lecture four, development

the agrarian question

development attends to social formations with a large peasantry—so the 'agrarian question' is essential to the problems of this course, naturally.

one and a half debates on the peasantry that have really mattered

the first generation – from the first decade of the 20^th century to the middle of the 20^th century. trying to deal with the question of what would happen to the peasantry as capiatalism spread. one answer was given by England—by the time that this debate was happening, England was far and away an urban country.

so people trying to understand the fate of the peasantry, looking at England, would expect more or less steady extinction. yet what they found, looking at continental Europe and elsewhere, was different – much slower extinction, if any

(1) economic: what explains the ability of the peasantry to persist, in the face of competition?

(2) political: what should socialists do? Sdem parties rooted in the working-class were concerned about what to do, when the bulk of the population was not w-class. peasants demanding strengthening of individual property, while w-class wanted socialization.

one easy answer was that history will solve this for us. if we wait long enough, the peasantry will disappear. the difficulty, though, again was that this wasn't happening fast enough.

what will happen to the peasantry? if they're not disappearing, why?

this was Kautsky's question.

when Kautsky started this book, he had wanted to show that the peasantry was doomed to extinction. but what he found was that there are actually mechanisms in place that allow the peasantry to exist, however precariously.

the sources of persistence are of two basic kinds: (1) peasants, when faced with more competitive producers, have one advantage—they aren't motivated to produce at the going rate of profit. for peasants the object of production is survival. they'll accept returns on their labour that are far beneath average – peasants will exploit themselves as is necessary. capitalists, however, will only produce at an average or above-average rate of return; they will withdraw at profits lower than this; (2) insofar as peasants are able to hold on to their plots of land, they end up being quite functional – (a) for employers in rural areas, the persistence of the peasantry promises cheap labour (costs of reproduction lowered by tiny plots of land); (b) insofar as they're willing to exploit themselves, they lower the cost of food, benefiting urban employers.

Kautsky and Lenin both recognized that the entrance of capital doesn't result in them following the same path that England did. capitalism can hold in place and accentuate the non-transformation of social relations in agriculture: agribusiness living in harmony with smallholders/small peasants.

the net result of this is not an equilibrium, even-based economic development; but accentuated unevenness.

this then brings up the next question. what do you do about this?

the traditional answer has been land reform. takes care of underemployment, produces income for peasants, and perhaps produces more efficiency (compared to larger landholdings). this last point is dubious (and the others depend on the nature of the land reform, no doubt).

let's talk about the inverse relationship of farm size-productivity.

Lenin versus 'populists' is rehashed, here. Lenin's response was land vs. labour productivity. and the basic point is the same, here.

in other words, giving land to peasants is fine for urban elites, of course. but it's terrible for peasants, welfare-wise.

exceedingly difficult to make judgments of relative efficiency of investments. when you do measure them, the relationship is a tenuous one.

- - -

not that it's not capitalism, but that it's a very backward form of agrarian capitalism.

industrial transitions of late developers are very different, but agrarian transitions are even more different. these 'odd' forms generate endogenous obstacles, political and economic.

an end-run around the problem of the agrarian question through State-based cooperatives, etc.

GR allowed them to boost agricultural productivity without changing property structures.

Kautsky writing in the context of the influx of cheap grain, destroying peasantry; since the 1970s and liberalization, we're living in a parallel phase of rapid agricultural transition.

Patnaik's proposal that the internal market be treated as the 'export market,' which presupposes that you boost internal demand through boosting peasant incomes.

- - - -

in sum: Late developers find themselves in a situation where the market isn't helping: agrarian underdevelopment as capital comes in, and foreign endowments lock you into cumulative disadvantages. This is where the State is supposed to come in.

lecture three, development

we've looked at internal constraints – issue of internal constraint, and the barrier it poses.

the way around it was some kind of intervention, State-led. two kinds of transitions: (1) to a modern form of agriculture; (2) away from agriculture, towards industry

now we turn to a second issue – external constraint.

here, Ricardian trade theory has had hegemony. for Ricardian trade theory, the long and short of it is that there are no obstacles. trade is good, regardless of where you find yourself. the implication is that there's no systematic disadvantage to specializing in one field, over another.

naturally, this has led to prescriptions that have recommended the free flow of capital and goods—no barriers to finance, or commodities. the appropriate trade policy is a free trade policy.

Ha-Joon Chang's book is, of course, very clear that there has never been a late developer that has succeeded by following free trade. free trade policies were imposed on colonies, of course—but their subsequent course is not great evidence for the orthodoxy, to say the least.

O'Rourke (like Bairoch before him) observes this, empirically.

for economics this is a 'paradox,' because the theory can't be wrong. if you take the science seriously, of course, it suggests that the underlying theory might be wrong.

Shaikh's attempt, of course, is in this vein. his suggestion is that a new theory of trade is necessary.

we have two countries. industries in Country A are more competitive than Country B. Country B soon runs a trade deficit; importing more from A than B. Gold flows from B to A.

in Ricardo's argument, Prices go up in A, and go down in B. In short, the lack of productivity in its industries is 'solved' by the change in the price level.

in Shaikh's argument, the price effect that Ricardo and Hume predict will be temporary; the more lasting effect will be a decline in interest rates, as Banks will lend out the gold and there will be an increase in supply, which means that inflation will be temporary. there's also the flow of gold back into B, because of higher interest rates. this also minimizes price increases in A.

in short, the competitive disadvantages remain in place.

Country B has to find its competitive disadvantages: primary goods, cheap labour (and low wages don't really work, in the long run—these countries have never developed well. the Indian textile industry didn't die because of tariffs, but because of inferior productivity).

neoclassicals say that's fine.

this is where Prebisch-Singer come in.

first, primary goods face declining terms of trade in the long run.

second, primary goods are extraordinarily volatile, which has a negative effect on investment.

Gunnar Myrdal's concept of 'cumulative causation' is relevant here.

Myrdal made the argument that the neoclassical assumption of balanced growth—that is, growth where initial disadvantages are wiped out by the market mechanism—is a fiction. What you actually find is a process of 'cumulative causation', where 'ex ante' differences between regions/countries are not counteracted, but actually reinforced. Another phrase for this, in the Marxist framework, is “uneven development” – the natural logic of capitalist development is turbulent, crisis-ridden, and uneven.

the consequence here, then, is that Country B is stuck.

the way out, then, is by doing what O'Rourke calls attention to. protecting yourself until gaining a competitive advantage.

- - - -

FDI in the 20^th C. overwhelmingly aimed at getting around tariff barriers; foreign firms came in to compete with local firms. there was no spreading of technology, etc.

often, also, FDI went to foreign markets because they weren't competitive on the domestic market. this isn't really going to help domestic producers.

neoclassicals talk about factor endowments as if these are things that countries are just born with ('capital-rich,' 'capital-poor').

the threat from industrializing country can't be understood in 'country' terms – but only in firm terms. there are plenty of firms who may very well benefit from the import of cheap goods and the opening of new markets. the 'national' effect is likely to be conjunctural; you'll have to look at it concretely.

are cheap raw materials/cheap labour functional for global capitalism? can you do without it? well US was never very well-integrated, but it's grown very quickly.

the US, also, has over time substituted raw materials for synthetically produced inputs.

importantly, you can't infer from the fact that firms will have problems that States will care. the reverse plaza accord wiped away manufacturing, to the benefit of finance. why?

Shaikh's argument, re: Central Banks, is that their own ability to influence interest rates operates within constraints set by the accumulation process. they aren't free actors. the supply of money and interest rates are endogenously determined, largely. this doesn't mean that State action is unimportant, just that it operates within limits.

lecture two, development

development is not an automatic outcome in any given social formation—it requires specific social/structural preconditions. most of history characterized by stagnation.

the critical shift was in incentive structures, which compelled producers to build in an orientation towards innovation/cost-cutting in their productive activity. until this happened, you don't get economic growth as an everyday component.

in European history, we are asking, what was an essential characteristic?

this week we focused on, first, a shift in agriculture. and second, we asked what this means for latecomers—both in terms of disadvantages, but there are some advantages, also ('liabilities to 'early development'').

Kemp and Crouzet put it quite well – developing countries aren't going to repeat the path of the early developers. nonetheless, they will have to put certain preconditions in place.

the main precondition is the domestic constraint—the constraint that traditional agriculture imposes upon the economy. there are, in fact, two kinds of transitions that are relevant: (1) within agriculture, the transition from traditional to modern agriculture—from pre-capitalist to capitalist agriculture; (2) away from agriculture, even of a capitalist kind, towards industry.

growth, then, becomes coincident with industrialization (development is often synonymous to industrialization).

today, a defense of the notion that industrialization is central.

why should agriculture be a constraint?

you can look at it from the supply side and the demand side.

from the supply side:

1. agriculture as the main occupation of most of the labour-force – it sucks up the labour supply, inhibiting the deployment of labour towards more productive activity. you have to free up labour from agriculture (the enclosures)
2. if agriculture is not dynamic, then the availability of material inputs for the production process will also be dampened. if the primary sector is stagnant, then industrialists face rising costs of inputs.
3. wage-goods—in early stages of development, most of the wage of industrial workers goes on food consumption. if agriculture is stagnant, it means that real wages will be low (because there will be little money freed up for purchasing, .

from the demand side:

1. very few of those involved in agriculture will be interested in buying goods, which will mean that the domestic market is thin (Lenin vs. Narodniks—kicking the peasants off the land will produce a mkt, according to Lenin. so you create a market by changing property relations, not by increasing wages)
2. even if you dispossess peasants and/or force them to be oriented to the market, it remains possible that their labour remains inefficient/not productive. even nonsubsistence but non-dynamic agriculture will mean that the growth of the market will be slow (and there will be slow growth in demand for industrial goods).

this means that it is absolutely essential for there to be a transition, within agriculture, from a traditional system of agriculture to a dynamic one.

now let's discuss the second transition—from agriculture, to industry.

cf. Kaldor—the main point is that no matter how dynamic your agriculture is, it will never be as high as the growth path you'll get if your main economic activity is industry. industry is capable of generating a much higher growth path than the best agricultural sectors.

there are a number of reasons for this:

1. agriculture grows more slowly than industry is that agriculture is constrained by some irreducible natural limitations (Marx makes this point in Vol II: labour time vs. production time, in agriculture versus industry). capital is 'tied' down, and it doesn't like being tied down. thus you will also have less capital coming in.
2. agriculture is less open to scale economies—it doesn't generate 'increasing returns' (when the same amount of inputs generate greater returns), but gets much faster into 'decreasing returns' (when the same amount of inputs generate decreasing returns).
3. agriculture is also subject to more volatility on the world market, in terms of returns to trade, and decreasing terms of trade. this increases the risk aversion of peasants, which means that they will shun market production.

so for an economy to develop, an economy must not only transform agriculture, but transform 'out' of agriculture.

why not remain an agrarian country?

1. it's politically difficult to sustain – people don't want a lower standard of living. economic development is politically something very helpful, for elites.
2. it's a Hobbesian world out there. States are competing, and countries which are more dynamic economically tend to wipe out weaker countries.

England, by the 1720s, is able to construct a very efficient central State, thanks to the settlement of 1688. these revenues help it build a very powerful military machine, and the Navy. England's defeat of France in the mid-1700s (Seven Years' War), and then in the Napoleonic Wars make Europe sit up and take notice. All of Europe, after 1815, starts a process of transforming its economic structure, and building States that can withstand this English behemoth. this is what drives the impetus to 'late development'.

the foregoing is important because it responds to two criticisms:

1. the West has generated a prejudice against small-scale agriculture (Schumacher) – small-scale agriculture is presented as being inefficient, as a drag on economic growth, but in fact family farming actually generates higher returns. the identification of development with industry is a mistake.
2. from post-colonial theory, via Chaterji, the argument is that the drive to industrialize is the result of post-colonial elites internalizing Reason and Science. the implicit argument in this is that the reason the third-world chose to industrialize is because its elites were socialized into accepting this as the desirable/valid form of development.

for either of these to make sense, there has to be an alternative path of development that you can adduce. is there another way to avoid domestic political unrest, or prevent encroachment by other States? Tanzania was the God that failed.

England was the first and last country where development takes place without the guiding hand of the State. in all the other cases, the State is critical.

the late industrializers will attempt not to repeat the same patterns that England went through, for two reasons: (1) they won't want to (try to telescope it); (2) they can't (England captures certain markets, and the Continental countries will find niches).

you do, of course, have to put certain preconditions in place. if they're not in place, you won't be able to avail of the correct technologies (peasants won't use threshers, etc.). what are these structural preconditions?

1. the transformation of agriculture
2. you have to be able to create a space for your industrialists to grow, so they can survive the threat of England (protection is critical)
3. there has to be a State-guided provision of public goods—of infrastructure.

the key is the first—how do you transform agriculture? this basically means changing property rights; taking property away from some people and giving it to others. wiping out certain classes of people. the difficulty in Europe was that you had just lived through the biggest cataclysm in modern history (Fr. Rev), you have the birth of the modern Left.

for the States in Europe, the trouble becomes two-fold.

1. capitalists are going to be reluctant to attack feudalism.
2. moreover, few states were bourgeois States; they were dominated by agrarian elites. how are they going to undertake agrarian reforms, the intent of which is to eliminate the agrarian elite?

as a result, Continental elites attempt to do this delicately—slow modernization of agriculture. precisely because of this, their growth path is slow, and very different from England. this is what unleashes the tensions that give you 1848, 1871, etc.

the nineteenth century in Europe makes no sense unless you contextualize it in the political/economic fact of modernizing while avoiding revolution.

- - - -

into the 80s, the consensus about France was that the Fr. Rev strengthened peasant property in land. while that improved the conditions of peasants, in some ways (given the removal of arbitrary events), its effect on the larger French economy was largely negative. the idea was that rural France was largely stagnant for sixty years.

there's been a revisionist account, that says these were actually relatively efficient – in terms of land productivity, it's argued. Vivek suggesting that this is a difficult case to make (food prices were quite high, real wages were low, capital formation was slow), and has to do with the resurgence of neo-classical economics.

on Prussia, the suggestion was that Prussian agriculture grew faster after reforms in 1806, 1811 than it did before—but not as fast as it did in UK or in USA. both because of low wages, and because –while farms were relatively large—they weren't large enough.

the English revolution built an efficient, extractive State – but this wouldn't have made much of a difference, had there not been underlying structural revolution. in fact, England has escaped the Malthusian trap by 1640.

the long-term consequences of the early centralization/organization of English landlords is important to explaining a lot of English history.

the Netherlands is politically weaker – why? it's rate of economic growth is not keeping up with England. and it's not able to get the most political bang out of economic buck, which has to do with its State structure (an effectively centralized State, and a political settlement between the Crown and the landed nobility). the English nobility is much more invested in the English State.

what 1688 does is facilitate State-building (a fiscal-military State). it's less clear how useful it is for accumulation. the Marxist presumption was that 1640 brought in capitalism; that's clearly not true. it's partly true that it facilitates capitalism. it's clear that it's major effect is on the extraction of revenues, which is indispensable to the creation of the British empire.

Perry Anderson's argument is that the reason you get capitalism in W. Europe is the 'availability of a certain legal resource', which is already in place – had it not been in place, you would not have had capitalism (Roman law). because of this, the absolutist State sanctifies private property. (the absolutist State, in short, was a transitional form which facilitated the rise of capitalism).

Why is this bogus? first of all, you don't get capitalism where you have absolutism; there was no absolutism in England; secondly, if they hadn't had the legal apparatus, they would have invented it (you don't have a legal sanction for enclosures).

British railway-building overseas begins in the post-1850 era, mainly.

Am. Civil War not driven by drive to centralize; WWI marks the beginning of American centralization.

there is a limit to how much primary-producers can get from demand from industrial countries, because of Ingel's Law (limit to how much consumers in industrial countries will want, of primary goods)

lecture one, development

development concerns the question of how and why countries are able to manipulate their rates of economic growth. the rates of increase of your GDP.

we are concerned with factors that encourage or militate against ec. growth.

this is a very recent question, about 300 years old. the reason for this is that the fact of economic growth is similarly novel. the very idea of development is a recent one.

	0-1000	1000-1500	1540-1820	1820-1870	1870-1914
EUROPE	-0.1	0.3	0.4	1.65	2.1
JAPAN	-0.1	0.18	0.3	0.41	2.4
LATIN AMERICA	0.7	0.09	0.2	1.3	3.48
AFRICA	0.7	0.06	0.16	0.5	1.4

some common answers

1. growth comes about on account of natural propensities. if this is true, though, why did it take so long? the Smithian answer is that this is because of the presence of institutions. most commonly, this account indicts the State—which allegedly squelched economic initiative and investible funds. in early days, the culprits were the Absolutist state, guilds, what have you. eventually, though, you get the modern state – allowing people to truck, barter, exchange, etc. the implication is that the advent of economic growth did not require structural shifts, but just institutional shifts—a change in the political rules of the game.

2. there is a cultural change that happens. in the pre-modern era, people were geared towards leisure, community, etc; innovation and hard work were discouraged. there can be culturalist and materialist variations of this argument. modernization theory is an excellent example of this. a kind of socialization prevailed in 17^th/18^th century Europe that never unfolded elsewhere. the obvious conclusion of these arguments is that modern rates of growth presuppose a cultural transformation. this demands internally-driven change, or cultural transmission. but this was, either way, the central obstacle [Asian values at one time inhibited ec. growth; then they promoted economic growth]

3. the other argument is that development required a transformation of social structures. it demanded a certain form of economic behavior, but this was not plausible under certain circumstances. because the choices that are available to people vary, depending on the conditions that confront them, it required a certain set of conditions to prevail before the corollary form of economic behavior could be generalized. the causal weight of the argument is on the property of the structures, not on the nature of the individuals.

there are significant disagreements here, viz-a-viz the neoclassical and cultural schools.

the Smithian argument:

1. people have an interest in their material well-being; their level of economic welfare.
2. because they're interested in their well-being, they have a proclivity to exchange.
3. their proclivity to exchange leads to growth, when institutions are appropriate.

the Structuralist argument draws a wedge between point number 1 and points number 2 and 3. in between, there need to be antecedent structural shifts.

put differently

the Neoclassicals: interest in welfare (X) – > a certain economic strategy (proclivity to exchange) (Y) – > modern economic growth

Brenner: interest in welfare enhancement (X) –> a certain economic strategy (Y) (the nature of which dependent entirely on a mediating mechanism (Z)—namely, the economic structure within which people are located)

this is an extremely powerful structural argument. let's run through it, by way of the rules of reproduction.

FEUDALISM

PEASANTS

1. Possession of MoP (customary rights to the land, and some degree of control of their own labour-power) –> produce for themselves/don't have to produce for the market
2. As a result, markets are thin; there will be few supplies coming to them (this is also a result of low levels of agricultural productivity, and the underdevelopment of markets due to low levels of technology)
3. Because markets are thin, they are also unreliable.
4. Peasants, therefore, avoid markets. They don't tend to specialize/innovate.
5. This reinforces the thinness of markets.
6. This produces a 'safety first' strategy.

[Discussion about whether it's possible to game the 'thickness' of markets, by assuming highly developed productive forces, to make a logical peasant, in possession of access to the means of subsistence, forfeit the 'safety first' strategy. Consensus seems to be that logically this is possible, but that empirically it is extremely rare]

LORDS

1. Peasant possession implies the general unavailability of free labour.
2. Thus, peasants are economically independent of lords (meaning, peasants can survive without the lord; lord does not have recourse to peasant produce in the same way that a capitalist does)
3. Reliance on coercion, then, to extract the rent.
4. The rent, then, will be invested in the means of coercion.
5. This means that there will be fairly slow productivity growth (this will produce a limited market—maybe for cannons, guns, etc.)
6. Because there's slow growth in productivity, he needs to grow his peasant base – he needs to annex other lands (It is individually irrational for him to kick them off the land, given that he wouldn't have a labour force to work the land. There might be some space for technological improvement on the manorial land, but the bang-for-buck would have to be enormous, given the supervisory problems).

Two basic conclusions:

1. For the economic system to shift from slow-growth to high-growth requires deep and far-reaching structural changes.

2. These changes are going to be fraught with all sorts of conflicts. Peasants will undertake this shift willingly, only under very rare circumstances.

The history of late development is the history of States undertaking this challenge of structural changes. What late development is fundamentally about is the attempt, through conscious agency, to bring about the sorts of structural changes that will bring about self-sustaining growth. To bring about a structure of incentives that encourages virtuous growth.

- - - - -

(1) A consequence of Brenner's argument is that 'wage-labour' is not a necessary condition for captialism – it is dependence upon the market. When you have landlords who can revoke the rights of their tenants, you have an epochal shift (in terms of productivity) – tenants will have to specialize/innovate to survive. You will get a class of wage-labourers, eventually, as unsuccessful tenants are sacked for underperforming. Market dependence is the key causal mechanism in which we are interested in; not the existence of wage-labour.

(2) Argument about 'urban practices' filtering into the rest of the continent (so, from Italian renaissance cities) fails because it can't deal with the constraints of social-property relations. Had these practices not filtered through, England would still have had capitalism. You run the counterfactual the other way, and you wouldn't have had capitalism (The basic investible resources for capitalist growth in England actually come from within England – this is an established quantitative fact. Wasn't the slave trade, wasn't investment from Europe, etc.)

(3) Merchant capital, in Vol I, is a solvent (at times). In Vol III, it's the opposite.

(4) The real secret of primitive accumulation is not 'thrift', but dispossessing people of the means of production.

Imperialism and the rise and decline of the British Economy 1688-1989, O'Brien

(49): four stages

1. 1688 to 1846, First Ind Rev, Mercantilism and Imperialism
2. 1846 to 1914, W. Hegemon and Guardian of 'Liberal' Ec. Order
3. 1913 to 1945, 'neo-mercantile' period of intensified competition
4. 1945 to today, decline

(50): 1688 marks discontinuity, as Britain starts to get more involved in G. Power politics

(51): taxes to national income at 18%, in 1815; only 3% during reign of James II; enormous rise in national debt, to 60% of revenues after defeat of Napoleon

(51): 1688 to 1915, only 1/3rd of years were peaceful in Europe

(52): in 1688, ratio of exports to GDP was 8%

(53-54): in sum--trade was growing, but was it important in the mercantile period to England's growth? debate among historians. negative cas is that (1) proportions were too low; (2) commerce's growth was endogenously determined; (3) gains from trade were small, even if positive. [O'Brien begs to differ, re: this period--for him, imperialism was important, though the case is not uncontested--basically takes recourse in an evasion, see p. 56]

(57): consistently high levels of investment in Navy/State [proves what, exactly?]

(58): as 'safety valve' for migration [but in all of this, there is no real proof advanced for the significance of mercantilism.]

(59): again, summarizing his case against the 'endogenous' case, re: development between 1688 and 1815. counter-factual w/o imperialism seems implausible, to him. 


(61): citing Smith as suggesting that imperial commerce made possible a more extensive division of labour (40 to 50% of non-ag workforce produced for markets overseas!) [hmm]

(62): in short, taking a middling position--against liberal histoiography that imperialism has no place. not wanting to be the world-systems fools, either.

(63): in short, for 1846-1914 period, reproducing argument of nineteenth-century radicals that, once Britain was powerful, it had no need for empire--costs outweighed benefits. some groups, of course, did benefit--subgroups.

(64): proportion of trade on imperial markets declined, in this period. almost everything supplied by imperial markets could have been purchased elsewhere.

(64-65): finds c-factual, in this era, plausible. 1.1 percent hit to GDP in 1870; 2.6% in 1913.

(66): citing Hobsbawm, 'imperial status' was a cushion for decline. a cushion for which taxpayers were paying a high premium.

(67): export of capital? but most went to white dominions (65%). and something like 2/3 of all assets were purchase of governemtn bonds and stable securities.

(70-73): imp--England could have adjusted better to 2nd Ind Rev, w/o Empire (domestic investment, banking system, etc.)

(73-75): imp--Empire implied a high taxation burden on domestic population

(77): and, as Germany was emerging as rival, Britain was unable to adjust the various burdens to compete better

path dependency, or why Britain became an industrialized and urbanized economy long before France, O'Brien (1996)

(213): std. of living before the Great War were probably not that far apart, actually

(214, see 242 also): argument: difference was a function of (1) geographical endowments, and (2) a system of property rights inherited from feudal past [either an alternative to or a misspecification of the Brenner thesis--or, an attempt to answer to questions the Brenner thesis begs?]

(215): importance of agriculture is three-fold (lists four, but 1 and 3 are the same)

1. supports growth of populations off of the land (and releasing labour and capital)
2. supplying them with food and RM
3. acting as a home market for manufactured goods, urban services

(216-217): land productivity comparable or higher in France between 1700 and 1910 (which was a function of intensification of labour inputs--i.e., not welfare enhancing!); but labour productivity far superior in England 

(219): imp-- it was not so much 'innovation', in this period (1500-1800), as it was the application of already-existing 'know-how'. rudimentary practices to store and accumulate nitrogen. [this is a very important point, as regards the Brenner thesis]

(222): availability of animals per capita was very important--progressive agrarian regions were most distinguished by this. (this becomes an 'endowment', that's important to the question at-hand)

(223-224): hints toward a 'geographic explanation'[but low bar, here, since it's just a two-country comparison]--availability of fodder crops, and less need for investment in inter-regional transport

(224-225): in sum--importance of animals, providing energy, fertilizer, etc., all raising yields and releasing labour.

(226): key--institutions of developing capitalist agriculture in Britain just wouldn't retain as much redundant labour--peasantry evolved into wage-dependent agricultural labour force well before 1800, which is very different from the rest of Europe

(228-229): key--revolutionary agrarian reforms, in France, helped secure peasantry in its place; 1800s was a century of challenge, which they met by selling below market prices, exploiting family labour, etc (self-exploitation)

(230): key--peasants stayed peasants because they wanted to minimize risks, maintain access to land. avoid uncertainty of proletarian life.

(232-233): referencing Bloch, here, arguing that reforms of 1789 were illustrative of general peasant strength, in Fr., to maintain access to land; very different from what's true, in Britain (good stats on how this translated into tenant farmer dominance, in Eng., but p-proprietor dominance, in Fr.)

(236): at beginning of 1600s, about 1/3rd of English farms were capitalist, another 1/3rd both family and hired labour. 45% of farms were removed from open fields.

(237): imp, waves of enclosure: between 1450 and 1525, in check till 1660, and then 1660-1815 [contradicts thesis that increasing enclosures were key to p. resistance in ECW, see JPS readings]

(239): there's a feedback loop, here, too: food prices went up as peasants migrated to cities, prompting further consolidation of capitalist farming in countryside, further migration of peasantry, etc.

(241): in sum, 'going back to the land' gives us as persuasive account of economic develoment as any (though concession that it's not reducible to agrarian fundamentals)

agricultural productivity and european industrialization, 1890-1980, o'brien (1992)

(514): ag. is important because successful early industrialization has been closely associated with improvements in productivity in land

(515-526): extensive discussion of measurement techniques

(526): disputing Bairoch's argument that protectionism in late 19th C. helped European Ec. (it depends on correlations), but no evidence for counter-argument offered

(529-530): key--no Eu economy had gone as far as Britain in 'freeing up' a labour force for industrialization, which was a function of the lower level of productivity (per worker) in agriculture. productivity per hectare was of course not the issue; UK hardly topped, on that count.

(531): US, also, was very impressive

(534): in claim that Medit. economies remain behind, hinting at 'ecological' explanation of backwardness