Re: [Marxism] Hillel Ticktin on the theory of decline and capital

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Comments?
>
> <http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/595/ticktin.htm>

Hillel Ticktin: We only know in historical detail of two transitions and 
hence of periods of decline - to feudalism and to capitalism. The absence 
of a transition in China, in the case of the Asiatic mode of production, is 
itself very interesting, but that is another discussion.

Comment: Isn?t Ticktin aware that the ?Asiatic mode of production? is a 
discredited idea?

HT: The mature form of feudalism exists from roughly 700AD to 1100AD - the 
crusades mark the watershed between maturity and decline. Capitalism was 
coming into being.

Comment: Egads! The clock keeps getting turned back. I thought that Brenner 
was wrong to date the origins of capitalism in the 14th century. Now it 
seems that it began in the 12th century. You learn something new everyday.

HT: At the same time, we have the rise of the bourgeoisie - first and 
foremost in Italy, where mass production of clothes and textiles is first 
encountered. They in turn trade with the world, inter-relating with the 
east, particularly India and China. We have to note that in both decline 
and transition the process is international. It never takes the form which 
Maurice Dobb wants to assign to it: that the emergence of the skilled 
worker into a capitalist is the basis of the emergence of capitalism. This 
is simply wrong in its categorisation. The whole process of a system in 
decline, transition and emergence is international.

Comment: Huh? Dobb doesn?t write about skilled workers evolving into a 
bourgeoisie. He is quite emphatic that capitalism originated in the 
countryside with the enclosure acts, etc. I do believe, however, that A.L. 
Morton does make this argument.

HT: Whereas Dobb and other Stalinists saw the issue as a transition within 
one country, Brenner and his followers, like Ellen Meiskins Wood, see it as 
an international class struggle. It is clear that the class struggle does 
play a pivotal role in any change in the mode of production, but it cannot 
do so on an arbitrary basis or without the necessary change in the mode of 
production.

Comment: That?s not the way I read Brenner and Wood at all. They don?t 
write in terms of the international class struggle­whatever that means­but 
agree with Dobb that capitalism developed in the British countryside and 
then was exported all over the world, like wool sweaters or something.


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