgeoisie, a class of wage workers took shape.
Changes in the economy, social and political spheres led to the strengthening of the dictate of the state, to the strengthening of absolutism. Absolutist regimes were of different types (conservative, enlightened, etc.)
According to F. Braudel, the violence of the state was a guarantee of internal peace, safety of roads, reliability of markets and cities.
2. Conditions for the emergence of capitalism in Europe.
Why did bourgeois relations spontaneously arise in Europe? After all, in other countries there were opportunities for the emergence of capitalism, for example, in China and especially in Japan. And although today science has not yet provided exhaustive answers to these questions, it is still possible to single out some special features of the Western European version of civilizational development.
First, Western Europe was the direct heir to the Greco-Roman world, a world with an unusually high level of development of commodity-money relations for antiquity, with the right to unregulated property, with an orientation towards an active creative personality.
Second, the rise of capitalism would have been impossible without urban communal movements. In the city, which was conquering self-government and independence from state power, a stratum of people (the third estate) was formed with free capital, which gave life to the future bourgeoisie.
Thirdly, the formation of active, defending their rights, estates forced the state to cooperate with them. Opportunities for pressure on society, on economic processes, of course, remained (and were used), but they were still limited.
Finally, the position of the church in relation to economic issues and commerce. But already from the XIII century. she softens her doctrines about practices traditionally considered "unclean." Condemning usury, the church did not condemn bills of exchange, pledges, investments. This led to the fact that trade in the public consciousness gradually received "the rights of citizenship", and after the Renaissance and the Reformation (Renaissance) began to be considered a very worthy occupation.
Regions of pan-European interaction.
Western Europe is the first civilization among the countries of the world, in which new bourgeois relations were born, gained strength, strengthened and, in the end, triumphed, i.e. the formation shift from feudalism to capitalism took place.
For the first time, bourgeois relations appeared in the large commercial cities of Italy (such as Florence, Genoa) at the end of the 14th century, but then there was a socio-economic regression, i.e. backward movement, change for the worse.
In the XV-XVI centuries. bourgeois relations spread to many countries of Western Europe. Starting from Holland and England, they moved to Florence, and then to Spain, Portugal, Germany. With the passage of time, this process covered most of the world, but the “pulling in” into it took place already in the context of the growing Europeanization of the world and the strengthening of ties and economic dependence on each other.
In economic terms, 4 regions are clearly distinguished in Europe, each of which finds itself in a specific socio-economic situation. Within the framework of the system of pan-European interaction:
1) a region dominated by the early capitalist structure, which most fully expressed the essence of the actual manufacturing phase of social production (England, Holland);
2) a region where this phase of social production was embodied only in a way that remained subordinate to the dominant feudal structure of production (France, Sweden, a number of regions of Germany);
3) a region in which in the seventeenth century. there was a socio-economic regression in comparison with the sixteenth century. (Spain, Portugal, North. Italy, South-West Germany);
4) a region in which serf relations were strengthened (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic States, Russia).
Economy of Western Europe in the 16th-18th centuries was predominantly agrarian in nature. Agriculture was the sphere of material production where the traditions of the previous period (the Middle Ages) were most stable.
Manual labor prevailed. And against this background, capitalism appears and grows. Social factors of bourgeois development are accumulating - class and professional stratification in society, the convergence of the commercial and entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, the growth of the third estate.
The representatives of the rising class of the bourgeoisie were characterized by courage, energy, enterprise, assertiveness, and the ability to take risks. No wonder the epoch of the XVI-XVIII centuries. - this is the time of the great adventurers. The bourgeoisie is selfish and calculating. Profit and profit are the main incentives for its activities.
3. The emergence of manufactories.
The formation of modern civilization was a rather complex and lengthy process, which underwent various transformations as it developed. This is a long historical period - from about the fifteenth century. and to the present, and in some countries this period has not yet been completed.
The modernization process, i.e. the transition from feudalism to capitalism goes through various phases of development: early industrial (14th-15th centuries), medium-industrial (16th-18th centuries), late industrial (19th century) and post-industrial (20th century).
At the early industrial stage of the development of the bourgeoisie, there is a long gradual formation of new social institutions and elements of the bourgeois formation, there is an accumulation of initial capital, manufactories (manual production) appear - the first signs of capitalism.
The cities were the center of the development of bourgeois relations. A new stratum of people (the third estate) was formed there, consisting mainly of merchants, usurers and guild craftsmen. All of them had capital, the shortest path to the acquisition of which was opened through trade and usurious operations. This capital was not hidden in chests, but invested in production. Moreover, in the production of a new type, more efficient, giving high profits.
In this era, the manufacture began to replace the craft workshop. Manufacturing is a large capitalist enterprise based, in contrast to the workshop, on the internal division of labor and hired force. Manufactories were serviced with the help of hired labor; it was headed by an entrepreneur who owned capital and the means of production. Manufactures, the primary forms of the capitalist enterprise, appear already in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
There were two forms of manufactory: centralized (a merchant or entrepreneur himself created a workshop, shipyard or mine, bought raw materials, materials, equipment himself) and a much more widespread - scattered manufactory (an entrepreneur distributed raw materials to homeworkers-artisans and received from them a finished product or semi-finished product).
The emergence of manufacture meant a significant rise in the productive forces of society. Its technical basis was also the use of the same tools as in handicraft production.
Later, manufactories began to use more or less sophisticated technical devices for the use of water and wind energy. Shafts, gears, gears, millstones, etc., driven by a water-filled wheel, were used in flour milling and crouping, for making paper, in sawmilling, in the production of gunpowder, for drawing wire, cutting iron, driving a hammer, etc.
In the manufactory era, profound shifts take place in the economic life of society, a catastrophic breakdown of the old economic life, the old picture of the world.
The main advantage of the manufactory was that it was a large-scale production and created opportunities for a narrow specialization of labor operations as a result of the technical division of labor. This helped to increase the output of hired workers by several times in comparison with the craft workshop, where all operations were carried out mainly by one foreman.
But until machines were invented, capitalist production was doomed to remain only a way of life in the system of the feudal economy.
Farms.
The countryside, the main bulwark of feudalism, was drawn into bourgeois relations much more slowly than the city. Farms were formed there, with hired labor of peasants who had lost their land as a result of transformations, i.e. ceased to be peasants in the full sense of the word. This process of de-peasantization went through various intermediate forms, as a rule, through the transition to leases, which meant the abolition of fixed payments and rights to hereditary holding of land.
In the village, the role of entrepreneurs could be played by rich peasants, merchants, or sometimes the feudal lords themselves. This happened, for example, in England, when there was a process of so-called fencing, i.e. the forcible drive of peasants from the land in order to turn it into a pasture for sheep, whose wool was sold.
The rate of development of capitalism depended on the speed of penetration of bourgeois relations into the countryside, much more conservative than the city, but producing the bulk of the output. This process proceeded most rapidly in England and the Northern Netherlands, where the rapid flourishing of manufactories coincided with the bourgeoisie of the countryside.
In England and Holland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. there was an intensive bourgeois restructuring of agriculture; a large-scale capitalist lease was approved while maintaining the noble land ownership of landlords (landowners). In these countries, the introduction into practice of new types of agricultural tools (light plow, harrow, seeder, thresher, etc.)
The bourgeois progress of agriculture provided raw materials and an influx of labor into industry, since the peasants, left without land and not finding work in the village, went to the city.
The development of capitalism was accompanied by technical progress, the destruction of traditional corporate ties, the emergence of single markets - national and European.
In this era, a new "hero of the time" appeared, an enterprising, energetic person who can withstand competition, create capital out of nothing.
BUT in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. even in those countries where bourgeois relations were successfully developing, the new order nevertheless existed in the "context" of feudal relations, which were still strong enough and did not want to voluntarily surrender their place.
The base of capitalism was rather weak, so there was room for a reverse movement, which has happened in a number of European countries... Among them were Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany.
Life. The era of the initial accumulation of capital, the emergence and development of manufactory production marked the beginning of a new era. Europe is becoming the center of the progressive development of mankind, the formation of new political institutions, a hotbed of new ideology and culture. Thus, the New Time is the era that laid the foundations of modern civilization, in which we are now ...
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Western Europe is the first civilization in which new bourgeois relations were born, gained strength and ultimately triumphed, that is, another formational shift took place - from feudalism to capitalism. They first appeared in large commercial cities of Italy (such as Florence, Genoa) at the end of the XIV century, in the XV-XVI centuries. spread to many countries of Western Europe: Germany, France, England, Spain and Portugal. Over time, this process covered most of the world, but the "pulling" into it took place already in the context of the growing Europeanization of the world and the strengthening of ties and economic dependence of countries on each other.
Capitalism in the city and in the countryside
Cities were the centers of development of bourgeois relations. A new stratum of people was formed there, consisting mainly of merchants, usurers and guild craftsmen. All of them had capital (the fastest way to acquire them was through trade and usurious operations), which were not hidden in chests, but invested in production. Moreover, production of a new type, more efficient, giving high profits. In this era, manufactory began to replace the workshop - large-scale production based, in contrast to the workshop, on the internal division of labor and hired labor. Manufactories were serviced with the help of hired labor; it was headed by an entrepreneur who owns the means of production and organizes the production process. There were two forms of manufacturing: centralized (a merchant-entrepreneur himself created a workshop, shipyard or mine, bought raw materials, materials, equipment himself) and much more widespread - scattered (an entrepreneur distributed raw materials to homeworkers-artisans and received from them a finished product or semi-finished product). The countryside, the main bulwark of feudalism, was drawn into bourgeois relations much more slowly than the city. Farms were formed there, with hired labor of peasants who lost their land, that is, ceased to be peasants in the full sense of the word.
This process of de-peasantization went through various intermediate forms, as a rule, through the transition to leases, which meant the abolition of fixed payments and rights to inheritance. In the village, the role of entrepreneurs could be rich peasants, merchants or sometimes feudal lords themselves, as happened, for example, in England, where new nobles (gentry) drove peasants from the land and turned it into pasture for sheep, selling wool. But, as a rule, landowners preferred to maintain the old order. The rate of development of capitalism depended on the speed of penetration of bourgeois relations into the countryside, much more conservative than the city, but producing the bulk of the output. The process proceeded most rapidly in England and in the Northern Netherlands, where the rapid flourishing of manufactories coincided with the bourgeoisization of the countryside. In that era, a new "hero of the time" appeared, an enterprising, energetic person who was able to withstand fierce competition, to create capital literally out of nothing. The development of capitalism was accompanied by technical progress, the destruction of traditional corporate ties, the emergence of single markets - national and European. But in the XV-XVI centuries. even in those countries where bourgeois relations were successfully developing, the new order nevertheless existed in the "context" of feudal relations, which were still strong enough and did not want to surrender their place voluntarily. The base of capitalism was weak, so there was room for a reverse movement, which has happened in a number of European countries. Among them were Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany.
Power monologue
In a transitional era, the balance of power between the government and society has changed dramatically. Their dialogue began to give way to the dictates of the king. Royal power is seeking maximum centralization and independence in relation to society. A huge bureaucratic apparatus is being created (especially in France), a permanent army in the civil service. The king himself makes laws, disposes of finances at his own discretion. Estates meetings either cease to be convened altogether, or find themselves completely dependent on the authorities. This type of monarchy is called absolute. Its appearance was possible only in a special situation, when the bourgeoisie, separated from the urban estate, entered into rivalry with the nobility. This increased the power's maneuverability and expanded the space of its freedom. In addition, the formation of a single internal market required centralization, the elimination of feudal troubles. As a rule, the monarchs sought to maintain a certain balance of power in society, maneuvering between the opposing social strata, but at the same time remaining a form of power of the nobility. The prosperity of the country and the longevity of the monarchy itself often depended on the chosen tactics. So, in France, Henry IV (1589-1610), on the one hand, sought to support the ruined peasantry (he lowered taxes, freed from arrears, forbade the sale of livestock and tools for debts), on the other, he encouraged the creation of manufactures and trade.
The policy of improving the country's economy and maintaining the balance of power continued under Cardinal Richelieu (in fact, he ruled the country from 1624 to 1642). The absolute monarchy in England found itself in a more difficult situation, where the involvement of the countryside in bourgeois relations was especially stormy and led to great upheavals. In this situation, the Tudors supported new processes (they gave benefits to merchants, encouraged colonial conquests, laws against vagabonds ensured the cheapness of hired labor), but at the same time tried to suspend them. Defending workshops, they slowed down the growth of manufactories, prohibited fences that damaged agriculture and undermined social stability in the country. As a result, the state's desire to regulate the economy quickly ended with a crisis of power and revolution. Another example is given to us by Spain, where the absolute monarchy remained extremely conservative, did not support crafts and trade, but, on the contrary, stifled cities with taxes, focusing mainly on the nobility. As a result, the manufactories already appearing in Spain withered, trade declined, the economy fell into decline, and Spain, despite the huge influx of gold from the colonies, turned into one of the most backward countries in Europe.
Conditions for the emergence of capitalism
Why did bourgeois relations spontaneously arise in Europe? Indeed, in other civilizations there were opportunities for the emergence of capitalism, for example in China, and especially in Japan. Although science has not yet provided exhaustive answers to these questions, it is nevertheless possible to single out some special features of the Western European version of civilizational development, which opened the way for the “European miracle”. Western Europe was the direct heir to the Greco-Roman world, a world with an unusually high level of development of commodity-money relations for antiquity, with the right to unregulated property, with an orientation towards an active creative personality. The rise of capitalism would have been impossible without urban communal movements. In the city, which was winning self-government and independence from the state, a stratum of people was formed with free capital, which gave life to the future bourgeoisie. The formation of active, defending their rights, estates forced the state to cooperate with them. Opportunities for pressure on society, on economic processes, of course, remained (and were used), but they were still limited. The position of the church in relation to economic issues and commerce was also important. Already from the XIII century. she softens her doctrines about practices traditionally considered "unclean." Condemning usury, the church did not condemn bills of exchange, pledges, investments. This led to the fact that trade in the public consciousness gradually acquired "the rights of citizenship", and after the Reformation it began to be considered a very worthy occupation.
In the middle of the II millennium A.D. NS. even in the most advanced countries of that time, feudal relations still continued to dominate. The specific forms of economy in different feudal countries - in China, India, Japan, Korea, Central Asia, the countries of the Arabic language, Russia, Germany, Italy, France, etc. - were very different. Remnants of pre-feudal structures - slavery and primitive communal relations - have survived to an unequal degree in these countries. Medieval cities reached various stages of development. However, in all these countries of the Old World, stretching from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Atlantic in the west, the main, most characteristic features industrial relations were basically the same.
Until the specified time, the small economy of the peasants continued to dominate in the countryside, working on land that was the property of the feudal lords, and were dependent on the latter. This small peasant economy in some countries was combined with the large lordly economy of the feudal lords themselves, based on the exploitation of the free corvée labor of the feudally dependent peasants. In the cities of most of the feudal countries of Asia, North Africa or Europe, a small economy of artisans dominated, who had their own means of production and worked to order or to market, mainly to a limited local market. These artisans were in various forms of direct or indirect dependence on the feudal lords and were exploited by them.
In the XIV-XV centuries. in the most advanced feudal countries, individual links in this system of small-scale production, entangled in the networks of feudal exploitation, are already beginning to disintegrate. In some of these countries (Italy, Flanders) the first sprouts of new, capitalist relations emerge sporadically.
In the XVI century. a turning point is taking place in the development of mankind. In a number of Western European countries, the process of disintegration of feudalism begins. The small-scale economy of direct producers is beginning to collapse. The means of production are concentrated in the hands of a new class - the capitalist class, and the direct producers themselves are turning into people personally free, but forced to live by selling their labor power. Under the conditions of the disintegration of the feudal economy, large-scale production, social in its form, is taking shape, based on the exploitation of wage labor, that is, already capitalist production.
What caused this economic upheaval in Western Europe? The entire experience of human history, summarized in the Marxist theory of social development, shows that economic upheavals of this kind are always associated with deep shifts in the field of material production, in the state and nature of the productive forces. This was the case in this case.
The period preceding the emergence of capitalism was a relatively fast time for the Middle Ages. economic development Western European countries. In the XI-XV centuries. Feudal relations in these countries, despite the severity of exploitation, nevertheless opened up for the direct producers - peasants and artisans - certain opportunities for the development of their own small economy. The peasants and artisans of Italy, France, Germany, England and other countries, who were materially interested in the results of their labor, in the process of their daily work, accumulated production experience, improved the tools of labor, improved production technology, thereby contributing to the development of productive forces. By the beginning of the XVI century. this development led to profound changes in the sphere of material production. Production technology became more complex, more and more urgently requiring a transition from small to large production. Along with the progress of technology, the social division of labor has grown and deepened. These shifts, along with the expansion of the domestic and foreign markets, were the main reason for the indicated economic revolution in Western Europe in the 16th century.
Development of technology by the beginning of the 16th century.
By the beginning of the XVI century. in all major branches of industrial production, handicraft tools were radically improved and various improvements were introduced in production technology. The most significant by the beginning of the 16th century. there was progress in the mining and manufacturing industries of Western European countries. The progress of handicraft technology was also observed in the textile industry, which at that time occupied the first place in terms of its prevalence in a number of industrial industries. In the period from XI to XIII century. a hand wheel spinning wheel was invented, which received in the XIV-XV centuries. widely used in Western Europe. In this spinning wheel, spinning was carried out by means of a spindle driven by a wheel, which was rotated by an artisan. Until then, in Western Europe, the most primitive spinning method was retained with the help of a single spindle, rotated directly by the fingers of the hand. At the same time, the horizontal loom was spreading, taking the place of the more primitive vertical loom. At the end of the 15th century. a self-spinning wheel is introduced, that is, an improved hand spinning wheel, in which, with the help of a wheel rotated by the spinner, not only spinning, but also winding of the produced thread is carried out. In addition to these basic tools of textile production, craft tools used for various auxiliary operations in the production of fabrics are being improved - combs and cards for combing wool, tools and devices for finishing cloth, etc. The technique of felting is changing especially strongly. Originally felting was done with hands or feet. From the 11th-12th centuries. there are felt mills, in which this operation is carried out with heavy wooden hammers, set in motion by a water wheel.
An important event in the development of the textile industry was the beginning of the widespread use of a new type of fiber - silk. In ancient times, fabrics in Europe were made from wool and linen. At the end of the early Middle Ages from Byzantium and the Arab countries, sericulture and the production of silk fabrics penetrate into Italy, where in the XI-XIII centuries. relatively large centers of this new for Europe type of industry appeared (especially Lucca. Venice, later Florence). Silk-weaving production also spread to France, Spain, and individual cities of Germany and reached a significant development by the 16th century. The production of cotton fabrics is also developing.
Sectional mine. Engraving from the book by G. Agrikola "On Metals" 1556
In some industries, technological progress has gone even further, going beyond the improvement of craft technology. The improvement of handicraft tools was combined in them with the use of various mechanical devices and even primitive machines, driven by the muscular force of man, the force of animals and the force of wind or falling water.This was the case in the woolen production, in one of the links of which, as was just said , a water wheel was used. Various mechanical devices and primitive engines have been even more widely used in mining, metallurgy, metalworking, shipbuilding, construction, and some other less significant branches.
In the mining industry in the XV-XVI centuries. much more complex than it was before, mechanical devices for the construction and operation of mines are becoming widespread. The German scientist and engineer Georg Bauer, better known by the Latinized name Agricola, describes in detail the already relatively complex mine equipment of his time (first half of the 16th century). He talks about carts for transporting ore moving with noise along a road with a wooden track, about mechanisms for pumping water from great depths and lifting ore upward, driven by the force of animals (horses) or the force of falling water, about ventilation installations, about crushing crushing ore, etc. It is interesting to note that Agricola describes a machine in which, thanks to a complex transmission system, one water wheel drives three different actuators - a crushing device for crushing ore, a grinding mill and a stirrer. However, such a machine was obviously a rarity, as Agricola himself calls it "one of a kind." The creation of this more sophisticated mining equipment made it possible to arrange deep mines and develop previously inaccessible seams. It was a real revolution in mining.
In metallurgy, instead of small forges, in which iron was directly reduced from ore by the so-called raw-blown method, from about the XIV century. began to build larger forges, already reaching 2-3m in height. These forges were equipped with bellows powered by a water wheel, whereas in the past small bellows were used, most often hand or foot bellows. Due to the large size of these forges and the great force of the air jet blown into them, the combustion temperature in the forges increased significantly, and the ore began to turn into a liquid, and not a doughy mass, as in the blowing process. At first, they did not know what to do with such a molten mass, which, when cooled, turns into cast iron. They saw it as a kind of production waste, increasing only costs and making the product more expensive, but not suitable for any useful application. Later, however, they noticed that by subsequent remelting and removal of carbon from cast iron in special furnaces, iron could be obtained from it. Since that time, they began to consciously strive to obtain pig iron from the ore with the aim of further obtaining iron and steel from it. So the forges turned into blast furnaces and a reworking process was developed, which in its main features has survived to the present day. This made it possible to obtain immediately large masses of steel and iron, which could not be achieved with a raw-blown method of producing iron. Thus, the blast furnace and the rework process marked an even more important technical revolution than that which took place in mining.
Blast furnaces. Engraving from G. Agricola's book "On Metals" 1556
In the metalworking industry since the XIII century. hammers driven by the force of falling water began to be used for iron processing (Germany, Czech Republic, England). In the XIV-XV centuries. these installations - "iron mills" - became even more widespread and improved. The weight of individual hammers began to reach 1 ton and even more. In the XIV-XV centuries. there were also machines for the production of sheet iron and wire, also driven by the force of falling water.
As we can see, the widespread use of the water wheel played a major role in the development of technology in the era under consideration. The rapid spread of this primitive water engine in the 13th-15th centuries. due to the improvement that took place at that time. Previously, the water wheel of the bottom battle prevailed, that is, such a water wheel, which with its lower part plunged into the stream of water. Since the indicated time, the water wheel of the upper battle has become more widespread, which was installed in such a way that water fell on its upper blades. Such a water wheel received more energy from the falling water and could do much more work. In addition, production ceases to be associated with large rivers, since branch channels were sufficient for the operation of the upper-breaker wheel. In addition to these cases in the XIV-XV centuries. it also began to be used in the production of paper, gunpowder, in sawmilling, etc.
The development of technology was not limited only to the sphere of industrial production. Great technical advances have also taken place in vehicles, more precisely, in one of its types - in sea transport. The compass, which began to be used in Europe in the 12th century, made it possible to keep a certain course in any weather (even with a cloudy sky) and thus made it possible to long voyages on the high seas. In the XV century. instruments for determining the position of heavenly bodies from the deck of the ship were improved and more accurate astronomical tables were compiled (by the German astronomer Regiomontana), which further facilitated long sea voyages. At the same time, a new type of sea ship (in Portuguese, caravel) was created, which was distinguished by greater mobility and ability to maneuver than the bulky and clumsy ships of the previous era.
Indisputable, although not as fast as in industry, technological progress also took place in agriculture. The data at our disposal about the development of agricultural machinery in the XI-XV centuries. very scarce. But still they are sufficient to assert that forward movement was also observed in this area. Due to the uprooting of forests and drainage of swamps during the XI-XV centuries. in Western Europe, the area of cultivated land was significantly expanded. Land use systems, advanced for their time, became more widespread. If by the beginning of the XI-XV centuries. in many countries of Western Europe, the slash, shifting system and two-field were still often found, but now everywhere, with the exception of the northernmost countries, they are being replaced by a three-field. In the most developed agricultural regions (for example, the Netherlands and England) in the 16th century. there is already a transition to even more advanced land use systems - multi-field and fallow grass sowing. The use of fertilizers is expanding. In the peasant economy, the number of agricultural implements is increasing. In particular, in connection with the successes of metallurgy, the number of metal tools is increasing and their quality is improving.
The picture of technical progress in the feudal countries of Western Europe of the period under review would be incomplete if we did not say anything about the numerous inventions and discoveries in those areas of material culture that are not directly related to the sphere of economic activity. At this time, an enormous turning point of world-historical importance was taking place in the development of military technology. In the XIV century, gunpowder began to be used for shooting from cannons, and then from hand firearms. By the beginning of the XVI century. firearms in their various forms have already become so widespread that, although they did not completely supplant the previous types of weapons, they made in any case a real revolution in military affairs. Knightly armor ceases to be impenetrable - they are pierced by a bullet even from imperfect rifles of that time. The stone walls of knightly castles, which can now be relatively easily destroyed by artillery, are losing their inaccessibility. New types of troops appear - artillery and infantry armed with guns, and the heavily armed knightly cavalry is losing its former combat significance.
Equally important in its consequences was the beginning of the production of paper and especially book printing. In the XII-XIV centuries from eastern countries The production of paper was borrowed, quickly replacing the very expensive writing material used in Western Europe until then - parchment, that is, leather dressed in a certain way. In the middle of the 15th century. typography was invented by means of a collapsible metal font. Already from the second half of the 15th century. the rapid replacement of parchment manuscripts by books printed on paper began. Such a book was immeasurably cheaper than a manuscript on parchment, and this, for the first time in the history of mankind, created the possibility of a wide dissemination of knowledge accumulated by man. Without the printed book, the entire subsequent development of culture would have been impossible.
It should be noted that other inventions are not of such great world-historical significance, but still very important. In the XIII century. began to produce glass lenses and glasses appeared around 1300. Around the same XIII century, large tower clocks, driven by the force of gravity of weights, began to be erected in Western Europe. These clocks were very bulky and fit only on large public buildings. Around 1500, a small spring clock was also invented.
All these inventions, which had no direct relation to the economy, nevertheless indirectly had a very large impact on its development. They created new needs and caused the emergence of new industries. The widespread use of firearms sharply increased the need for iron, copper and steel, gave a powerful impetus to the development of metallurgy and led to the emergence of new branches of the metalworking industry. The invention of paper and book printing gave rise to the paper industry and printing industry. The advent of watches, especially after the invention of the spring-loaded watch, led to the emergence of a new industry. Very important was the fact that these new branches of production were distinguished by sophisticated technology for that time and their development contributed much to the general technical progress. The development of the production of artillery pieces led to the improvement of casting techniques and the emergence of new types of machine tools (for example, a drilling machine driven by a water wheel). Watchmaking was the school in which the technique of precision instrument making was developed: the subsequent development of the production of precision instruments was largely based on the technique created in watchmaking.
Taken together, all these diverse improvements and inventions have led to fundamental shifts in the field of production technology. The productive forces of Western European feudal countries at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. enter a new, higher phase of their development.
Development of the social division of labor and commodity production
These important shifts in the field of productive forces had a profound and varied influence on the social production of the feudal countries of Western Europe. The tools of labor have become more complex, especially in those industries where various mechanical devices and primitive engines began to be used. Labor productivity has increased. The structure of production has changed: the volume of industrial production has increased and many previously absent branches of industrial production have emerged. At the same time, important changes have taken place in the nature of social production and exchange. The social division of labor grew and deepened, which found its manifestation in the further development of commodity production.
The social division of labor existed and played a large role in the economic life of Western European countries up to the 16th century, although its scope was very limited.
In the XVI century. at the level of productive forces reached by this time, the advanced feudal countries are entering a period of a broader and more developed social division of labor in its forms. The increasing complexity of production technology in itself made it necessary to increasingly specialize individual farms in certain types of production activities.
Economic and social processes associated with the development of technology also operated in the same direction. In particular, an increase in labor productivity resulted in an increase in the mass of the surplus product and, consequently, in the income of the ruling classes and the feudal state, which showed a particularly great demand for precisely those products that were produced by the urban industry (luxury goods, military equipment, ships for the fleet, etc. etc.). It is clear that the consequence of this should have been the further development of the social division of labor.
At this new, higher stage of the social division of labor, mining, metallurgy (both ferrous and non-ferrous), some branches of metalworking production, shipbuilding, silk-weaving industry, etc., were completely or almost completely isolated from agriculture. than before, the degree has separated from agriculture the wool weaving industry. The flax-weaving industry, which used to be usually concentrated in the countryside, began to separate from agriculture.
The development of industry, isolated from agriculture, naturally presupposed major changes in the agricultural economy. The share of agricultural and livestock products that was intended not for the own consumption of peasants and feudal lords, but for exchange in one form or another for industrial products, increased. In other words, the commodity production of foodstuffs and raw materials for industry is growing.
Along with the growth of commodity production, the development and complication of its forms takes place.
Metal processing workshop. Engraving from G. Agricola's book "On Metals" 1556
Industrial production of small towns, designed for a narrow local market, continues to exist. However, the production of industrial products, based on a broader and more developed division of labor, is growing rapidly and acquires a greater share in economic life. Some old and new industrial cities are developing, and the export of industrial products far beyond the borders of the region immediately adjacent to the city is becoming more important.
In Central Europe, new ones were discovered or, with the help of more advanced technology, old deposits of polymetallic ores began to be exploited more intensively. On the basis of the development of these deposits, the smelting of silver, copper, zinc, lead developed (in southern Saxony and other mountainous regions of Germany, northwestern Hungary, Tyrol, etc.). In the Eastern Alps (Styria, Carinthia, Carinthia), in Northern Italy, some provinces of France, Lorraine, certain counties of England, in Sweden, etc., the development of iron ore deposits and the smelting of iron grew. In certain regions, the production of a significant part of articles made of iron and non-ferrous metals (firearms, relatively complex tools, etc.) is concentrated. The centers of shipbuilding are developing (primarily the Northern Netherlands). The production of silk products, glass vessels, mirrors, jewelry, etc., which until the 16th century was concentrated mainly in the cities of Italy, is growing in some areas north of the Alps, especially in France and the Netherlands.
In the XVI century. some of the old centers of the wool-weaving industry (Florence, Bruges, Ghent) are falling into decay, but new centers are emerging that exceed the old ones in terms of production.
In addition, areas of rural handicraft industry, targeting distant markets, are gaining more importance. As examples of such centers of industrial production, one can point to the centers of the wool industry in England (especially the counties of Yorkshire and Norfolk), which supplied their products not only to European, but partly to non-European countries as well. Areas of production of linen fabrics in Silesia, the Netherlands, Westphalia are distinguished, and likewise Lyon, which was an important center for the production of silk fabrics, centers for the production of lace in Flanders, Brabant, etc. and food.
A manifestation of this process of expansion and deepening of the social division of labor was the increase in the total mass of goods produced on the market, and the production of goods for the distant market, sold through the merchant, increased especially. At the same time, the forms of commodity and money circulation also developed. The 16th century was a time when new types of trading transactions were spreading, the stock exchange became a place for extensive transactions in goods and securities (especially the stock exchange in Antwerp), speculative transactions based on market fluctuations were taking on colossal proportions, credit and banking were developing, much more development merchant and usurious capital reaches more than before.
A powerful additional impetus to the growth of commodity-money relations was given by the great geographical discoveries of the late 15th-early 16th centuries. They vastly expanded the field of activity of the European merchants and opened up new opportunities for extremely profitable unequal trade with the population of open countries enslaved or terrorized by force of arms.
The decline of feudal production and the development of capitalism
These changes in the state of the productive forces of the feudal countries of Western Europe were the main reason for the development of capitalism. As a result of these shifts in the advanced Western European countries of the XVI century. a situation was created in which the small economy of the direct producers of feudal society was no longer capable of further development, moreover, in certain branches of economic activity it began to decay, giving way to more productive social forms of production - capitalist.
This process of disintegration of small-scale production, which prevailed in feudal society, was to a certain extent directly related to the development of production technology. As mentioned above, as a result of a number of technical discoveries by the beginning of the 16th century. in Western Europe there was a significant improvement and complication of the means of production, especially the tools of labor. Such an improvement in the means of production, even in those cases when it did not go beyond the improvement of craft technology, nevertheless changed the economic position of the small producer, who was now forced to spend larger amounts of money on the acquisition of the instruments of labor necessary for him. It is clear that this facilitated the establishment of the economic dependence of the small producer on the merchant or other owner of capital, since the artisan now more often felt the need to turn to them for a loan to provide his economy with the means of production. For example, the complication and rise in the cost of the loom and other tools of textile production should have increased the number of cases when the artisan-weaver was forced to borrow money for their purchase, which, naturally, increased the possibility of his ruin and enslavement by the lender.
The complication of production technology in those cases when it was already accompanied by the use of relatively complex mechanical devices and primitive engines and machines influenced the position of the small producer many times more strongly. An individual small producer could not, at his own expense, purchase and use his labor to operate a deep mine with complex equipment or a metallurgical enterprise, which included a blast furnace with bellows driven by a water wheel, a furnace for melting cast iron into iron and heavy hammers for processing iron, also usually driven by a waterwheel.
In those branches of industry in which such a relatively complex equipment was used, the small-scale production of individual artisans inevitably had to be replaced by larger production along with the development of new technology.
However, the development of capitalism cannot yet be explained by the direct influence of the improvement of production technology. Branches of production in which complex mechanical devices and machines were used in the 16th century. were still generally an exception. In addition, it should be borne in mind that even in these industries, primitive handicraft technology has not been completely replaced by new technology.
The main and decisive factor in the emergence of capitalist relations in Western Europe in the XVI century. there was a complication of production due to the growth of the social division of labor. With the deepening of the social division of labor, the production process acquires, in fact, a social character, and the individual producers participating in it turn into links of a complex and ramified economic organization. They enter into relationships with each other that go far beyond the boundaries of individual economic regions and connect a large number of individual producers of the most diverse specialties with strong economic ties, and these ties acquire a complex character. Now it is no longer possible to establish personal contacts in the market, both between individual producers and between producers and consumers, which existed in the production of goods for the local limited market. The more complex form of organization of production makes it necessary to transport both industrial products and agricultural products over considerable distances, which in the specific conditions of that time could be carried out only with the help of a merchant, who becomes a necessary intermediary between individual farms, connected through the market by a system of wide social division of labor.
When produced on broad market the factors limiting competition and stratification among small producers working for the local market cease to operate. A significant increase in production in individual production centers, frequent fluctuations in the market situation, the destruction of personal ties between producers and consumers, the development and complication of commodity and money circulation opened up the widest opportunities for competition between individual commodity producers and led to stratification in their environment. Along with this, there is a subordination of small producers to commercial capital. Many small producers became dependent on merchants who supplied them with raw materials and sold their products, and to one degree or another lost their economic independence. In other words, new forms of small-scale production are emerging, already based on the relations of capitalist exploitation.
The development of the social division of labor also created the preconditions for the organization of large enterprises. The concentration of production in certain centers opened up the potential for organizing enterprises that produced significant quantities of goods. At the same time, production for a wide market, even with the dominance of handicraft techniques, gave larger enterprises some indisputable economic advantages over small handicraft enterprises. The owners of such enterprises had more money and opportunities for obtaining credit than small commodity producers, usually they used technical improvements to a greater extent and more quickly, had broader business connections and knew better the needs of the market, etc. the advantage that cooperation and division of labor bring. Particularly favorable conditions for the development of capitalism were formed in those cases when the growth of a broad social division of labor between various production centers was combined with a detailed division of labor in the production of certain industrial products, for example, in the wool weaving industry.
Initial accumulation
The onset of the first stage of capitalist development, its manufacturing period, is associated with major changes in the position of the masses, with the violent expropriation (in various forms) of direct producers, the result of which is the formation of reserves of hired labor, as well as with the process of accumulation of large capital within the state through the implementation of domestic loans, a ransom system for raising taxes and direct expropriation of the means of production from direct producers, and outside the country - by robbing, enslaving and destroying entire states and peoples newly discovered by Europeans.
“... The historical process, which turns producers into hired workers, appears, on the one hand, as their liberation from feudal duties and guild coercion; and only this one side exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other hand, those freed only then become sellers of themselves, when all their means of production and all the guarantees of existence provided by ancient feudal institutions have been taken away from them. And the history of this expropriation of them is inscribed in the annals of mankind with a flaming tongue of sword and fire. " K. Marx.
The development of capitalism was facilitated and accelerated by the use of direct and undisguised violence.
The result of this was, on the one hand, the ruin of a significant part of small producers - peasants and artisans, who lost their property and turned into destitute people deprived of the means of subsistence, and on the other hand, the accumulation of significant funds in the hands of representatives of the upper strata of the population. This plundering of the masses greatly accelerated the development of capitalism. The presence of a large number of people who did not have their own means of subsistence greatly facilitated the task of providing labor for the developing capitalist production. The concentration of large funds in the hands of a small group of individuals made the task of accumulating the amounts necessary for the organization and further development of enterprises of the capitalist type no less easier. Thus, the conditions necessary for the development of the capitalist mode of production were created. This whole process of violent ruin of the direct producers of feudal society was called by K. Marx the process of primitive accumulation, since it was "not the result of the capitalist mode of production, but its starting point."
The specific forms of initial accumulation were very different.
A classic example, taken from the history of England, Marx described in the 24th chapter of Volume I of Capital, devoted to primitive accumulation. This example is the so-called enclosures. In connection with the growth of industry, especially woolen, and with the growth of the urban population in England from the end of the 15th century, an urgent need for wool and other agricultural products began to be felt. English feudal lords decide to use this situation to increase their income. Until then, peasants lived in their possessions, leading their small labor economy and united in communities. The peasants paid the duties established by custom, which in the new conditions began to seem insufficient to the feudal lords. The latter begin, grossly violating the customs of feudal society consecrated by antiquity, to drive the peasants from the land. Land taken in this way was fenced off and established on large sheep farms, in which there were only a small number of shepherds in large areas, or large farms rented out on terms of payment of higher rent.
The result of the fencing was the appearance of a huge number of people deprived of any property. England XVI century. presents a terrible picture of popular disasters. Many thousands of ruined peasants turned into beggars and vagabonds. At the same time, the ruin of many artisans took place, who could not withstand the competition of the developing large-scale production.
A similar process of violent ruin of artisans and peasants took place in other Western European countries, developing there not so rapidly and taking other forms. In particular, a very large role in this process was played by a sharp increase in taxes, which also entailed the ruin of small producers. The peasants and artisans, ruined and turned into homeless people, represented a reservoir of cheap labor for the nascent capitalist production.
The other side of the process of initial accumulation is the formation of large private capital. This also affected non-European territories that fell under the rule of Western European states as a result of the great geographical discoveries. In the XVI-XVII centuries. there was a systematic plunder of a number of peoples of Asia, America and Africa, unprecedented until then in scale. As a result, huge sums of money accumulated in the hands of Western European feudal lords and merchants. These sums, pumped to the countries of Western Europe, were one of the main sources from which the funds were drawn, with the help of which the capitalist production of England, the Netherlands, France, etc. was created.
Analyzing the process of initial accumulation, Marx irrefutably proved that capitalism did not arise as a result of the hard work and energy of the most enterprising people who, as the apologists of capitalism argued, got rich through thrift and diligence and gradually turned into capitalists. In reality, the emergence of capitalism was by no means a peaceful and painless process. It was the result of the ruin and impoverishment of people who until then had run their small labor economy, and this ruin was carried out with the help of open and gross violence.
The birth of the wage labor class
The development of the system of wage labor was the basis of capitalist production. Therefore, the emergence of more or less significant cadres of wage workers, for its part, served as an essential factor in the emergence of this new mode of production. It is not only a matter of the quantitative distribution of wage labor. The working class that emerged during the disintegration of the feudal mode of production represented a huge new productive force. Simple capitalist cooperation and manufacture could not have arisen if the labor qualifications of small producers had not reached a high level, if they had not learned to use a relatively differentiated instrument. Expropriated small-scale producers often already possessed well-known production and technical skills. These trained predecessors of the industrial proletariat were an essential element of the new productive forces that were ripening in the bowels of feudal society.
The cadres of trained hired workers were largely drawn from both peasants previously associated with domestic industry and from artisan apprentices, as well as from ruined artisans.
The wage laborer was free in a double sense: free from feudal dependence, that is, from anyone's incomplete ownership of his person, and free from the means of production, that is, from all ownership of the instruments of labor. Consequently, the emergence of a class of wage workers is the destruction of two types of property that existed under feudalism. The fierce and long struggle of the peasants for liberation from feudal dependence played an important role in the elimination of the incomplete property of the feudal lords in production workers.
However, as soon as they found themselves under the rule of an entrepreneur-manufacturer, the workers had to start an even more fierce struggle with him. From the very first steps in the history of capitalist production, there have been class clashes between hired workers and capitalists. The nascent working class in the struggle defended minimally the necessary conditions life and work. One of the most striking examples of the class struggle of this period was the strike of the Lyons printers in 1539-1541. Strikes and unrest have taken place throughout the history of the manufacturing stage of capitalism.
The development of capitalism in industry. Manufactories
The organization of capitalist industry took place through the subordination of small enterprises to commercial and usurious capital, or through the transformation of a small producer into a capitalist. A merchant (or several merchants connected with each other) delivers raw materials to industrial centers and sells them to urban or village artisans.
The merchant buys finished products from artisans, organizes their transportation to the place of consumption and sale to consumers. If an artisan produces a semi-finished product, then the merchant buys it and delivers it to another artisan for further processing. For example, he buys yarn from a spinner and delivers it to a weaver. Having much more money than individual artisans earned from trade profits, the merchant usually provides the artisan, if necessary, and credit. At that time, the crediting of the artisan with raw materials was especially widespread, since the artisans, being in the conditions of fierce market competition, did not always have the cash necessary to acquire it.
This position of the small producer-artisan and merchant in the process of social production entailed the establishment of economic dependence of the former on the latter. The degree and specific forms of this dependence varied. At first, the artisan, while still retaining full ownership of his farm, began to buy raw materials from any one merchant, then he fell into debt dependence on the merchant, systematically receiving raw materials from him. At the same time, the artisan was usually obliged to deliver the products made by him to the same merchant at a certain price. In practice, this meant that the artisan received raw materials and made certain products from them for the merchant on the basis of a predetermined payment. This form of dependence of artisans on a buyer was most widespread in Western Europe in the 16th century.
Finally, the artisan was forced to borrow the tools of labor from the merchant or borrow money to purchase them.
This was the final stage of the whole process: in this case, the artisan was actually completely transformed into a hired worker who received wages from the buyer. A new form of production arose, in which the direct producer was actually expropriated, deprived of ownership of the means of production and was subjected to capitalist exploitation. This form of industrial production is called capitalist home industry. Thus, the lowest form of capitalist industry, that stage of its development, when it still retained the character of small-scale production in form, was work at home, a scattered manufacture.
This form of capitalist production receives in the XVI century. most widespread. It developed especially rapidly in the countryside, where there were no shop constraints. The artisans who stood out from the mass of the rural population in the new conditions of economic life usually no longer had the opportunity to become independent producers; as a rule, they immediately began to work for a merchant-buyer, who distributed raw materials to them and bought finished products, and sometimes providing instruments of labor, and thus actually turned into wage workers. Thus, whole areas of small-scale, but in their social essence, already capitalist production of woolen fabrics, linen fabrics, many types of metal products, etc., arose in the countryside.
Another process, when one of the artisans became a capitalist, led to the same result, but only more radically, with less preservation of the old economic forms. The wealthy artisan expands his workshop, then begins to economically subordinate other small producers to himself, acting as the organizer of manufactory production.
The next stage in the development of capitalist relations is a change in the production process itself, when the tendency inherent in capitalism to create large-scale production is clearly revealed. The capitalist-entrepreneur, who has emerged from among the merchants-buyers or the wealthy artisans, unites the artisans working for him into one production collective. The capitalist enterprises that emerged in this way were of two types - less developed enterprises based on simple cooperation, in which individual workers performed homogeneous work, and more developed ones, based already on the division of labor (while retaining manual craft techniques). Enterprises of this second type were centralized manufactories. It has already carried out the division of labor as a powerful means of increasing labor productivity, and individual workers specialize in performing certain production operations. Already in a scattered manufactory, individual workers, despite their spatial disunity, were tied by the division of labor - together under the leadership of an entrepreneur, they worked on the production of one product, receiving raw materials or semi-finished products from the entrepreneur and giving him the manufactured products. Occasionally, some of the stages in the manufacture of a product were transferred to a workshop, where wage laborers worked in the same room under the direction of an entrepreneur. Most often, in such workshops, the final operations for the production of this type of product were carried out, for example, the assembly of degals of watches produced by individual workers at home. This type of manufacture is mixed.
In a more developed manufacture - centralized - this element of fragmentation of production has already been completely eliminated. All the workers, or at least most of them, were gathered in one room and worked side by side under the guidance of the entrepreneur or his clerks.
Manufacturing was the leading form of capitalist production in the first period of development of capitalism - from the 16th century. up to the industrial revolution that took place in England in the second half of the 18th century, and in other Western European countries in the 19th century. This is especially true for a centralized manufacture. The unification of workers in one room made it possible to carry out a detailed division of labor between them and introduce numerous improvements in the technology of the production process and tools. In particular, of particular importance was the fact that, in connection with the widespread division of labor within the manufacture, further detailing of working tools is taking place, which paved the way for the subsequent development of machine technology during the industrial revolution.
In individual industries, the degree of development of capitalist production and its specific forms were different. From the point of view of these differences in the rates and forms of development of capitalism, different spheres of industrial production are distinguished, partially mutually overlapping.
The most intensive development of capitalism took place in those industries in which there was a significant increase in the complexity and rise in the cost of the means of production. These industries included the mining industry, metallurgy, some metalworking industries, and shipbuilding. This should also include some of the smaller industries in which mechanical engines or complex equipment were used - silk-winding production, papermaking, book printing, gunpowder production, etc.
In all these sectors, the destruction of the small-scale economy of the artisans-proprietors was the result not only of their involvement in the development of commodity production, but also the result of technical progress. New technology in these industries could no longer be used within the small farms of individual artisans. Therefore, comparatively larger capitalist enterprises had to develop here, which had the necessary number of workers and equipment that corresponded to the requirements of the new technology. The workers in these enterprises were armed with qualitatively new means of production, which included even primitive mechanical engines. The water wheel was especially widely used at that time. Therefore, a significant number of these enterprises - metallurgical, metalworking, etc. - were located in places convenient for the construction of dams along the banks of rivers and were called "mills". In English, the name "mill" (mill) to denote various industrial enterprises was retained for a very long time and partially survived to this day.
The size of these capitalist enterprises was in the overwhelming majority of cases very small. Only a few enterprises in mining, shipbuilding, partly metallurgy and metalworking (especially the production of weapons) had more than a hundred workers. However, in these enterprises, individual elements of the technology and organization of large-scale capitalist industry of the subsequent time are already clearly visible, since not only the division of labor was carried out in them, but also primitive engines and machines were used, although manual labor continued to play the main role in such manufactures.
Capitalism developed somewhat more slowly in another group of industries - in those industries that were drawn into production on the broad market, but still fully retained handicraft technology. This area of industrial production in the advanced Western European countries included the production of a very significant, probably even most of the woolen and silk fabrics produced at that time, high-quality linen fabrics, many metal products, expensive leather goods, most of the luxury goods, etc. all of these industries provided the bulk of industrial products to the broad market.
Glass blowers. Engraving from G. Agricola's book "On Metals" 1556
The capitalist production that was taking shape in these sectors was still based on handicraft techniques and therefore did not have those technical advantages over small handicraft production that large capitalist enterprises, for example, the mining or metallurgical industry, had. Therefore, the small-scale farming of artisans turned out to be much more stable here and more slowly gave way to large-scale capitalist production. The artisans became poorer, became dependent on commercial capital, and yet a very significant part of them did not go bankrupt, but continued to run an independent economy.
Particularly stable was the small-scale production of artisans in the old urban centers, in which a developed guild system prevailed. formed cities, in which the guilds and the traditions of guild production did not have such a solid foundation. So, for example, in Flanders in such previously famous centers of the wool-weaving industry as Bruges and Rent, in the 16th century. the old forms of industrial organization were retained. New forms of industry developed mainly in the countryside and in new cities.
Different in this group of industries were not only the rates of development of capitalist production, but also its specific forms. Since under the conditions of the dominance of handicraft techniques, large-scale production did not have significant technical and production advantages over small-scale, the capitalist industry that developed in these sectors still partly continued to retain the character of small-scale production, or it represented transitional forms from small-scale to large-scale production and only in some of its own. part has reached the stage at which large, centralized enterprises are already being built.
Capitalism developed most slowly in production designed for the local limited market. Here one of the main conditions for the development of capitalism was absent - commodity production based on a broad social division of labor. The bulk of artisans in this area of industrial production up to the industrial revolution, and partly after it retained the position of small producers-owners.
Development of capitalism in agriculture
In agriculture, capitalism in general developed much more slowly than in industry. land and the associated personal dependence of the peasants, which is still preserved in a number of European countries.
However, the development of capitalism in the XVI century. nevertheless, it affected the sphere of agricultural production. One of the prerequisites for the development of capitalism in agriculture was the differentiation of peasants. Partial involvement of peasants in commodity production usually entailed stratification in their environment. An insignificant part of the peasants, most adapting to the conditions of production on the market, grew rich, expanded their economy in one way or another and began to exploit hired labor - farm laborers from among the land-poor or completely ruined peasants. This is how small-scale capitalist agricultural production arose.
But such a process took place only in certain European countries, where conditions were especially favorable for it. These were the countries where there was an intensive involvement of the peasant economy in commodity production and where the peasants already in the XIV-XV centuries. achieved, to a greater or lesser extent, liberation from personal serfdom and the right to freely dispose of their economy, subject to the regular performance of duties in favor of the owner of the land - the feudal lord (England, the Netherlands, partly France). However, even in these countries the possibilities for the growth of the peasant economy under the conditions of the still-preserved feudal system were so limited that the comparatively larger peasant farms that took shape in this way were, with some exceptions, only semi-capitalist in nature. The number of hired laborers in each of them was negligible, and the rich peasant himself and his family members usually continued to participate in agricultural work.
Another way of developing capitalist production in agriculture was the degeneration, under the influence of new conditions of their own economy, of some feudal landowners and landowners from among the wealthy townspeople. The feudal lords expanded their own production of agricultural products to the market and replaced the unproductive labor of dependent peasants with the labor of hired workers. As a result, their feudal economy acquired the features of a capitalist type of economy. Among the feudal lords, a special stratum was formed - the so-called new nobility whose interests did not contradict capitalist development. This is especially the case in England.
Farms of the capitalist type that were formed in this way were already of larger sizes. It should be noted, however, that this process of development of capitalism did not receive in the West European countries of the 16th century. widespread. Only in one of these countries - in England, it took on a large scale and led to serious changes in the agrarian system.
In real historical reality, these paths of development of capitalism took various concrete forms and were often intertwined with each other. This was the case in England, where in the 16th century. the labor of agricultural workers was used on their farms by both nobles and farmers who rented land from landlords.
The degree of development of capitalism in Western Europe in the 16th century.
Development of the capitalist mode of production in Western Europe in the 16th century. did not lead to the rapid and complete displacement of pre-capitalist forms of economy. Capitalist production for a long time developed within the framework of feudal society, only partially displacing the forms of economy characteristic of this society, which for a long time continued to provide the bulk of social production. Capitalist production of the time under consideration was thus only a way of developing in the bowels of feudalism.
This situation is explained by the fact that at this time, with the exception of certain industries, manual craft technology still continued to dominate. In agriculture, small peasant farming continued to predominate, combined in some countries with large lordly farming based on the use of the free corvée labor of the peasants. The industry, working for the local limited market, was dominated by small-scale artisan production.
Moreover, such small handicraft production often continued to exist along with domestic capitalist industry and manufactory and in industries working for a wide market.It turned out to be especially persistent in those cases when artisans were engaged in agriculture in the form of subsidiary trades, which significantly strengthened their economic independence.
Capitalism was able to gain a complete victory in the field of production over pre-capitalist forms of economy only when the technical basis for large-scale industry was created, when the machine appeared. But this only happened during the industrial revolution.
Nevertheless, already in the 16th century, the development of capitalist production exerted a tremendous influence on the economic life of Western European countries. Although it provided a smaller part of all social production, it took possession of precisely the most important spheres of social production. The capitalist economy provided a significant part of all marketable products and, undoubtedly, most of the products that were produced for the wide market. In addition, it should be noted that it produced products that were extremely important for the economy and the entire social life of that time - products of the mining industry, many metal products, including the most complex and expensive tools and firearms, ships and various military equipment. , high quality woolen and linen fabrics, etc.
In order to fully appreciate the significance of the economic revolution that took place during the period under review, it is also necessary to take into account the fact that, simultaneously with the development of capitalist production, profound changes took place in specific forms of pre-capitalist economy, which quantitatively continued to prevail in the 16th century.
The progressive development of commodity production, which was the result of the deepening and expansion of the social division of labor, led to an increase in differentiation among artisans and to their ever greater subordination to commercial capital. The position of those artisans who still retained their small-scale labor economy, that is, did not undergo capitalist expropriation, became different than before. In the field of agriculture, we are witnessing various paths of development at this time. In countries where, under the influence of the development of commodity-money relations in previous centuries, there was a process of commutation (replacement of rent in kind with money), the elimination of lordly plowing, as well as the personal emancipation of peasants, these processes continued in the early period of the development of capitalism, being complicated in some places by complete or the partial expropriation of the peasantry. This was the case in England, France and some other countries. Where agriculture was drawn into the mass production of agricultural products mainly for the foreign market of capitalistically developing Western Europe, the feudal lords expanded their own lordly farms, increased corvee and increased the serfdom of the peasants.
The degree of development of capitalism in different countries of Western Europe was different. In the XVI century. almost all the countries of Western Europe were involved in the development of the capitalist mode of production to one degree or another and in one form or another. In many of them, more or less developed forms of capitalist production were already taking shape in certain industries - in mining, weapons production, shipbuilding and some other industries. However, on a broader scale, the development of capitalism was extremely uneven. This depended on the specific conditions prevailing in different countries. The country that in the XIV-XV centuries. went ahead of other countries and where already in the indicated centuries the elements of capitalism were born, that is, Italy in the 16th century. finally loses its leading position; a period of decline ensues in it, during which the capitalist production that had developed earlier is withering and growing. On a large scale at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th, the development of capitalist relations took place in Germany, England, the Netherlands, France, and Spain. In the middle of the 16th century, the backwardness of Germany and Spain clearly begins to appear, and three of the five named countries, England, the Netherlands and France, are in first place in terms of the intensity of the development of capitalism.
The growth of capitalism, together with the changes just indicated in the sphere of pre-capitalist forms of economy, created favorable conditions for the development of productive forces and led to profound changes in the entire social life of Western European feudal countries of the 16th century.
The manufacture is making fundamental changes in the position of direct producers. These changes are expressed not only in the fact that the formerly independent artisan obeys the command and discipline of capital, but also in the fact that the division of labor characteristic of the new mode of production “turns the worker into a freak, artificially cultivating in him only one-sided skill and suppressing his whole world. production inclinations and talents ”(K. Marx). Already a scattered manufactory is almost always characterized by the involvement of women and children in production from a very early age. The individual worker, turned into a mechanical instrument of one partial operation, can use his labor force only in connection with others, but this connection is carried out by the capitalist, who owns the entire mechanism of production and uses this role to intensify the exploitation of workers' labor. “One of the most harmful aspects of capitalist work at home,” writes V. I Lenin, “is that it leads to a decrease in the level of the worker's needs. The entrepreneur gets the opportunity to choose his workers in such provinces, where the living standard of the population is especially low and where the connection with the land allows you to work for nothing. "
Manufacturing workers are already beginning to form into the class of the proletariat exploited by capital. However, manufacture cannot encompass social production in its entirety. Urban handicrafts and rural subsidiary trades remain a wide base for the manufacture. The manufacturing period is characterized by a constant increase in the mass of the urban plebs, on the one hand, due to the ruin of artisans, and on the other, due to the influx of landless and impoverished peasants into the cities and the growth in the cities of the number of beggars, day laborers and generally declassed elements living on odd jobs. From this stratum of the plebs, standing outside the guilds and outside the estate-feudal structure, a pre-proletariat was formed in medieval cities.
The development of capitalist relations in Western Europe was accelerated by an event of great historical importance - the great geographical discoveries and the subsequent conquests and conquests by Western European states in Africa, Asia and America.
Capitalism is only one of the socio-economic formations that have existed in the world. The history of its formation is associated with such phenomena as colonial expansion and exploitation of workers, for whom the 80-hour work week became the norm. T&P publishes an excerpt from Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang, How Does the Economy Work? , which was recently published by the publishing house "MYTH".
The economy of Western Europe is indeed
grew slowly ...
Capitalism originates in Western Europe, in particular in Great Britain and the Benelux countries (which today include Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), in the 16th-17th centuries. Why it originated there, and not, say, in China or India, which at that time were comparable to Western Europe in terms of economic development, is a subject of intensive and lengthy discussions. Everything has been offered as an explanation, from the contempt of the Chinese elite for practical pursuits (such as trade and industry), to the map of the UK's coal deposits and the discovery of America. Let's not dwell on this discussion for a long time. Let's take it for granted that capitalism began to develop in Western Europe.
Before its appearance, Western European societies, like all others in the pre-capitalist era, changed very slowly. Humans were largely organized around agriculture, which used virtually the same technology for centuries with a limited degree of commerce and handicraft production.
Between the 10th and 15th centuries, that is, during the Middle Ages, per capita income increased by 0.12 percent per year. Consequently, incomes in 1500 were only 82 percent higher than in 1000. By comparison, this is the amount that China, with its 11 percent annual growth rate, achieved in six years between 2002 and 2008. It follows that from the point of view of material progress, one year in China today is equivalent to 83 years in medieval Western Europe (during this time, three people could be born and die - in the Middle Ages, the average life expectancy was only 24 years).
 ... but still faster than the economy
any other country in the world
Notwithstanding the above, economic growth in Western Europe was still well ahead of that in Asia and Eastern Europe (including Russia), which were estimated to have grown three times slower (0.04 percent). This means that over 500 years, the income of the local population has increased by only 22 percent. If Western Europe moved like a turtle, then other countries looked more like snails.
Capitalism appeared "in slow motion"
Capitalism appeared in the 16th century. But its spread was so slow that it is impossible to pinpoint the exact date of his birth. Between 1500 and 1820, the growth rate of per capita income in Western Europe was still 0.14 percent — essentially the same as in the Middle Ages (0.12 percent). In the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, growth accelerated in the late 18th century, especially in the cotton and ferrous metals sectors. As a result, from 1500 to 1820, Great Britain and the Netherlands achieved economic growth rates per capita of 0.27 and 0.28 percent, respectively. Although these figures are very small by modern standards, they were twice the average Western European figure. This led to a number of changes.
Colonial expansion begins
From the beginning of the 15th century, the countries of Western Europe began to expand rapidly. Called for the sake of decency the era of the great geographical discoveries, this expansion included the expropriation of land and resources and the enslavement of the indigenous population through the establishment of a colonial regime.
Beginning with Portugal in Asia, and Spain in the Americas, from the end of the 15th century, Western European peoples began to ruthlessly conquer new lands. By the middle of the 18th century, North America was divided between England, France and Spain. Most of the countries of South America were ruled by Spain and Portugal until the 1810s and 1820s. Parts of India were ruled by the British (mainly Bengal and Bihar), the French (the southeast coast) and the Portuguese (various coastal regions, in particular Goa). Around this time, the settlement of Australia begins (the first correctional colony appeared there in 1788). Africa at that time was not "mastered" so well, there were only small settlements of the Portuguese (previously uninhabited islands of Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe) and the Dutch (Cape Town, founded in the 17th century).
Francis Hayman. Robert Clive meets Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plessis. 1757
Colonialism was based on capitalist principles. It is symbolic that until 1858 British rule in India was exercised by a corporation (East India Company) and not by the government. These colonies brought new resources to Europe. Initially, the expansion was motivated by the search for precious metals for use as money (gold and silver), as well as spices (especially black pepper). Over time, plantations were created in the new colonies - especially in the United States, Brazil and the Caribbean - where slave labor, mostly exported from Africa, was used. Plantations were established to grow and supply new crops to Europe such as cane sugar, rubber, cotton and tobacco. It is impossible to imagine a time when there were no traditional chips in Britain, tomatoes and polenta (made from corn) in Italy, and chili in India, Thailand and Korea.
Colonialism leaves deep scars
For years, there has been debate over whether capitalism would have developed in the 16th and 18th centuries without colonial resources: precious metals used as money, new foodstuffs such as potatoes and sugar, and raw materials for industrial production such as cotton. While there is no doubt that the colonialists benefited greatly from their sale, it is likely that capitalism would have developed in European countries without them. At the same time, colonialism undoubtedly ruined colonized societies.
The indigenous population was exterminated or brought to the brink of extinction, and its land with all its resources was taken away. The marginalization of local peoples has been so deep that Evo Morales, the current president of Bolivia, elected in 2006, is only the second head of state on the American continent - a native of the indigenous population, who came to power since the Europeans arrived there in 1492 (the first was Benito Juarez, President of Mexico 1858-1872).
Many Africans - an estimated 12 million - were taken into slavery and taken to Europe and Arab countries. This not only became a tragedy for those who lost their freedom (even if they did manage to survive the difficult journey), but also drained many African societies and destroyed their social fabric. The territories acquired arbitrary borders - this fact affects the domestic and international policy of a number of countries to this day. The fact that so many interstate borders in Africa are in a straight line is a clear confirmation of this, since natural boundaries are never straight, they usually run along rivers, mountain ranges and other geographical features.
Colonialism often implied the deliberate cessation of existing production activities in economically developed regions. For example, in 1700, Great Britain banned the import of Indian calico (we mentioned this in Chapter 2) in order to promote its own production, thus it dealt a heavy blow to the Indian cotton industry. This industry was completely destroyed in the middle of the 19th century by the flow of imported fabrics, at that time already produced in Britain. mechanized way... As a colony, India could not apply tariffs or other policies to protect its producers from British imports. In 1835 Lord Bentinck, Governor-General of the East India Company, uttered the famous phrase: "The plains of India are white with the bones of weavers."
Start of the industrial revolution
Capitalism did take off around 1820 throughout Western Europe and later in the European colonies in North America and Oceania. The acceleration of economic growth was so sharp that the next half century after 1820 was called the industrial revolution. Over these fifty years, per capita income in Western Europe has grown by 1 percent, which is very small by modern standards (in Japan, there was such an increase in income during the so-called lost decade of the 1990s), and compared with a growth rate of 0, The 14 percent seen between 1500 and 1820 was real turbojet acceleration.
80-hour workweek: the suffering of some
people only got stronger
However, this acceleration in per capita income growth was initially accompanied by a decline in living standards for many. Many people whose skills were outdated - for example, textile artisans - lost their jobs because they were replaced by machines operated by cheaper unskilled workers, among whom were many children. Some cars were even designed for the height of the child. People who were hired in factories or in small workshops supplying raw materials for them worked very hard: 70-80 hours a week was considered the norm, someone worked more than 100 hours a week, and usually only half a day on Sunday was allocated for rest.
The working conditions were extremely dangerous. Many British cotton workers died of lung disease due to the dust generated during the manufacturing process. The urban working class lived very cramped, sometimes with 15–20 people huddled in a room. It was considered quite normal for hundreds of people to use one toilet. People died like flies. In poor areas of Manchester, life expectancy was 17 years, which is 30 percent less than in the whole of Great Britain before the Norman conquest in 1066 (then life expectancy was 24 years).
The Free Market and Free Trade Myth:
how capitalism actually developed
The development of capitalism in the countries of Western Europe and their colonies in the 19th century is often associated with the spread of free trade and the free market. It is generally accepted that the governments of these states did not tax or restrict international trade (called free trade) and did not interfere with the functioning of the market (free market) at all. This state of affairs led to the fact that these countries were able to develop capitalism. It is also generally accepted that the United Kingdom and the United States were in the lead among other states, because they were the first to adopt the free market and free trade.
Free trade spreads mainly through non-freedom means
While free trade was not the cause of the rise of capitalism, it did spread throughout the 19th century. In part, it manifested itself in the very heart of the capitalist world of the 1860s, when the UK adopted this principle and signed bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs), in which both sides lifted import restrictions and export customs duties for each other, with a number of states. Western Europe. However, it spread most strongly on the periphery of capitalism - in the countries of Latin America and Asia, moreover, as a result of what usually no one associates with the word "free" - the use of force, or at least the threat of its use.
Colonization was the most obvious route for the spread of "unfree free trade", but even those many countries lucky enough not to become colonies had to accept it too. By means of "gunboat diplomacy" they were forced to sign unequal treaties that deprived them, among other things, of tariff autonomy (the right to set their own tariffs). They were allowed to use only a low flat rate (3-5 percent) - enough to boost some government revenues, but too low to protect fragile industries. The most shameful of such facts is the Nanking Treaty, which China had to sign in 1842 after the defeat in the First Opium War. But unequal treaties also began to be signed with Latin American countries until they gained independence in the 1810s and 1820s. Between 1820 and 1850, a number of other states were also forced to sign similar treaties: the Ottoman Empire (the predecessor of Turkey), Persia (today's Iran), Siam (today's Thailand) and even Japan. The unequal Latin American treaties expired in the 1870s and 1880s, while treaties with Asian countries were in effect in the 20th century.
This statement is too far from the truth. The government played a leading role in the initial stage of the development of capitalism both in Great Britain and in the United States and other countries of Western Europe.
The inability to defend and defend their young industries, whether as a result of direct colonial rule or unequal treaties, significantly contributed to the economic regression of the countries of Asia and Latin America during that period: there was a negative growth in per capita income (at a rate of -0.1 and - 0.04 percent per year, respectively).
Capitalism Shifts to a Higher Gear: The Beginning of Mass Production
The development of capitalism began to accelerate around 1870. Between 1860 and 1910, clusters of new technological innovations appeared, as a result of which the so-called heavy and chemical industries began to rise: the production of electrical equipment, internal combustion engines, synthetic dyes, artificial fertilizers and other products. Unlike the technologies of the industrial revolution, invented by practical men with good intuition, new technologies were developed through the systematic application of scientific and engineering principles. Thus, any invention could be reproduced and improved very quickly.
In addition, the organization of the production process in many industries has gone through a revolution thanks to the invention of the mass production system. With the introduction of a moving assembly line (belt conveyor) and interchangeable parts, costs have dropped dramatically. In our time, this is the main (almost universally used) system, despite the frequent statements about its death, sounding since 1908.
New economic institutions have emerged to manage the growing scale of production
At its peak, capitalism acquired the basic institutional structure that still exists today; it includes limited liability companies, bankruptcy law, central bank, social security system, labor law, and more. These institutional shifts were mainly due to changes in basic technologies and policies.
Due to the growing need for large-scale investments, the principle of limited liability, which was previously only applied in privileged companies, has become widespread. Consequently, it could now be used by any company meeting certain minimum conditions. With access to an unprecedented scale of investment, limited liability companies have become the most powerful vehicle for the development of capitalism. Karl Marx, who recognized their enormous potential before any ardent supporter of capitalism, called them "capitalist production at its highest development."
Before the British reform of 1849, the essence of the bankruptcy law was to punish an insolvent businessman in the worst case with a debt prison. New laws introduced in the second half of the 19th century gave failed entrepreneurs a second chance by preventing creditors from paying interest during the reorganization of their businesses (according to Chapter 11 Federal law bankruptcy of the United States, introduced in 1898) and forcing the latter to write off part of the debts. Now doing business has become less risky.
The rhodes colossusStriding from Cape Town to Cairo, 1892
As companies grew in size, banks also began to grow. At that time, there was a danger that the bankruptcy of one bank could destabilize the entire financial system, so to combat this problem, central banks were created as lenders of last resort - and the Bank of England became the first in 1844.
Due to widespread socialist agitation and increased pressure on the government by reformists regarding the position of the working class, a number of social security and labor laws were introduced since the 1870s: accident insurance, health insurance, old-age pensions and insurance for case of unemployment. Many countries have banned the work of young children (usually between the ages of 10 and 12) and limited the number of hours worked for older children (initially only 12 hours). New laws also regulated working conditions and hours for women. Unfortunately, this was not done out of knightly motives, but because of an arrogant attitude towards the weaker sex. It was believed that, unlike men, women lacked mental abilities, so they could sign an employment contract that was unfavorable for them - in other words, women needed to be protected from themselves. These social security and labor laws have smoothed out the rough edges of capitalism and made the lives of many poor people better - albeit just a little at first.
Institutional changes have contributed to economic growth... Limited liability companies and debtor-loyal bankruptcy laws have reduced business risk, thereby encouraging wealth creation. The central bank on the one hand, and the social security and labor laws on the other, also fostered growth by increasing economic and political stability, respectively, which allowed for increased investment and, therefore, accelerated further economic recovery. The growth rate of per capita income in Western Europe increased from 1 percent per year during the peak of 1820-1870 to 1.3 percent during 1870-1913.