Capitalism and its agents/apologists propose that it is ahistorical, that it is the end-point of history, both post-history and the 'meaning' of history, that there is no alternative.
that is exactly what you are doing. deifying capitalism as some evil alien force which invented itself out of nothing, divorced from the social realities which lead up to, gave rise to it, made it possible.
THAT, my dear waffle, is a-historical.
No. It is alien to them, busy wiping then out. Successfully.
wiping out other systems is the effect of the virus, its modus operandi; not its precondition of being.
of course capitalism EVOLVED out of, and was only possible with the existence of a set of historical conditions. feudalism and agriculture based economy gave way to big industry, and with technological "advancement" came the necessity of a new organizing principle with which to control the workers, a new mechanism that would regulate the flow of production.
Not really. Because night chronologically follows day, it is 'caused' by day?
not an apt metaphor. a better one is when moisture in clouds reach a certain density, rain occurs.
Your concept of history is ahistorical, that it is pre-determined, and not contingent.
no, i do not believe in pre-destiny. but i do believe in causality.
i know where you are coming from:
The principal instrument used to undermine the old rural communities was land enclosure. By this means common land, to which common rights had become attached by ancient custom allowing even the poorest to have access, was now expropriated into large estates and private hands. Enclosures actually began in the reign of Henry VII at the end of the 15th century. The number of enclosures increased rapidly after the Reformation in the 16th century with the breaking up of the monasteries and the land rights associated with them. But in our period a new systematic approach to enclosure began to develop with the power of the state behind it.
but this is predicated on an evolution of the means of production, and more importantly, the pre-existence of a deeply divided class structure in which the powerful few subjugated the majority of farmers/workers.
The process by which the soil was transformed into capital became more and more intensive. The agricultural revolution of the earlier part of the 18th century had massively increased food production by the systematic application of more scientific farming principles such as crop rotation, liming and manuring of the soil, and selective breeding, and had provided the basis for an increasing population. ... The confidence of the new 'progressives' was secured by a new world view which abhorred the untidiness of the natural landscape and which worshipped above all order, system and symmetry - the celebration of nature found in Wordsworth and Constable came as a later reaction against these rationalists.
The optimism of the age, however, meant absolutely nothing to the labourer. For the mass of the rural population the enclosures were devastating. Whole regions became depopulated. Small farmers now became day labourers and hirelings. Some emigrated to America. Many joined the bands of the destitute who roamed the agricultural districts. Finally they were drawn with a terrible inevitability into the black holes of the growing industrial ghettos.
The ruling class regarded the whole scene with delight. To them the small landholders had been unproductive and wasteful. They sermonised about the fecklessness of the poor and celebrated their plunder with visions of their own advancement and human progress. In fact the ruling class, despite their ideological pretensions, were clear about the benefits of this shift both for the new capitalism they were inaugurating and for their own interests within it. One Mr Bishton wrote the following: 'The use of common land operates upon the mind as a sort of independence.' When the commons are enclosed 'the labourers will work every day in the year, their children will be put out to labour early' and 'that subordination of the lower ranks which in the present times is so much wanted, would be thereby considerably secured'.
"We make history, but not in circumstances of our choosing."
EXACTLY. our choices are limited to the realities we face, are born into.
power, which is to say power over others, already existed for thousands of years prior to capitalism. and only with this given, this precondition, was capitalism, admittedly a radical shift, possible.
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