From Feudalism to Capitalism | Part V
From Feudalism to Capitalism | Part V Harman is joined in his emphasis on the crucial role of productive forces by younger Marxist historians such as Neil Davidson and older ones such as Henry Heller, who together represent a third popular, more inclusive perspective on the origins of capitalism. They do, in fact, drive us back to Marx in our search for the next steps in the transition. The growth of trade, as Marx points out, led to the export of English wool to Flanders and northern Italy where wage-labor cloth industries briefly flourished in the late 14thC in Flanders and the late 15thC in Italy. But both experiments failed due to an economic crisis, to worker resistance, and, at the end, to the knock-on effects of the enclosure of the English countryside at the start of the 16thC. With loss of the commons and the conversion of 10% of the small-acre crop lands into large-acre pastureland, Marx reminds us, numbers of the English peasantry were separated from t...