The Origins of Capitalism as a Social System. The Prevalence of an Aleatory Encounter

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I: Capitalism and its origins: the theoretical context
	1 Marx’s notion of capitalism: a synoptic account
	2 Marx’s two approaches to the genesis of capitalism: the ‘productive forces – relations of production dialectic’ vs. ‘so-called original accumulation’
		2.1 A note on the status of Marx’s theoretical oeuvre
		2.2 A ‘philosophy of history’ and a ‘general law of human development’?
		2.3 ‘So-called original accumulation’
	3 Early forms of capitalism and wage labour: Lenin’s polemic against the Narodniks
		3.1 The historical context
		3.2 Capitalism prevailed as pre-capitalist exploitation forms dissolved
		3.3 Production for the buyer-up as a form of capitalist  manufacture
		3.4 Maintenance or dissolution of indirect forms of capitalist exploitation depending on class relation of forces
		3.5 The theoretical importance of Lenin’s intervention
	4 Capitalism and the agrarian sector: Karl Kautsky’s theoretical intervention
	5 Post-Second World War Marxist approaches to the ‘transition to capitalism’ question
		5.1 The ‘agrarian origin of capitalism’ tradition
		5.2 The ‘State-Feudalism’ tradition: revenge of the Narodniks?
		5.3 The persistent ‘theory of Production Forces’ tradition
		5.4 The ‘world-capitalism’ tradition
		5.5 The birth of capitalism as an aleatory encounter: from Balibar to Deleuze-Guattari and Althusser
		5.6 The ‘circulation question’: Is merchant capital productive or not?
	6 Non-Marxist approaches to the origins of capitalism
		6.1 Introduction: the ‘spirit of capitalism’ and the riddle of monetary profit forms in pre-capitalist societies
		6.2 Werner Sombart’s Modern Capitalism and its critics (1902–1916)
		6.3 Max Weber and the ‘spirit of capitalism’ controversy
		6.4 ‘Ancient capitalism’?
		6.5 Fernand Braudel: market economy vs. capitalism
	7 Modes of production and the pre-capitalist money-owner
		7.1 Modes of production and social classes: basic concepts and definitions
		7.2 Dominant pre-capitalist modes of production: relations of use and possession in the hands of the labouring class
		7.3 The money-begetting slave mode of production
		7.4 A dominated non-capitalist mode of production persisting through time
		7.5 The money-begetting slave mode of production and the capitalist mode of production
		7.6 Economic partnerships as forms of pre-capitalist money-begetting activities
		7.7 Concluding remarks
PART II: Venice and the Mediterranean: a discourse on the birth of capitalism
	8 From a Byzantine exarchate to a major colonial power in the Mediterranean: a historical sketch of the rise of Venice up to 1204
		8.1 The emergence of the Italian maritime republics: an overview
		8.2 Building a merchant tradition on salt, slaves and timber
		8.3 Gaining power through alliance with Byzantium
		8.4 The new geopolitical landscape after the First Crusade: phases of alliance and conflict up to the final clash of arms
	9 The Venetian social formation until the end of the thirteenth century: an unconsummated process of original accumulation
		9.1 The rule of a state-organized money-begetting oligarchy
		9.2 The economic functions of the Venetian state
		9.3 Complex forms of class exploitation and domination in a commercialized pre-capitalist society
		9.4 Concluding remarks
	10 War economics and the ascent of capitalism in the fourteenth century
		10.1 The Venetian colonial system: countering tendencies of disintegration after the Fourth Crusade
		10.2 Fighting for trade supremacy in the Mediterranean
		10.3 State power and the consolidation of the relation of capital
PART III: After the encounter took hold: the reproduction of capitalism on an expanded scale
	11 Venice alongside the new capitalist powers
		11.1 Venice and capitalism in historiography and Marxist literature
		11.2 Venice’s supremacy in the fifteenth century
		11.3 The Ottoman peril
		11.4 The spread of capitalism in Europe and Venice’s economic restructuring
		11.5 Crises and recoveries
	12 Political power and social cohesion
		12.1 The Venetian state as a capitalist state
		12.2 State apparatuses and forms of representation
		12.3 The ‘national question’, Venice’s state and its colonial territories
Bibliography
Index