robert brenner, property and progress

(58): nice definition of s-p relations: "relations among direct producers, relations among exploiters, and relations between exploiters and direct producers that, taken together, make possible/specify the regular access of individuals and families to the means of production and/or the social product"

(59): evolution of a society of a given type versus transition from a society of one type to another are qualitatively different phenomenon. this is the 'closed rules of reproduction' point.

(61): the key condition is that people be subject to the competitive constraint. this is only the case if people are dependent upon the market. being involved in the market is insufficient.

(62): pre-capitalist MoP as a 'single broad type' of social-property relations

(65): ruling classes needed to organize to extract surplus (organized force). this typically required endowing subordinates with politically constituted private property, or 'rights to an income' derived from peasant wealth

(67): Smith's fatal flaw is to fail to think about the potential 'losses' incurred by new participants on a market. he sees only gains.

(70): the key pt re: Lordly rules of reproduction is not that they don't have the incentive to increase their product, but that they don't have the capacity to innovate/specialize in pursuit of that goal (there's no workforce compelled to work for them, the costs of constructing one/supervising it are prohibitive) . they can pursue extensive growth.

(76): towns, for Brenner, weren't external to feudalism -- but politically constituted communities that also shielded producers from the market [this is the source of their political conservatism, in the revolutions. cue the revisionist challenge to the Marxist orthodoxy].

(85): re: the transition, Brenner's argument doesn't allow for the accretion of micro-level intiativies/action. Smith, he's saying, doesn't understand the constraints imposed by feudal s-p relations

(86): market can consolidate a feudal mode of production (as it did E. of the Elbe)

(92-93): absolutist State as a result of the seigneurial reveneue crisis of the late 1200s (in Fr. and W. Germany, at least), because lords were to weak to stand up to monarchs. absolutist State didn't mind free peasantry (sometimes), as long as it could guarantee centralized taxes [hmm]

(96-98): in aftermath of Black Death in England English lords didn't construct a tax office State, in response, but to use their political organization (and the monarchical State) to seize ownership [here the story could be clearer; in particular the contrast with France and W. Germany]