The Pristine Culture of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood

Author:Ellen Meiksins Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

One modification should be introduced into this argument – a modification that would make it more internally consistent. If German Junkers remained an aristocratic military caste in the traditional pre-capitalist mode, while the English aristocracy and gentry had long since become capitalists, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the English pattern of economic development is attributable not to the landed or aristocratic provenance of its dominant class but to its capitalist character, while Germany’s mode of industrialization has, at least in part, to do with the persistence of pre-capitalist forces.

Wiener’s observation that Bismarck’s government was motivated by the geo-political advantages of economic development in its promotion of industrialization lends support to this view. It is not, after all, difficult to understand why private capital, driven by the compulsions of capital accumulation, might be drawn to cheaply produced consumer goods for a mass market, where the necessary conditions are present and especially at a stage of development where neither the technological capacity nor the market for heavy consumer goods is available, while states responding to military and geo-political pressures might be inclined to encourage large-scale industrial production of capital goods. In a sense, the difference between England and Germany was that English industrialization was the product of capitalism, while German capitalism was at least accelerated by industrialization, a development of private industrial capital encouraged by the state.

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