claudio katz, from feudalism to capitalism

(85-86): distinction between early and late Marx on questions of merchants and transition to capitalism.

(88): here begins his reconstruction of the classic account. worthwhile.

(90-91, and 103): question--"artillery, ocean navigation and printing" were all innovations of the late medieval epoch. how do you fit this sort of dynamism into Brenner's "rules of reproduction"? presumably you can have technological innovation that doesn't imply a move toward capitalism--but the question is still what, exactly, is the incentive structure driving this. the crux of the Brennerian response, I think, would consist in arguing that there's no competition; but what if the feudal lords are unhappy with the goods being produced? if they're ineffective?

(96): in sum

(97-98): merchant incentive structure, laws of motion that impel them

(100 and 104): question, related to putting-out system--didn't this represent an advance, in terms of a classical definition of capitalism, over previous methods of production? or is this not germane?

(100): key point--merchant 'capitalism' flourishes outside prevailing mode of production--doesn't have any relationship to the method of production, only worries about circulation. capitalism must unite production and circulation. therefore it flourishes in precapitalism.

(101): question, how do you make sense of the acknowledged development of productive forces to which merchants contributed?

(102): feudal lords pitted against merchants as an intraclass rivalry over the surplus claimed from basic producers? but isn't there something else going on here? the question of the political revolution, for example?

(103, and 114, and 116): a parallel between merchants and capitalists, and lords and serfs--well, clear question is how we relate this class struggle to the rural class struggle. because, as explicated by Katz, the urban one seems more or less autonomous (until he concludes the opposite, without evidence, in the conclusion)

(104): merchants not interested in productive investments

(107): there is a question, here, regarding crises in general--in feudalism represent a 'contraction', rather than a breakthrough of the productive forces

(107): status of absolutism -- how do we think of this, if not like Anderson did? what is the place of the absolutist state in the larger narrative? if not as a transitional form, then what? another precapitalist form?

(108): distinction between 1300s and 1600s

(110): merchants make a feudal response to the crisis of the 1600s