Re: RE: Rethinking the transition from feudalism questi on

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine:
>>It should be mentioned that Brenner (a common target of Louis' ire)
doesn't "belittle the achievements of the past and to assume in a
patronizing way that medieval people were primitive and ignorant..."
Rather, he assumes that people were basically "economically rational"
and that it was the feudal mode of exploitation that was
irrational.<<

I don't have "ire" toward Brenner or Wood. My efforts have been
directed at showing their unfamiliarity with Spanish colonialism and
their inability to adequately explain the contours of African
capitalism, which took shape outside the framework of market
relations, a sine qua non for Brenner and Wood. My latest article is
at: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/economics under the title
"Testing the Brenner Thesis Against Colonial Spain and Modern South
Africa".

Jim Devine:
>>The fact that "the yield of corn in the fifteenth century ... had
fallen since the thirteenth century" is not used to imply "that the
people who grew the crops were stupid and lazy." Rather, the problem
was that feudal social relations of production weren't very good at
producing a surplus for the feudalists, i.e., at dealing with the
widely-recognized Ricardian problem of diminishing returns in
agriculture. (Capitalism seems to be able to deal with this problem,
but we're now discovering the environmental and health impact...)<<

I am not sure that the book under question can be refuted by simply
referring to "widely recognized" Ricardian problems. I posted from
its introduction in order to alert people that new scholarship is
being produced all the time that tends to undermine the Brenner
thesis. As we all know, Ellen Meiksins Wood has no scholarly
ambitions in this arena, but simply hopes to win people over to the
Brenner thesis through introductory essays and books meant for the
general radical public. Brenner himself has gone on to other
pursuits, as we know. I call people attention to Dyer's book in the
same way I drew attention to Pomeranz's "The Great Divergence" when
it came out. Brenner and Wood might be satisfied recirculating old
arguments and data, but other scholars are discovering fascinating
new data. We must engage with this or risk a kind of talmudic
disputation over holy texts, whether Dobb and Brenner on one side, or
Sweezy and Wallerstein on the other.

Jim Devine:
>>I believe that Brenner would agree with this: one of the problems
he points to with feudalism is that the serfs and other underlings
had control over their own tools, so that the feudalists had a hard
time getting them to produce. Also, Bloch's magisterial book on
feudalism emphasizes the decentralized nature of the system, so that
the bit about people being able to take initiatives is quite logical.
No-one has described the feudal period as being "totalitarian."
(Methinks that this author, like so many others, is over-emphasizing
the novelty of his book in order to drum up sales.) BTW, the author's
definitions are also pretty standard.<<

You make Dyer's book sound like a polemic. Nothing could be further
from the truth. Except for a passing reference to Brenner in the
introduction, it is mainly a scholarly attempt to illustrate economic
and class relations in the feudal era using new archival records.
Rather than focusing on the countryside as the Dobb-Brenner current
does, he shows what was going on in the towns. Remember that Sweezy
relied heavily on Pirenne's scholarship to answer Dobb. Obviously, if
all we had at our disposal were these dated works, we'd be at a big
disadvantage. Dyer's scholarship is meant to bring us up to date.
Here is a small excerpt to show you the sort of thing he is involved
with:

Merchants contributed much to the economy of towns, and took their
rewards in consequence. They traded over long distances both in
expensive luxury goods, and in cheaper commodities in bulk. Without
their management of the higher levels of the trading system, the
larger towns in which they were based could not have existed, but
they also had great influence on small towns and country markets, in
which the commodities they handled were bought and sold. Merchants
reduced risks by diversifying their activities, including the
purchase of land, moneylending and holding office. They were the
richest people in the towns, played a major role in municipal
politics, and advised the royal government.

The wealthiest and most ambitious merchants had wide horizons. The
twelfth and thirteenth centuries had been a period of globalization,
in the sense that Europe's contacts with Asia grew in importance.
This was not so much because of crusading and the establishment of a
western Christian colony in Palestine, as through the growth of trade
with the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea in spices, silks,
cotton and other goods, which was mainly handled by Italian and
Spanish traders. The Italians led the world in the business methods
by which they raised capital in partnerships and companies, and then
arranged profitable ventures in distant cities through their factors.
The merchants of London and the other towns in Britain contributed to
this trade mainly by acting as distributors of the luxuries, enabling
rich consumers to indulge in a sophisticated Mediterranean culture.
Even in the commerce of northern Europe, English and Scottish
merchants took second place to those from Flanders, Brabant and
France, with the Italians and the Germans rising in prominence
towards the end of the thirteenth century. Nonetheless, native
merchants still traded overseas, like Robert of London, who bought
pepper worth £183 at Genoa in 1186, and exporters of wool like
Lawrence of Ludlow from Shropshire, who went down with his ship
in the North Sea in 12.94 while taking a cargo to Holland. The
English participated in this embryonic globalization when in the
twelfth century they developed trade links with Spain, where
merchants found an outlet for English woollen cloth, and brought back
spices, gold and fine leather. Good-quality shoes were made from
Spanish goatskins from Cordoba (cordwain), which gave English
shoemakers, even if they worked mainly in locally produced leather,
the distinctive occupational name of cordwainers.

When archaeologists excavated a rubbish pit in Southampton, in Cuckoo
Lane near the quay, they found a seal bearing the name of Richard of
Southwick, a merchant active in the 1270s and 1280s, who lived in a
stone house nearby. The pit contained rubbish from South-wick's
house, revealing his international contacts. He had business links
with a merchant from Normandy called Bernard de Vire, whose seal was
found, and he had bought decorated jugs from south-west France and
lustreware from Spain, together with more valuable but perishable
goods such as wine. The sheath for his dagger was made from Spanish
leather, and he ate imported figs and grapes as well as local fruits.
The pit also contained the skeleton of a small African monkey,
brought to Southampton by a sailor from the Mediterranean and
presumably kept by Southwick as an exotic pet.