TRANSITION DEBATE

The issue of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in history has been one of controversy and debate, with respect to its understanding and interpretations. The debate initially started between Maurice Dobb and Paul Sweezey, which eventually got expanded into a major debate among a wide range of historians, which came to be known as the ‘transition debate’. The debate emphasizes on four aspects of the transition- the definition of feudalism, the ‘prime mover’, the intermediate phase and finally ‘the two way theory’ for the rise of capitalism. It was following Brenner’s thesis that the new phase in the debate has started, wherein the core issues remained the same but the earlier thesis was expounded and critiqued.

Henry Pirenne’s famous ‘commercialisation model’ provides a background to this debate. He explained through this thesis, the emergence of feudalism as arising out of the disappearance of trades and towns, which had characterised the pre-feudal, Roman world. However, the rise of the Islamic Empire in the 7th and 8th AD and their gradual takeover of the Meditteranean put a stop to this. The Islamic Empire destroyed this flourishing trade heralding the Middle Ages, in which land was the most dominant source of wealth and the “economy of exchange” was replaced by a close, self-sufficient “economy of consumption”.

He subsequently stated if feudalism was essentially created by the absence of trade, then automatically the emergence of trade would kill feudalism. This revival of trade occurred around the 11th century with the crusades, when the Europeans took over the Meditteranean once again. The Maritime commerce soon penetrated inland, and with the revival of markets, agriculture also underwent changes. In the 12th and 13th centuries, a growth of towns was witnessed, which forced exchange and subsequently, the opening up of the estate.

Thus, such a theory implied that feudalism was stagnant and could be changed only by external forces. This model presupposes that the development of capitalism is possible only when the external obstacles to its realisation are overcome. It also suggests that capitalism developed with the growth of cities and the liberation of merchants.

Maurice Dobb was the first Marxist scholar to study the development of capitalism. He challenged the commercialisation model claiming that towns and trade were not anti-thetical to Feudalism. Although, he acknowledges the changes brought about by markets, he questions whether markets could be the sole or even decisive factor to sufficiently explain the decline of feudalism. He claimed that the “growth of money economy” lead to an intensification of feudal relations in Eastern Europe, which was marked by the reemergence of ‘second serfdom’. So if trade was indeed the prime mover, why did it lead to different results in different parts of Europe?

The ‘Dobb-Sweezey’ debate began with the latter’s criticism of Dobb’s thesis in his article published in Science and Society (1950). A contrast of the main points made by both Dobb and Sweezey would be relevant to understand the debate.

The first clash lay with the definition of feudalism. Dobb viewed feudalism in terms of social relations of production between the feudal landed aristocracy and the peasant-serf. In other words, Dobb equated feudalism with Serfdom and often used the two terms interchangeably. However, Sweezey regarded this definition as a highly restrictive one for an entire system and a defective one as it does not identify a system of production. He claimed that some serfdom can exist in systems which are not even feudal. For instance, in nearly all the conquered land, the conquerors have had the land cultivated by the old inhabitants. He defined feudalism in terms of the relationship between the market and the producer and defined it as a system for the production of use.

The second point of contention was the question of the ‘prime mover’. While, Dobb had said that the primary cause was a crisis in social relations of feudalism as a result of the inevitable class struggles (internal factor), Sweezey located a factor external to these relations i.e. in the expansion of trade and markets (external factors).

Dobb believed that it was the inefficiency of the feudal system coupled with the growing needs of the ruling class for revenue that was responsible for the decline of feudalism. The need for additional revenue had increased as a result of a natural increase in the number of the lords, more extravagance and an increasing tendency towards warfare, which created the need for more resources. It led to growing tensions and increased pressure on the serfs till it became unbearable, resulting in mass desertions of peasants to the cities and towns. Thus, there was an exhaustion of the labour force by which the entire system was nourished. This not only liberated them but also aided the improvement of the conditions of the serfs, who remained behind as their bargaining power had increased. Thus, the main cause of the decline of feudalism was over-exploitation of the labour force and not trade. This internal crisis led to different reactions within Europe, which ultimately forced the feudal ruling class to grant certain concessions to the peasants such as commutation of labour dues into money dues and the renting of demesne lands to tenant farmers.

Sweezey, on the other hand, felt that the feudal system was highly conservative, change resistant and self-perpetuating and hence the “prime mover” for the transition had to be something which was outside the system and was thus identified as trade. According to him, feudalism had none of the pressures that exist under capitalism for continual improvement of the methods of cultivation. He did identify certain elements of instability-growth of population and competition for land-but they were too minor to bring about a revolutionary change. Thus, he identified the prime mover to be outside the system.

He also argued that the factors suggested by Dobb that led to the growing demands of the ruling class take place outside the system of feudalism. He regards the growing needs for revenue of the ruling class as a consequence of the expansion of luxury trade in the 11th century, which naturally affected the taste of the noble class. Moreover, he doubts the actual increase in the population of the noble class given the fact that the medieval period was characterized by warfare (which Dobb fails to explain how it’s an inherent feature of the feudal system) and the burden of this warfare was borne by the noble class.

He concedes the fact that the desertion of serfs was an important factor leading to the decline of feudalism but refuses to see it as a phenomenon internal to the feudal system. He sees the flight of serfs as a natural consequence of the rise of towns which had taken place around the 13th and 14th centuries. While, he has no doubt that the oppression caused by the lords played a major role in the flight of the serfs but it could not have been the biggest factor which would have encouraged such large-scale emigration. Thus, he feels that the fleeing of peasants in the absence of any alternative would be completely incomprehensible. He highlights the important role played by towns in aiding the decline of feudalism in this respect. Thus, towns were seen as ‘urban magnets’ offering liberty and employment, which attracted the fleeing serfs. Moreover, the town-dwellers themselves made every effort to facilitate the escape of serfs from the rural areas as they needed additional labour power and more soldiers to enhance their military strength.

For Sweezey, trade was the most crucial factor which had lead to the decline of feudalism. His thesis was based on that of Pirenne. He believed that once trade outgrew the peddling stage it unleashed a creative force which brought about a new qualitative force. The centers or towns which earlier served only as centers for long distance trade were now being used as production centers as well. These centers not only supplied the town population itself with the essential commodities but enabled the rural population to purchase goods as well from the markets with the proceeds of the sale of their own goods. Thus, a new system of production for exchange had come into existence which co-existed with the older system of production for exchange. It was only when people came to realize the efficiency of the newer system- cheaper goods, profits, additional revenue etc-that it came to supersede the older system.

In his reply, Dobb challenged the notion of feudalism as a static, stagnant and incapable of movement from within. He argues that to refute the fact that feudalism could be changed by factors internal to the system, Sweezey had gone against the Marxist law of development which states that every economic society is moved by its own internal contradictions.

Further, he clarifies that holding just one cause, whether external or internal, as the prime mover would be an oversimplification of the issue. The causes of change must be seen in interaction with each other. However, he still gives primary importance to internal contradictions but does not rule out the importance of external factors but felt that their importance lay in the fact that it accentuated the internal conflicts within the old system and accelerated the process of social differentiation.

The third point of difference is with regard to the rise of capitalism. Both based their arguments around Marx’s thesis of the two-ways to capitalism. The first was the “really revolutionary way” in which the producer becomes the capitalist. Sweezey supported this view point as he believed that only the merchants had the capital to facilitate large-scale investments in new industries. Dobb laid emphasis on the second way, which saw the rise of capitalist from the class of merchants. The merchant initially took over production but his interests were different from that of the capitalists and hence he became an obstacle in the rise of capitalism as he was keen to preserve the older system to suit his own interests.

Dobb attributed this to the countryside, due to the liberation of the petty commodity production and ‘primitive or original accumulation’ in agriculture. With the decreasing control of the lord, he could devote more time to his own plot, and with the surplus thus generated, go to the market. With this access to the market, the peasants became potential competitors. As a result some benefitted while others were dispossessed of their land. This is primitive or original accumulation. The dispossessed people now entered the new system as wage earners as their bargaining power is low, since they had no property or capital. This method was called ‘petty production’ and thus social relations of production were changed.

Sweezey, however, says that the generalization of commodity production could not account for the rise of capitalism. According to him, the first capitalist manufacturers were actually large-scale merchant enterprises. The merchants carried out the trade and accumulated wealth, so that they could begin full fledged production. Thus, he identifies merchants as carriers of trade that dissolved feudalism and created capitalism. The capitalist enterprises were therefore, necessarily urban. The capitalist economy develops outside agriculture, in the towns, but slowly incorporates and commercialises agriculture.

The last point of distinction between Dobb and Sweezey is their understanding of the transitional period between feudalism and capitalist stages. Dobb says that feudalism entered into crisis in the 14th century and calls this period as still feudal, though in decline. Thus, for Dobb this transitional phase was characterized by several changes-such as the rise of trade, commutation of labour dues into money dues, renting out of land to the tenant farmers etc- but the form of exploitation, in the absence of free mobilization of labour, free market in land and political constraints and pressures of manorial custom, which still ruled the economic relationship, did not shed its feudal character. Sweezey however, says that the transition period was neither entirely feudal nor capitalist, but one of simple commodity production, which should be seen as a distinct period in itself.

This, however, was contested by Dobb in his reply to Sweezey on the grounds of the nature of the ruling class of this period. In his opinion, he believes there were two possibilities for this. One that the ruling class was a feudal one and hence, the period was still largely a feudal one though it was in a state of decline. The second alternative was that the ruling class was that of merchant bourgeoisie then the state must have been a bourgeois state. Dobb rejects this to be impossible because the bourgeois revolution took place only in the 17th century and the period under discussion was the beginning of the 15th century.

In his reply to Dobb, Sweezey argued that there were several ruling classes, which shared power. This however, was contested by Christopher Hill on theoretical grounds. He argued that Sweezey’s theory regarding the existence of several ruling classes was theoretically not possible as it was almost impossible for several classes to share state power with each other. Such a situation, according to Hill, would lead to chaos, anarchy and a civil war like situation.

Rodney Hilton played an important role in refuting the ‘Commercialisation theory’, which formed the basis of Sweezey’s thesis. He stated that the Pirenne’s thesis was based only on the assumptions that the Arabs were anti-trade, when in actuality they favoured and encouraged long-distance trade and hence could not have been responsible for the decline of trade. He believed that the decline of feudalism was because of internal factors and not external changes.

He believed that it was the struggle for rent, which was the prime-mover. As the demand for rent by the lord increased, it increased the pressure on the peasant. However, the rent represented the surplus products of the peasants it added an incentive for the peasants to increase their own cultivation. This effort often resulted in the cultivation of new lands.

(X) Other prominent scholars included A.B.Hibbert, who wrote ‘The Origin if the Medieval Town Patricaite’ in Past and Present (1953); and F.Y. Polyansky. Both see towns as elements in the historical development of the feudal socio-economic order. Hibbert proposed that commerce was a natural product of feudal society. Polyansky attempts to place trade and commerce as integral to feudalism, saying that they were the result of the expansion of the feudal agriculture. New technologies introduced in agriculture in the 8th-11th centuries increased the total production of agriculture. With a greater feudal surplus, there was greater trading activity. He said that the creation of towns constituted one form of the political and economic expansion of the feudal regime.

Kohachiro Takahashi’s views are important as his brought into insights from different parts of the world to this debate, through his studies in Japanese history and feudalism. He said that in considering various modes of production, the basic thing to take into account should be the existent-form of labour power, which he believes is the decisive factor. The question of transition therefore is not about changes in the economic and social conditions, but change in the existence-form of labour power. He also referred to Marx’s two ways to capitalism, but said that they were two different approaches. According to him, the first was seen in Western Europe, where feudal property was reorganized; while the second was seen in Prussia and Japan, were feudal property was consolidated. Thus, capitalism was imposed on feudalism from above, it did not develop on its own.

In the 1950s, another dimension was added to this debate. At this time, the Annales school of thought existed, which wrote on ‘total history’, i.e., looked at factors other than political or economic that influenced history over a long period. An important sub-group was the Demographic school, which suggested that demographic change also affected the transition, and that the laws of demand and supply determined the shift to capitalism. M.M. Postan and Emmannel Le Roy Ladurie saw autonomous cycles of demographic expansion and decline in Europe, connected to economic development. In the 11th-13th century, there was a growth in population. There was added pressure on the land, leading to a scarcity and rising prices. Thus, the position of the lord vis-à-vis the peasantry improved due to the presence of excess labour. In the 14th-early 15th century there was a decline, which led to declining productivity, famine and plague. There was a reversal in the land-man ratio and peasants were able to get concessions. Again in the late 15th-16th century, there was growth while the 17th-18th century saw a decline. This came to be known as the Malthusian Cycle only when Europe was able to escape this crisis did full-fledged capitalism emerge in Europe.

Scholars like Robert Brenner rejected such a theory on the grounds that the demographic model is inadequate as demography as a factor cannot determine the patterns of income distribution and serdom and nor can it determine the nature of the market. He also criticised the demographic school, and trade, on the grounds that they didn’t explain how the same factors produced different results in different parts of the continent. Thus the mere fact that the same factor produced different results in different parts of Europe were enough for him to prove that these could not have been the dominant factors, which lead to a transition. Thus, he held the primary reason to be the crisis built into the varying configurations of feudal relations of production, but in the context of other factors like demography and trade, which he did not ignore.

Brenner said that the feudal social property system established certain limits on the development of production, which led to economic stagnation and involution. Neither the landlord nor the serf were in the position to or had the desire to improve production. The landlord had could increase his income by exploiting the serf. So to innovate would be too much trouble and investment. For the peasant, whatever surplus he produced was appropriated, so he had no incentive to produce more. This basic relationship ensured a crisis of subsistence, accumulation and productivity in feudal agriculture, and was intensified by an increase in population. So, it was a system of inefficient production and it was the class structure which was responsible for no dynamic changes taking place in the feudal order. Following Marxist thought, he said that feudalism was based essentially on political power, and it would collapse only when this power was challenged. This was the idea of the ‘class struggle’. It depended on the balance of forces between the contending classes.

Brenner tried to explain why the increase in population had a different impact on different parts of Europe. He took the example of Germany, where the increase in population in Western Germany had to lead to the strengthening of peasant ties but in East Germany, an increase in population had lead to the strengthening of serfdom. He stated that this was primarily due to the fact that Western Germany was more densely populated and had seen more contiguous settlements making it possible for peasants to be in constant touch with each other. There was greater struggle over limited resources and land and thus arose the need for peasant co-operation. This enabled peasants to collectively resist the power of the landlord and win concessions. In East Germany, the landed estates were much bigger due to which the peasants were scattered over large tracts of land. Moreover, the trends for individual farming were more common in these areas as a result of which it became easier to suppress the peasants.

He tried to explain the rise of capitalism in Western Europe by comparing the internal developments in England and France. In France a strong monarchy had emerged which was able to curb the powers of the nobility by intervening in favour of the peasantry. It recognized the concessions won by the peasants and allowed them to retain control over their land holdings. However, the state had not intervened in order to promote the interests of the peasants but to enhance its own powers. Thus, it soon emerged as the chief tax extracting body in France. The state protection to peasant land holding and the rights given to their family members to hold on to the land as well lead to the division of the same land into smaller fragments over generations. This came to be known as Morcellment, by which France had become a land of small estates. This adversely affected the total productivity and France could not develop a strong agrarian base.

In England, the central monarchy was quite weak and depended on the feudal aristocracy. Thus, they intervened in their favour by dispossession of the peasants and appropriation of their land by raising the rent arbitrarily. The peasants were evicted from their lands, which were then taken converted into large landed estates by the lords. This was the clear beginning of ‘agrarian capitalism’ as the lords were able to consolidate their land holdings and establish their monopoly over it. The lands were then leased out to a capitalist tenant, who in turn reemployed a number of the displaced peasants as wage-labourers. Thus, a three-tier system had emerged in agriculture.

Brenner also pointed out that merely large-scale landholding does not mean that there is capitalist development. New kind of property relations is the basic condition for the rise of capitalism. This emerged due to a process of dispossession and accumulation in England, by which property was getting consolidated in a few hands, as opposed to many hands in France, based on the dispossession of the majority. The landlord could now lease land to the capitalist tenant, who would employ wage labour for capitalist production. Earlier, law or tradition fixed this rent, but now it was responsive to market conditions. The capitalist tenant held land only on a rent-paying basis, as long as he could get a profit. It could even be said that a market existed in leases, as there was competition for land. Thus, it was compulsion, or need that forced them to produce for the market, not opportunity. Both the landlord and the tenant came to depend on increased productivity for success in the market in the interest of profits and rent respectively. This new symbiotic relationship became the basis for capitalism. As a result, production now improved enormously and as larger tracts of land were being cultivated, economies of scale could operate. This made possible a sustained fall in the prices of grains. Therefore, it was now possible for wages to be lowered, because the price of livelihood had reduced and minimum wages were paid, only for bare subsistence. So the total amount of wages paid to the labour reduced, which in turn led to a decline in the total cost of production. Also, with the fall in grain prices, the expenditure on non-food products increases. Since less is spent on food, more money can be spent on other items like clothes, luxuries etc. Together, with the low cost of production, this increased expenditure constitutes effective demand, leading to an expansion in the home market. With the rise in demand, increasing number of people had to cater to it and more people moved to the cities. Between 1400-1700, close to 40% of the population in English agriculture had moved to the towns. Also, the increase in production makes it possible for sustain a larger non-food producing population, unlike in the subsistence economy, where each produced just enough for oneself. This led to the growth of the industrial and service sectors as, with production of surplus, more people could move away from agrarian work to other sectors like service and manufacturing etc.

Thus, Brenner stated that it wasn’t internal class struggle or demographic factors alone, which accounted for the decline of Feudalism. But when these factors operated in the context of rising markets and towns that the existing power was challenged and uprooted.

Brenner has made an invaluable contribution to the transition debate. He emphasizes the specificity of the historical process that brought capitalism into being, and how it came about. But there have also been various criticisms. There is a general criticism of the very idea that English agrarian relations were distinctive enough to call them agrarian capitalism in the 17th and 18th centuries, specifically in its drive to improve productivity. Another objection is that since capitalism is defined by exploitation of wage labour, it is not a decisive argument against the concept of agrarian capitalism that England was not a predominantly wage-earning society, and wage labourers were still very much in a minority. Other processes like differentiation are also important.

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie attacked Brenner for mixing up economic and political factors by talking about surplus-extracting and ruling classes as if they were one and the same. M.M. Postan critiques Brenner by saying that just because a factor does not achieve same result in different situations and regions we cannot discount its role. He says that the demographic model brings in a wider set of references – family, size, structure, customs, role of war, law, etc., in opposition to Marxist theories that remain limited to concern about property relations. He goes on to suggest that a corrected and supplemented Ricardian theory (diminishing returns from the land for a number of reasons) provides a better matrix than Malthusianism for the demographic theories.

Guy Bois believed that the role of the state in case of Britain and France had been greatly exaggerated and it could not have lead to such a fundamental difference in the developments in the two countries. He believed that the difference lay in total structure of feudal experience. France had had a more acute and sharper version of feudalism than England’s marginal experience. Therefore when the feudalism crisis occurred, England had not matured fully enough and so feudalism could decline.

(X)

Patricia Croot and David Parker say that Brenner underestimates the decisive role played by small capitalist farmers in England. They also criticize his explanations for the contrasting development in England and France. The property arrangements in France could be temporary arrangements. As population increased, these divided further into sub-holdings. So peasants did not get enough income and, in addition, were burdened with a heavy king’s tax and the feudal rent. Thus, he overestimates the security of small peasant holdings in France. According to them, the real difference was only in terms of time period stipulated for taxation. Brenner said that it was delayed in France. Croot calls for the study of what happened afterwards, as a generation later, similar conditions to those in England developed. Brenner is also attacked concentrating just on large landlord estates. This produces a circumscribed view of the real developments – he passes over the contribution of the English peasant and exaggerates the independence of the French peasantry. However, Brenner’s argument does not account for the growth of capitalism through the rise of certain groups, but by particular system of class relations.

Heide Wunder said the thesis was ‘anglo-centric’, focusing mainly on England. He said that the contributions of continental historians should also be considered. He also questioned the divergent evolution of peasant class organization in East and West Elbian Germany. Brenner said that the West had more communal resources of struggle while the East did not. But Wunder said that the notion of different ‘communal experiences’ of the West and East Elbian peasant communities was an error. So an important empirical basis to Dobb’s thesis questioned.

Thus, while certain important aspects of Brenner’s thesis have been questioned, his theory has not been destabilized in any real sense. Brenner thesis still stands, and though it may be improved by some of the criticisms, it is yet to be fundamentally challenged.

Perry Anderson also makes an important contribution by attempting to synthesize non-Marxist themes such as demography with the conventional Marxist emphasis on social relations. He also laid emphasis on trade but saw them as internal to the system of feudalism. He felt that the appearance of money-rent brought about a fundamental change in feudalism. He argued that the feudal lords, in light of the new developments, tried to concentrate their formal coercive powers in a new kind of centralized monarchy, which resulted in the rise of the ‘Absolutist State’, which in turn marked a critical step towards the rise of capitalism.

Thus, to conclude, we see that the transition debate is a complex of extremely varied discussions and themes. These debates provide a historical framework for analyzing the factors which lead to the decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism. Although, there is still no acceptable coherent structure to explain the transition, the debate is still dynamic and new development s have emerged recently.

 

Bibliography

  • Maurice Dobb—Studies in the Development of Capitalism
  • Rodney Hilton (Ed.)—The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
  • T.H. Aston and CHE Philpin (Ed.)—The Brenner Debate

—“ Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe”: Robert Brenner

— “ The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism”: Robert Brenner